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.

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.

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.

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.

Your Theology is Showing

I am an ordained ministry in the Evangelical Church of North America. A core belief of my denomination is for the believer to live a life filled by God’s Spirit and the reality that the believer can have this fullness now and walk in the abundant life God promises.

This post, nor this blog, is for the purpose of convincing the reader of any particular doctrine. However this post is about the fact that your theology greatly impacts your take on TG.

Just this afternoon, a missionary sat in my office and told me a great testimony of one of his champions. Back in the 1970’s as he was starting out, a gentleman came up prior to the missionary presentation and told the missionary that he was glad to have a missionary speaking that evening, but he did not have any money to give. He wanted him to know this right up front before the service started. After the missionary presented the gospel and how the gospel must be proclaimed to all nations, the same gentleman came up and said, “Well now I have to give.” The Spirit showed this man his role and he followed God.

Forty years later the champion has now died. By the time of his death his average gift was $170 per month. Through the years he never missed a month and maintained a loving relationship with the missionary. This champion's wife was not a believer at the time the man started giving to missions. But before his death she had become a Christian. Part of the impact on her decision was the habitual giving of her husband, the giving of the missionary back into their lives, and God’s faithfulness in providing through His abundance all the years.


The ideas of habitual giving and God's abundance are points where my theology impacts my giving and teaching. Being filled with God’s Holy Spirit is vital to the Christian walk; it is so important that Jesus tells His disciples to wait before going out to fulfill His commission. Wait for what??...The coming of the Spirit. The Spirit gives the believers the power to surrender our life to the Father and thus enabling us to be faithful. Then the surrendered life is a walk of discipleship in Christ with His Body (i.e. the Church).

Jesus never taught the Church to get people to repent and then forget them and move on to the next. He says to make disciples. This is much more than “get ‘em saved” then on to the next group. It is about a deep walk with the filling of God’s Spirit in the heart of the believer. There is an habitual aspect to walking with Christ. (Eric Foley has a good post on habitual giving.) And there is a need to trust in the abundant nature of God.


This belief regarding the fullness of God's Spirit drives my fund-raising. Onetime gifts to God are not enough. Discipleship is not a onetime event, nor is the need to be givers. God wants us to be habitual givers, whose lives are lived in Spirit-filled stewardship to Him. And as always our actions are not just for ourselves, but are testimonies to teach others.

Leadership and Giving

Here is a question that was posed to leaders that is critical for every leader to answer: “If I follow you will I find Christ at the end?” Great question!!

Now, take this question and apply it to your fund raising strategy. I think we will find that the answer is not found in a transactional/traditional fund raising mindset. Let’s take the principle behind this question and phrase it in a way the champion might ask you about your ministry.

If I give to your ministry will the gift lead to Christ?

Think about this for a moment. Does the giver’s investment in your ministry change them, or does it just get you funded. I believe every gift has the potential to change the giver that is how God works. But think how much more we could show Christ if we were intentional about the gifts doing more than simply funding the ministry. What if we built a strategy that treats each gift as part of the givers discipleship journey, keeping in mind that at the end of the disciple journey the purpose is to see Christ?

All of our ministry’s have the goal that the funds received are used to advance the Kingdom of Christ for the ‘receivers’. But as leaders we are also responsible to help the donor see Christ as well. Leaders can help donors become champions, and help champions see the power of God through giving. In giving the champion is being like Christ.

We can help champions see that they reflect Christ through their gift. When this happens we will see the gift multiply (perhaps not financially) because when Christ is reflected we reach the goal of the showing people Christ. So leadership and giving must be linked. We not only lead our staffs and the recipients of our outreach, but we must also lead the donor. Christ-like leadership leads to Him and so too does Christ-like giving.

Get Friends To Talk

A key part of the Body of Christ is in its members sharing their faith. If we never tell our neighbor about Christ how will they hear about the Good News?

In a similar way when giving transforms your life you tell others. We tell our friends about the organization we help and how helping them has changed us. We are more apt to attend a church or help an agency recommended by a friend. We even go to restaurants and movies friends suggest.

The seventh principle in TG is about our peers.
Principle 7: The relationship between champion and champion is as important as the relationship between champion and organization

Even before today’s world of internet, Facebook and Tweets, the suggestion of a friend went far beyond the impact of a store’s advertisement. But with all the communication tools for us today, the word of a peer plays a bigger role than ever.

Check out this web site to read what a leader in fund-raising learned about peers connecting online.

As we think of the need to move champion-to-champion communication forward, we need to ask ourselves some questions.

1. Is your ministry impacting donors at a level that moves them forward in their walk with Christ? If this is not a part of their giving then champion-to-champion communication will not happen.

2. If the answer to #1 is yes then ask this question…Have you created places or ways for the transformed champion to tell their story?

3. Have you created tools and training for champions to work on behalf of the cause of the ministry they have with you?