Next Sunday

Why do conversations about money still feel difficult in so many churches?

In this episode of the Next Sunday podcast, Jim Shepard and Frank reflect on what has—and hasn’t—changed across more than three decades of church generosity work. The tools look different, but familiar pastoral questions remain.

Together, they explore the discomfort surrounding money conversations, the importance of a pastor’s personal conviction, and the relationship between generosity and discipleship. They also consider how culture and consumerism shape the messages people hear about money throughout the week.

For pastors shaping vision and leading its implementation, the conversation offers a reason to revisit how the church teaches, communicates, and equips its people.

Listen, then bring one observation into a conversation with your team.

How can a church make giving easier to understand while staying clear about how gifts will be used?

In this episode of Next Sunday, Jim and Frank explain the Generis one fund approach and the leadership work behind it. They discuss the difference between one giving invitation and the church’s responsibility to plan and allocate funds, why reporting matters to congregational trust, and how a clear invitation can help people who join the church after an initiative begins.

The conversation also considers what changes when pastors can talk about generosity as part of discipleship, beyond a single project or campaign. For church leaders weighing their next season of ministry, it offers practical questions to consider before choosing an approach.

Listen to the full conversation.

Sunday comes every seven days, even when a church is preparing for a major generosity initiative. So how much additional work should pastors, staff members, and lay leaders expect?

In this episode of Next Sunday, Jim Sheppard and Frank Bealer explain why the answer depends on more than a standard workload estimate. They explore senior-pastor involvement, leadership structure, staff experience, hidden responsibilities, open positions, and the importance of choosing a point person with genuine capacity.

They also address a commonly overlooked reality: the work does not end after the public phase. Continued communication and encouragement help people follow through and give new members of the church an opportunity to participate.

Listen for a practical, honest conversation about preparing your team to carry an important initiative well.

Churches often focus their generosity efforts on the congregation. But what happens when the staff members responsible for leading those efforts are not personally participating?

In this episode of the Next Sunday Podcast, Jim Sheppard and Frank Bealer explore why staff giving is more than an internal policy or financial matter. It affects leadership credibility, staff advocacy, and the broader culture surrounding generosity.

The conversation also moves beyond expectations to pastoral care. Jim and Frank discuss reluctance, marital concerns, financial pressure, compensation, onboarding, and why staff giving should never be reduced to forced compliance.

Listen for a candid and constructive conversation about helping the people closest to the mission understand, practice, and lead generosity with integrity.

This is episode 5 of 5 of the Next Sunday Podcast Summer Session: five focused conversations to help pastors and church leaders arrive at fall with a congregation of ready hearts. Download Beyond The Generosity Gap Workbook, a free guide designed to help you put these conversations into action before the season arrives.

For God loves a cheerful giver. It is one of the most quoted lines in conversations about generosity, and one of the most misunderstood.

In this final episode of the Next Sunday Summer Session, Jim Sheppard unpacks the Greek word behind "cheerful", hilaros, and reveals that it carries two co-equal meanings: joyful and ready. Paul uses the word ready five or six times in the verses immediately before that famous line. The point was never just happiness. It was preparation.

Jim and Frank close the series with a direct challenge to pastors: stop apologizing for the offering moment. Stop managing reluctance. The goal is not to protect people from their wallets; they know how to do that better than you do. The goal is to form people into ready, eager, willing givers. And that formation work does not happen in September. It happens now.

This is episode 4 of 5 of the Next Sunday Podcast Summer Session: five focused conversations to help pastors and church leaders arrive at fall with a congregation of ready hearts. Download Beyond The Generosity Gap Workbook, a free guide designed to help you put these conversations into action before the season arrives.

The data is encouraging. Gen Z's propensity to give is at or above that of Boomers. Their faith is growing. So why isn't their generosity keeping pace in most churches?

In this episode, Jim Sheppard and Frank Bealer name the gap honestly and place the responsibility squarely where it belongs. Frank introduces the idea of "checkmatic giving," the way automated digital giving, while convenient, has quietly removed generosity from everyday family life and eliminated the natural discipleship moments that used to happen around the kitchen table.

Jim traces the larger pattern: Boomers didn't disciple Gen X well in this area. Gen X didn't disciple Millennials. And now the gap has compounded into Gen Z. The good news is that their willingness is there. The question is whether the church will disciple that willingness before the window closes, and whether it will start building the formation pipeline for Gen Alpha before it is too late.

This is episode 3 of 5 of the Next Sunday Podcast Summer Session: five focused conversations to help pastors and church leaders arrive at fall with a congregation of ready hearts. Download Beyond The Generosity Gap Workbook, a free guide designed to help you put these conversations into action before the season arrives.

Most churches treat their fall giving campaign, year-end giving, and new year launch as three separate events. In doing so, they exhaust their congregation, miss their best opportunities, and arrive at January wondering what happened.

In this episode, Jim Sheppard and Frank Bealer make the case that September through February is one continuous discipleship rhythm, not three disconnected seasons. They unpack the theological difference between Cain's question and Abel's question as the frame for what truly transformational giving looks like, and show what it means to build a second-half narrative that carries people through each moment rather than resetting with every new push.

They also land on what may be the most overlooked communication opportunity of the entire church year, the annual giving statement. Everybody opens it. Almost nobody uses it well. This episode shows what it looks like when you do.

This is episode 2 of 5 of the Next Sunday Podcast Summer Session: five focused conversations to help pastors and church leaders arrive at fall with a congregation of ready hearts. Download Beyond The Generosity Gap Workbook, a free guide designed to help you put these conversations into action before the season arrives.

Most pastors sense it. Generosity feels harder to cultivate than it once did. But few can name exactly why.

In this episode, Jim Sheppard and Frank Bealer bring the explanation to the surface. The environment that quietly reinforced giving for decades has shifted, and the formation gaps it was masking are now fully visible. Jim introduces the idea of false signals, the metrics that make a church look healthier than it actually is. Hitting the annual budget. A faithful older generation quietly carrying a disproportionate share of the weight. Attendance growing while generosity participation stays flat.

Frank adds a challenge that cuts to the heart of it: getting really good at budgeting and forecasting is not the same as making disciples. The status quo is not working. And the summer is the right time to figure out the difference, before fall demands results you haven't prepared for.

This is episode 1 of 5 of the Next Sunday Podcast Summer Session: five focused conversations to help pastors and church leaders arrive at fall with a congregation of ready hearts. Download Beyond The Generosity Gap Workbook, a free guide designed to help you put these conversations into action before the season arrives.

Before you diagnose your congregation's giving culture, there's a harder question to sit with first.

In this opening episode of the Next Sunday Summer Session, Jim Sheppard and Frank Bealer make the case that the giving temperature of a congregation almost always reflects the spiritual and emotional temperature of its leader. A great strategy launched into unprepared hearts will run off like rain on hard ground. The real preparation begins with the pastor.

Jim and Frank walk through what an unresolved relationship with money actually looks like in practice, the apologetic tone before a giving message, the constant rationalizing, the tendency to reach for a new strategy rather than do the harder interior work. They challenge pastors to identify where money still creates tension in their own lives, and why that unresolved tension will quietly limit everything they try to lead this fall.

This episode is not a diagnosis of your congregation. It is an invitation to look in the mirror first.

High-capacity givers and major donors are often approached transactionally—by schools, charities, alma maters, museums, and causes that lead with one question: “How much can you give?” This episode explains why pastors must lead differently, and what your biggest givers wish you knew about shepherding them well.

In this episode of The Next Sunday Podcast, hosts Jim Sheppard and Frank Bealer continue the conversation on segmentation and generosity by asking a practical question: once a church knows who its high-capacity givers are, what should pastors do—and how should they relate to these givers with integrity?

Jim makes a clear point: don’t start with the money conversation. If a pastor leads with giving, it immediately signals a transactional posture—treating a person like a resource instead of someone to shepherd. Instead, Jim reframes high-capacity giving as a stewardship assignment—one many people are unprepared to carry, especially first-generation wealthy families or newer believers who suddenly find themselves with significant resources and little discipleship framework for what to do next.

The episode also challenges assumptions about financial ease. Frank references a recent study noting that even households earning around $500,000 report feeling “paycheck to paycheck,” which exposes how common lifestyle pressure and financial tension can be, even at higher income levels. The takeaway: pastors shouldn’t assume complexity disappears with wealth. 

A key leadership moment comes when pastors fear reaching out to a major giver who is pulling back, because they worry it will be perceived as “I’m only here for your money.” Jim pushes deeper: that fear often reveals the pastor’s own transactional mindset. Until that posture is corrected, the conversation will stay awkward, because the awkwardness is coming from the leader, not the giver.

Finally, Jim and Frank emphasize that generosity is discipleship—progressive sanctification—and churches can hit a campaign goal while still failing their people spiritually. The call is to help people grow over time, strengthen the “muscle” of generosity, and steward the pastoral opportunity with clarity and courage.