Estates and Estate Seminars Come in All Sizes

One of our favorite tasks is delivering checks to churches from the estate of one of the members of their church family. Just like individuals leave gifts to their natural family members, your church family members will leave gifts to your church family if they are challenged to do so. In most cases that church member attended an Estate Stewardship Seminar hosted by the Foundation.

The picture shown here is of our own Doug Griffin delivering a check from the estate of Carolyn Hill to Pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Ceres, California. Mrs. Hill who was a member of their church family became a part of the Foundation's family in 1999 when her church hosted a seminar.

We continue to host Estate Stewardship Seminars in churches of all sizes. Attendance in our recent seminars has ranged from 4 to 92. The number of people attending is not nearly as important as the church families' attitude about the event.

In fact, the seminar where only 4 attended resulted in one of the largest planned gifts to ministry in the past year! In that case the pastor specifically referred a family to us for a consultation. That family wanted to benefit mission causes with a substantial portion of their estate.

Every church should schedule an Estate Stewardship Seminar at least every two years. Larger churches need to host seminars more often. You will never get everyone to a single seminar for a variety of reasons. By hosting seminars every year or two word gets around about the importance of taking care of this vital stewardship responsibility, and over time more and more of the church's family will become a part of ours.