75: Leaving a Lasting Impact: The Heart of Legacy Giving in Faith Communities

Discover how the act of legacy giving can carry forward your values and beliefs long after you've left the room. Brian Roberts of the Greater New Jersey United Methodist Conference joins Jeff Bills for a conversation on this transformative practice within faith communities. Find encouragement that you don't need a hefty bank balance to leave a profound impact. Brian shares how these choices reflect our deepest care for our loved ones and the congregations we cherish. Special thanks to Brian for joining us this week!

NOTES & RESOURCES:

• Interested in learning more about legacy giving at HOPE? Contact jeff@meethope.org.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the Meet Hope podcast, where we have conversations about faith and hope. Hope is one church made of people living out their faith through two expressions in person and online. We believe a hybrid faith experience can lead to a growing influence in our community and our world for the sake of others. Welcome to Hope.

Speaker 2: 0:37

Hey friends, welcome to the Meet Hope podcast. I'm Jeff Bills and I am being joined today by a friend and colleague, Reverend Brian Roberts. Brian, welcome, Glad to have you with us, and Brian is a member of the Greater New Jersey Annual Conference staff and you serve in. What's that capacity, Brian? What's your title?

Speaker 3: 1:00

My title is Executive Director of the Stewardship Foundation for Greater New Jersey, but I like to share with people that I'm here to serve and resource congregations and growing grace-rooted generosity and helping people respond to God, and then with faith-aligned investments through Westpath, which is our United Methodist used to be United Methodist Pensions Right.

Speaker 2: 1:26

Okay, well, that's a lot. So we're going to be talking a little bit about endowments and legacy giving, but before we get into all of that stuff, tell us a little bit about yourself, brian.

Speaker 3: 1:43

Sure, I grew up in upstate New York and the rolling hills of upstate New York and then, as I felt, called to ministry. After college, came down to Princeton Seminary, was there for three years, worked for a Presbyterian church, an AME church for a year and then a United Methodist Church and ended up serving. My first congregation was in St Peter's in Ocean City.

Speaker 2: 2:09

Great church. That's a great church. Anybody who's an Ocean City person knows right where that church is.

Speaker 3: 2:15

Right, you're ready's restaurant.

Speaker 2: 2:19

All right, and you and I were just talking, so we came into the conference about the same time, so we're contemporaries as well as being colleagues. We both love kayaking, so you're a kayaker, right.

Speaker 3: 2:32

I am and enjoyed it. We were talking of some of the adventures that we had. Luckily not too many misadventures this summer kayaking, but a good adventure seeing the wonder of God's creation around the New Jersey area.

Speaker 2: 2:45

Love it, love it. So let's talk about legacy giving. So it's something that we're just beginning to talk about here at Hope Church and a lot of us this is new, and a lot of us this is new, new to Hope and, in many ways, new to me. So when you talk to folks about legacy giving, what is that? What exactly is legacy giving?

Speaker 3: 3:15

Legacy giving is remembering what's important during your life and trying to care for it with some of your estate or some of the accumulated assets as we pass into God's eternal care. Paul was writing to Timothy and in the sixth chapter of first Timothy he says look, you come into the world with nothing and you're going to leave the world with nothing. And so as we go to God and to God's eternal care, remembering what's important and leaving that to family, but also opportunities to leave that to a ministry that many of your members care for your ministry, their whole life, yeah, and so how do they then remember that as part of their estate planning?

Speaker 3: 3:59

Okay, remember that as part of their estate planning.

Speaker 2: 4:02

Okay. So this is about how you are leaving to something like your church when you're gone, that Most folks, I think, don't imagine they're going to have, you know, millions of dollars, and they think of legacy giving as that. They want to take care of their immediate family, but may not be thinking much beyond that.

Speaker 3: 4:40

Sure, and that's one of the myths I try to dispel with people. It's not just the billionaires or multimillionaires, but all of us will probably accumulate more resources than we realize during our lifetime and as we pass into God's care. Of course, remembering those that we love, those that love us our families and taking care of them, bring those that we love, those that love us our families and taking care of them. But encouraging people to say what would it look like to leave a portion of your estate, a portion of an IRA or something a life insurance policy that would help provide an income stream made the same percentage of your estate that you gave to the church, or different ways to consider it, like an additional grandchild or something, so that it's many gifts over time add up for a congregation or for a ministry.

Speaker 3: 5:36

It's true, universities and hospitals know that, but the congregations, our churches, we haven't shared that as much.

Speaker 2: 5:44

Right, yeah, and and I'm probably not the best example of this, because Marilyn and I were slow to get around to writing out a will when our kids were young, we had talked to folks that, hey, if we're suddenly out, if we're in heaven identifying who we would want our kids to stay with, but hadn't really thought about other resources, and so, you know, and that's not a comfortable conversation, it's, you know, nobody really wants to think about that, but it is really important, isn't it?

Speaker 3: 6:24

It is, and in about you're not alone about half of the population, the adult population, doesn't have a will, or they've thought that when we get around to it, you know, we'll do this or it's someday, I think.

Speaker 3: 6:38

In terms of my own parents, all of a sudden, you know, my mom had a stroke, my dad had some issues and with his health, and they're now both in a nursing home and we had to really work quickly with them on a number of steps that they kept trying to put off. So for people with their parents or themselves trying to think about those kind of conversations and then seeing it as really a gift so that they can make the decisions they want to make, you know, and do that in a way that reflects their love, their passion, their faith.

Speaker 2: 7:13

Yeah, yeah, and you know we haven't—we're a relatively young congregation. We've been around—we're coming up on our 33rd anniversary and so, unlike some churches that have been around for 100 years and have long relationships with families and so forth, we're relatively young in that regard and we have a lot of young families as well. But there are examples, even in our young history as a church, of people who have passed on and did remember the church in their will, and oftentimes it's a few thousand dollars, but it's less about the amount of money and just about their desire to see the church continue to flourish even after they're gone.

Speaker 3: 8:16

I think the key thing is for people to understand that as they make a gift, then a congregation like Hope, then putting that gift into an endowed fund or to a place where the principle can grow over time and continue to create an income stream and so that initial fund can continue to make an impact for generations, even to come.

Speaker 2: 8:44

Yeah, yeah. And so what we've set up and again, this is all new to us we're saying that there's two legacy funds. One is designed for the care and maintenance of the building, so the longer we're around, the older the building gets, the more care and maintenance will be required. There'll be an opportunity to invest in that way. And the other would be for future ministry and helping to fund future ministry to be seed money for the church. To be able to do that and I know you said that at St Peter's, where you serve, they have that kind of legacy fund, right.

Speaker 3: 9:33

They do and it makes a huge difference. They were started, the endowed funds were started in the 1990s, early 90s, but they've grown over the years as different people have added to them or given, and then they've grown and appreciated. And for St Peter's, just a few blocks from the ocean, the building would get hammered by the weather and the cost of maintaining the properties and things. That created almost like a 12 to 15% income stream that really helped carry a lot of the data and maintenance that then allowed and freed the people that were giving to God through their tithes and offerings that to go towards ministry, towards staffing, towards new programs, towards outreach. That's it.

Speaker 3: 10:19

And it really freed us up and we thank those saints that continue and we continue to honor them. I think I told you the story of Trudy, who is a communion steward, and she would prepare the bread and she would bake the bread every Sunday for communion. Love the Trudy's. And she lived over the, you know, one of the stores on Asbury Avenue, the main street in Ocean City, and would walk to church and no one knew that. You know that she had planned to give part of her estate and she really lived below her means and she saved a lot and when she passed in God's care there was a surprising gift to the church and I would always, you know, at communion I could still smell Trudy's bread from heaven, baking, but thanking her and smiling and saying, trudy, we're continuing on in your memory.

Speaker 2: 11:11

What a beautiful thing, right. It is yeah that she loved the church in life and she cared for it in her eternal life. Right, and we would remember her often, and you know, and it was continuing to make a difference creative things that we've seen as well in a couple of examples where people had life insurance policies and named the church as the or one of the beneficiaries.

Speaker 3: 11:44

Right and right. There's a number of creative ways to give, and life insurance policies are one of them and some people have now a number of different IRAs, perhaps from different work experiences and naming the church to receive an IRA or a portion of an IRA. Working with your financial planner or an accountant, there's a number of ways that can even benefit the family tax-wise at the time of the estate, but also make a difference in the church.

Speaker 2: 12:19

That's awesome. Yeah, so the business of the church and we make this point all the time is to make disciples for Jesus.

Speaker 3: 12:29

Christ.

Speaker 2: 12:30

Transformation of the world Right. And to do that well, it takes resources. It takes people resources, it takes talent resources, it takes facility resources, it takes financial resources, and so, while it's not always comfortable to talk about these things, it's just a fact that we need to have resources to do the ministry effectively, and so a legacy fund is just another way of resourcing ministry.

Speaker 3: 13:00

It's another tool right, it's another like a leg to help support the ministry in the present and in the future.

Speaker 2: 13:06

Yeah, absolutely. Anything else that you would share with our folks about legacy giving?

Speaker 3: 13:16

by people that left legacy gifts where they could have a level of ministry that was not sustainable without those. Like you know, a little Asbury church down in Egg Harbor Township, but they have a full-time pastor for this congregation. They're making a difference in the community because somebody you know that was there remembered them, that was there, remembered them and I just smile because that congregation is alive and thriving and making an impact. But it's because of somebody several decades ago that was part of their ministry saying, hey, I'm going to just remember this congregation.

Speaker 3: 14:12

I think one of the things that happens is many of all of us get things from the universities we attended, the hospitals we attended, and there's a gap between People in the United States presently give about a third of charitable dollars go to the church. A little under 33% go to the church. But there's a gap in the amount the church has received for bequests. It's not even 10% of the bequests go to churches and when people have interviewed about that they said why? And many people say it's because we didn't, the church didn't ask.

Speaker 3: 14:50

The university, the hospital makes an ask. They also make it easy, and here's how you can do it, and so part of my passion is to help ask people to give what I know they would want to give if they really stopped to think about it, and then find ways to walk alongside them and say here well, here's a way to do it so you can honor God now and make a difference, as you're in eternity, looking down from heaven's balcony.

Speaker 2: 15:18

Love that you know. It's reminding me now of a story here at Hope. We have some great equipment in order to broadcast our services, to do online worship, and we see, on any given Sunday, upwards of 50% of our attendance are people attending online. And we have this great equipment because of a woman named Marilyn McRae and Marilyn during COVID.

Speaker 2: 15:54

She had gone into the hospital for cancer surgery and literally got trapped in a rehabilitation facility. Because of COVID. She couldn't leave. Nobody could come in and visit her, so she was basically locked in this facility and one of the things that kept her encouraged was watching our worship services online and then zooming in for small groups Right. And as her life was dwindling, she wanted to make sure that that ministry, that online ministry, would continue to thrive, and so she left a legacy gift. We didn't know that she was going to do this or that she had the continue to thrive, and so she left a legacy gift. We didn't know that she was going to do this or that she had the means to do this, but that legacy gift allowed us to do new lighting and buy the technical equipment needed to do broadcasting well, and so those of us who enjoy the online experience are able to enjoy it at the level that we're able to do it, in part because of a legacy gift from Marilyn McRae, and so and her legacy lives on here as well well.

Speaker 3: 17:19

I thank God with you from for Marilyn and that vision and the other saints that you know, see the needs and step up, and, and one of the things is just intention. You know one of the there is a sense of urgency. Trillions of dollars are going to change hands in the next number of decades. It's going to happen as a baby boomers, as we age quicker than we thought and and, as it happens, it's up to us to make decisions. Where do we want that to go, what kind of impact do we want it to make and how do we impact the kingdom, the kingdom and the kingdom of God in ways that hope is really awesome at doing? Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2: 18:05

So this is the Meet Hope podcast Conversations of Faith and Hope, and one of the things we like to do with our guests is ask the question what has you hopeful today? So it's a difficult time for the church in America these days, as you know. It's a difficult time in the life of many of our churches in the conference. You see that in your work. But in the midst of all of that, brian, what has you hopeful these days?

Speaker 3: 18:34

Well, I came from Ignite Weekend. I was down. I stopped there on Saturday with 800 teenagers. You know two bishops, bishop John Scholl and Bishop Hector Burgos, out of this conference, but to see 800 young people and the music was loud and it was rocking.

Speaker 3: 18:54

But the good news was evident and seeing the impact of God, hearing about the preschool here and about all the families that are being blessed by that and about all the families that are being blessed by that, and there's a book called by a guy named Thomas Groom Will Our Faith have Children? And I think our faith will have children and continue to make an impact as we pay attention to our youth, to our children, to our young families and keep making a difference. And so, through your ministry here at Hope and other congregations that are focusing on that, I see not only the future but the present.

Speaker 2: 19:37

Love. That, that's great. Well, hey, appreciate your time with us, brian, in this really important subject of legacy giving. If you'd like to learn more about it, we'll have some notes in the program and you can always contact me, jeff, at meethopeorg, and I'd be happy to have ongoing conversation with you about how we're setting up our legacy gifts for the future. And so thank you so much for tuning in and have a great week.

Speaker 1: 20:14

Thanks for being a part of the Hope Community as we continue our conversations about faith and hope. If you don't already, please join us for worship on Sundays or on demand. You can learn more at meethopeorg or find us on socials at Meet Hope Church.