Thursday, July 28, 2011

Shining Eyes

A question we want to ask ourselves in fund-raising is, "Are people richer after we leave?" I use the word 'richer' for a reason.

After we talk or share with a person or a group we need to think if are they better off after our time together than they were before we shared.

We all have been around people who help us be better, and around those who seem to drain the life out of us.

So when you are done sharing do people feel you just drained them and their wallets? (Subtraction giving).

Do they feel they got in a 'good deal' and feel good about the investment? (Transactional giving).

Or is their life richer as a result of ministry sharing? (Transformational giving.)

When the giver is changed by the gift as much as the receiver transformation is going on.

Ben Zander is the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. He has a great lesson on getting people to not just love classical music but to use their untapped potential. As I watched this video at a conference I saw how this can teach us about our presentations and the times we share with people.

At the end of this video he talks about 'shining eyes'. That moment when people get it. I have seen this moment in people as they light up about ministry. They may support an outreach somewhere in town or around the world. Their support is obedience to God. As they talk about the ministry they talk of it as their own even though they may have never physically been present. They are transformed by their obedient giving. In other words they have shining eyes.

Enjoy this video and use it as a challenge for your ministry to have shining eyes, but be patient while you watch it, the end is what you need to see.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Someone who wants to raise support

A missionary sent me this article, “20 Reasons Why I Want to Raise Support”.

Some good stuff. Note #4 on the list.




4. Expands my ministry to include my supporters. It enables me to encourage, share with, pray for, counsel, and make a difference in my supporters’ walk with Jesus.

This is much better than seeing the supporter as an ATM. See the health in treating the champion as part of the ministry rather than a means to a ministry?

I was invited one time to listen to a ministry update. They called it a party. Never I have I heard the word ‘me’ so much in one presentation. No one in the room knew each other and the focus was not on the guests, just on the 'me' at thr front of the room. I was not part of the ministry any more than their interest rate on their bank account. I wish the presenters saw me as part of those whose life they could change and not just ask me for more of my change (You know, the kind in my pocket.)

This list has several good points to help us see our fund-raising about so much more than ‘me’. God help us to focus being agents of transformation.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

New?

Transformation has become a buzz word today in Christian circles. Nothing wrong with that. After all, the Bible does tell us not to conform to the world but to be transformed.

Some feel that the idea of Transformational Giving is new and we have just hopped on the ‘band wagon’ with using the word transformation. Well Transformational Giving is really not new. This blog is based on a rather old event at Zarephath in 1 Kings 17.

Some of the teaching may feel new simply because it may involve your group changing from transactional or subtractional types of funding to transformational. Another new thing for some may be having a list of principles complied in one place as Eric Foley has done. But really the idea of an offering being an act of transformation goes back to Abel’s offering to God.

In digging around to learn more, I found a newsletter from the spring of 2008 that has transformation as its theme. It is from the ECFA quarterly newsletter. This newsletter has some great info about transformation and the role it has in your organization.

One article is an interview with Wes Willmer about his book Revolution in Generosity: Transforming Stewards to be Rich in God. It helps us see how if your giving is transformational, generosity improves because it focuses on the biblical perspective of being rich in God.



Rich Haynie, has an article “God and Asking”. He states:



In my experience, most people do not travel the road of asking for financial resources founded on biblical principles. Yet those asking for funds are in a unique position to participate in God’s work of transforming the hearts of His children. Fund-raising can play an integral part in the fulfillment of the Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20)—both indirectly, by gathering the funds necessary to send people to “all the nations” to make disciples; and directly, by helping facilitate the transformation of people into the image of Christ by “teaching them to observe all He commanded” about money and possessions.


This ECFA publication was 2008. So maybe we are not so new, but maybe we should be if fund-raising is not based on biblical principles. Perhaps your ministry could use new methods built on some very old truths.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Equations

The most well known equation in the world is e=mc2. You may not even know what it means but odds are you have heard of it.

I propose a new equation for Christians. T=GC2.

Here is what this means. T= Transformation. GC2 = Great Commandment and the Great Commission. When the Great Commission and the Great Commandment are not separated but rather knit together as God intends, you will see transformation.

A few summers ago I was asked to come do some training at a Christian liberal arts university for their mission department. The issue was, “How do we get our study body to come to the annual Mission Conference?” Statements like these were made…
• “Students not called to missions do not feel the mission conference applies to them.”
• “Students in local ministry do not think the mission conference is for them.”
• “Many just don’t see the need for missions anymore.”
• Etc.

Several problems are reflected in these statements but this blog is not about people getting involved in cross-cultural missions. However the solution to these statements has the same base that we see in peoples need to give. Part of the problem begins in the compartmentalizing of the teachings of Christ. By compartmentalizing we have separated the teachings of the Great Commandment and the teachings of the Great Commission and made them separate when in truth the Great Commission is the natural outflow of the Great Commandment.

The Great Commission is not just about international missionary service. Rather it is about transforming people with the Gospel. So we learn through scripture that the Great Commission is asked of every believer. In other words, the Great Commission is for everyone following the Great Commandment. One big problem in students feeling that the mission week is not for them is because we have allowed the Great Commandment and the Great Commission to be separate, when in fact they should have never been separated.

So when you love the Lord with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself, you will then go and make disciples. You will work with the Holy Spirit to see lives transformed.

Giving is a key part of both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. Giving ourselves is at the heart of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. This gets much bigger than money. Loving God and loving our neighbor are not to be separated. Service and giving are all part of being obedience and obedience transforms. So T=GC2.