At Killer Church this week we are taking time out to take a look back at Liquid‘s 2010 Christmas Offering.

This will be the second year at Liquid that we had a “Christmas Offering.”  (Kinda the third . . . because in 2008 we were raising start up capital for our New Brunswick Campus.)  This year we structured one “ask” with three parts.

On September 11, 2011, Liquid will launch its third campus in Montclair, NJ!  A part of the Christmas Offering will end end up providing the financial foundation for the launch of this site.  Personally . . . I’m pumped about this launch!

On December 11th, 2010 we hosted a city-wide outreach for over 600 economically challenged people – including a great brunch, gifts and coats for kids and lots of festive fun! This represented a bit of a risk because all the expenses for this outreach happened before the end of the Christmas Offering.

Summer 2011 will feature the launch of our brand-new Arts & Music Camp for kids! Camp Rock will teach children the fine arts of Music, Film, Photography, Dance, and more! The 2010 Christmas Offering will provide full Camp Rock scholarships for children in financial need.

I was excited for this year’s Christmas Offering because all three parts of the offering were future facing.  Last year we ended up underwriting the “loss” from our New Brunswick Campus expansion.

From a communication point of view, this allows us to tell a handful of really great stories about why people should give to the Offering . . . lots of pieces to “sell” . . . it also recognizes that various people in our church are motivated to give “above and beyond” by various types special projects.  (Evangelism, Compassion, Kids) There is a potential danger in a three fold focus . . . that it can lack the clarity of one single big item.

We were missing a global emphasis in this year’s offering.  We have spent a lot of time, effort and energy getting people fired up for the clean water cause.  I thought we’d have more questions about why this was missing from this year.  In the end I never heard in mentioned.

Any thoughts on a three part campaign rather than just a single focus?  What dangers or advantages do you see?

On Wednesday I’m going to look at some of the communication pieces we used for this year’s Christmas Offering. Subscribe to the blog through email and you’ll get exclusive bonus content.