We’re Multiplying through Financial Discipleship Ministry Maturity

Editor’s Note: As we approach the final three months of the year, our latest quarterly blog issue comes from our executive director of Urban Outreach, Ken Battles. In this update, you’ll learn just how much growth Compass – finances God’s way has quickly seen through multiplying financial discipleship throughout the Church…

— Melody Stampley, Managing Editor

As Compass pivoted from financial stewardship to financial discipleship in 2020, with a career spent in process management and improvement, I felt led to prepare a practical, easy-to-follow and repeatable method that would allow churches to reach the highest level of financial discipleship maturity.

Through a method called M.E.D.I.C. (Motivate, Educate, Demonstrate, Integrate, Celebrate) and the Pathway to Generosity, Compass Kentucky Executive Director Gary Montgomery and I collaborated to observe and engage General Association of Baptists Kentucky churches.

That is when I captured a vision for the 10-step process Compass now calls the Financial Discipleship Ministry Maturity Method (FDMMM):

1. Establish a relationship with the senior pastor or appropriate designee.
2. Provide a Compass Overview and perform a church assessment.
3. Introduce M.E.D.I.C.
4. Introduce Pathway to Generosity.
5. Provide financial discipleship webinars and Building Your Finances God’s Way (BYFGW) studies.
6. Launch the first BYFGW study.
7. Provide ongoing engagement and support.
8. Provide ongoing financial discipleship training.
9. Replicate success internally.
10. Replicate success externally.

FDMMM has allowed me to develop rich ministry and personal relationships with the senior pastor, leadership team and members of four churches in greater Lexington, KY, and four churches in greater Baltimore through a partnership with Compass Global Executive Director Tina Darden. 

Each month, we meet with the church pastors for prayer, fellowship, ministry and life updates, accountability and small-group study/seminar planning. And now, they feel better prepared to speak with accuracy and authority on finances God’s way. Specifically, they report experiencing a closer relationship with God, increased generosity, contentment, intentional savings, reduced debt, better spending decisions, more service in ministry and eternal perspective.

Four of these churches have reached FDMMM Step 10. Learn, Apply and Multiply are now part of their ministry and life DNA. And through their testimony, they have become Compass Ambassadors, influencing other churches to participate. 

The Bible teaches us that, “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). Since transitioning to ministry in July 2020 after 42 years in IT, it has been incredible to experience God’s orchestration of divine appointments and events, as we collaborate with these ministries to glorify God and improve their relationship with Him and the money and possessions entrusted to them.

To learn more about FDMMM, visit https://compassurban.org/financial-discipleship.

Blessings always, 

Ken Battles

Executive Director, Compass Urban

AUTHOR BIO

Ken serves as Executive Director of Compass – finances God’s way Urban Outreach. He graduated from Alabama A&M University with a bachelor’s in computer science in 1978, where he met his wife, Sharon. His spiritual and natural gifts include administration, teaching, encouragement, problem-solving and collaborative leadership. Ken and Sharon live in Central Florida, where they attend Antioch Missionary Baptist Church of Oviedo. They have five godchildren and have been happily and successfully married since 1980.