Transformational Giving

We’ve spent more than half a month now on posts detailing the Engagement level of Transformational Giving (TG). And E deserves every bit of the attention–it truly is the heart of TG.

I’m going to give the subject a rest for now until we teach it in even greater detail in our free January Mission Increase Foundation workshop, after this concluding post courtesy of World Gospel Mission’s Tim Rickel which details one of the most vital and yet least well known P to E moves in US history:

Stephen Mather got 15 wealthy industrialists together—prominent publishers, politicians, industry leaders, and railroad  builders—and took them on a long camping trip in the wilderness out west and called it The Mather Mountain Party. They stood before stunning beauty and reflected on the amazing treasure God has given us in our wilderness places. They saw where people had trashed an area camping out, and Stephen had them work together to clean it up. They dined on 5 star cuisine prepared by top chefs and served on linen tablecloths under a canopy of trees or next to a beautiful wilderness view throughout the whole trip. At the end he gathered them together. He told them that now they owned this cause. That this wasn’t the end, it was the beginning, of using their influence to move congress to preserve these spaces for generations to come. In the commentary on the series, one man says, “He didn’t preach to the choir, he took people who didn’t even go to the church and showed them the wilderness beauty and urged them to take up the cause.”

Talk about CMS [Champion Migration Strategy--WGM's term for Transformational Giving] in action. There’s some reference material for you, no charge. Does CMS work? Go to a national park!

The perfect P to E move, Tim–thanks for a fitting conclusion to our Notes in the key of E series. May the Lord bless you with a vacant RV space during your next camping trip!

Good advertising makes you feel something then do something.
–A Senior Marketer from General Motors

Didn’t General Motors just declare bankruptcy?
–Me

Perhaps GM’s ad problem was simply that its ads didn’t make us feel something and then do something.

Or perhaps GM’s ad problem is that the old formula of feeling leading to doing (AKA tugging on heartstrings in order to tug on purse strings) just doesn’t quite pack the punch it once did.

Or perhaps for Christian ministries the problem goes much deeper than that.

With regard to fundraising, Christian ministries and missionaries continue to subscribe almost universally to that old GM formula as if it were Gospel. The truth is, it’s anything but. It’s actually quite problematic from a Christian discipleship standpoint to nudge people towards giving through appeal to emotion.

As Mission Increase Foundation’s Suzanne Dubois and Tracy Tucker noted as we were preparing for this past summer’s Marketing Your Ministry workshop, there are no scriptures that guide us, lead us, or teach us how to drive people’s action through their feelings.

This is definitely not to say that emotion plays no part in the process of biblical giving. Far from it. The importance is the sequence.

Let’s read 1 Peter 1:22 together re-e-e-a-a-l-l-y carefully:

Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart.

(Interestingly, some early manuscripts have the verse ending with “from a pure heart“.)

So what’s the biblical counsel? Get everyone all lathered up with emotion so that on impulse they’ll respond rightly?

Far from it!

The Bible never places much trust in our emotions to guide right action!  My own life verifies that suspicion is well placed, thank you very much, You?

Instead, take a look at where emotion enters the process, according to Peter:

1. We learn the truth and then obey it. This produces:
2. Sincere love in love–an outflow of action–and because of this
3. We love one another deeply.

Two key truths here.

First, the biblical model turns the GM marketing model on its head. (Praise God–perhaps we can avoid bankruptcy after all!) Biblically, action–obeying the truth–precedes feelings. As Christians, we may or may not initially feel like doing the right thing at all. As Christian leaders, our goal is not to manipulate feelings until our listeners feel like doing the right thing. Our goal is to work with the Holy Spirit to teach the truth, i.e. What does God call you to do in relation to this cause?

Second, the Bible associates the heart with depth, will, strength, and response to truth, not with emotions stirred courtesy of a heart-rending DVD. You can see that 1 John 3:17-18:

But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.

For the Christian, the feelings equation is truth + deed; then God’s love can pour out through us.

That’s why the third component of E (Engagement) is experience, which is shorthand for truth + deed. Appealing to emotion may produce “success”, if success is defined as “getting someone to give me money”. But it sure isn’t the biblical path to growth in the likeness of Christ for our hearers.

And it sure didn’t sell a lot of cars for GM.

The nonprofit sector’s commitment to informing is best seen in its love of newsletters. Newsletters are great for informing donors. They are not so great, however, for educating champions.

What is the difference between education and information?

I like the way the difference is described on worldeducationsites.com. Information, says the site, is the acquisition of new knowledge. Proper education requires information but goes beyond it–way beyond it, as the site notes:

Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation. Education also refers to the, facilitation of realization of self-potential and talents of an individual. It is an application of pedagogy, applied research related to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, computer science, linguistics, sociology and anthropology.

That, my dear champion, is hard to pull off in a newsletter.

(It is not, however, impossible, as Mission Increase Foundation Regional Giving and Training Officer Matt Bates notes in his Thoughts on the Nonprofit Newsletter.)

The fundamental difference between informing and educating is the outcome:

• When a champion is informed, s/he possesses knowledge.
• When a champion is educated, s/he possesses not only knowledge but the critical judgment and values maturity to know how to act upon that knowledge in such a way that the cause is advanced.

Nonprofit ministries tend to make two heinous errors by conflating information and education:

1. Nonprofit ministry leaders say, “I don’t ask anyone for money. I just share the need and leave it to the person to pray how to respond.” Sounds holy, but it’s really an exercise in wholesale negligence. We who know the cause well have the responsibility not only of informing our Christian brothers and sisters about the need but also of educating them why the need exists, what the Bible calls each Christian to do in relation to the cause, and the range of options of how the listener can respond. Else how will they reach full maturity in Christ in relation to the cause?
2. Nonprofit ministry leaders typically inform Christians about a situation and then ask them to give and pray. But such an approach also leaves out the education step. Even if I give and pray, I am in most cases no more able to understand and act upon that challenge in the future than before I was asked. The nonprofit ministry may be better funded and supported with prayer, but the giver himself or herself is still wholly dependent on the nonprofit ministry to know what to do and when to do it. That state of permanent adolescence is never commended in the scripture.

Education, then, is one of the three key components of Engagement. You know that you have educated rather than simply informed when the end result of the process is that the champion is able to bring others to full maturity in the cause–the state of champion development known as “O”, or ownership.

We nonprofit ministries would do well to ponder Hebrews 5:11-14 as we ask, Are our champions living on the milk of information…or the solid food of education in relation to the cause?

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Equip, Educate, and Experience are the three essential elements of Engagement.

(Today’s blog is sponsored by the letter E?)

Of those many E’s in that initial sentence, the one that trips up nonprofits the most is Equip.

Reason:

Our traditional transactional fundraising (ttf) heritage causes us to confuse equipping with encouragement.

That is, a cornerstone of ttf is the sychophantic relationship between fundraiser and donor.

Adj. 1. sycophantic – attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery

bootlicking, fawning, obsequious, toadyish

Adj. 1. sycophantic – attempting to win favor from influential people by flattery. Synonyms: bootlicking, fawning, obsequious, toadyish

We’re taught to laugh at major donor and prospective major donor’s jokes…send birthday cards on their children’s birthdays…and engage in a detestable practice known as “friendraising” in which we befriend those whom we believe can give us lots of money.

Needless to say, this doesn’t put us in a particularly advantageous position to hold individuals accountable, subject them to strenuous training, coach them to do things they are really uncomfortable doing…and then drill them when they fall short. These are all the things any coach must do, and it’s certainly no less true in TG coaching where our goal is to equip individuals to grow comprehensively into the fullness of Christ in relation to the cause.

That’s a matter completely different from encouragement.

What could be wrong with encouragement? After it, doesn’t everyone need to be encouraged?

Make no mistake: encouragement is a great accessory to equipping. It is, however, a deadly substitute.

Consider:

I’ve been talking with a ministry for the last couple of weeks.

The ministry had anointed a champion (a board member no less!) to coordinate a banquet using the Mission Increase Foundation model.

Good move!

Bad move: The ministry sent the champion the MIF fundraising banquet manual and asked him to read it. They checked in by phone to see if he had any questions. Then they checked in with him every week or two to see how it was going.

“Great!” he would say.

Until…

Until the time of the banquet drew night. Then he noted that he had lost his job and that he had had to move to a different state. He had some friends still working on the banquet in the original state, of course, but he himself hadn’t been able to devote the kind of time to it that he needed. Could the banquet date be rescheduled?

Yes, said the helpful ministry. So the date was rescheduled, and the check-in process began again in earnest.

Until…

Until the time of the rescheduled banquet drew nigh, at which point the champion acknowledged that he really didn’t have a whole lot of table sponsors, and there wasn’t really anyone who was confirmed to come.

The ministry, on the hook for $12,000 in banquet costs, contemplated its next move. Should it cancel the banquet and eat the loss? Should it plow ahead and try to recoup something? anything?

“I think we’ll do great,” assured the champion. “There’s a lot of people who will come. Trust me.”

Encouragement can be very expensive, indeed.

In contrast, TG Principle 5 says:

Transformational Giving relationship between a champion and an organization is primarily a peer-level accountability relationship, not merely a friendship or a mutual admiration society.

And equipping is at the heart of that accountability relationship.

When a champion wants to host a banquet for us, we help them count the cost. We mentor and coach them through the process. Due dates. Metrics. Deliverables. The occasional strained phone call. Times they want to give up, but we don’t let them. Times they want to vary from the model, but we say no. We’re coaches after all, not permissive parents.

Equipping is the process of collaborating with the champion on a detailed, structured plan with dates and metrics where we help the champion identify:

• What does fullness in Christ in relation to the cause look like, according to the scriptures?
• Where am I at presently, in contrast?
• What are the steps that I need to and am willing to take to move from where I am to where Christ calls me to be in relation to the cause, according to the scriptures?

That phrase, “according to the scriptures”, is key. We’re not coaching champions to achieve their passion in relation to the cause. We’re coaching champions to achieve their calling, which is something distinguishable from passion. God doesn’t call us to do the things we’re passionate about. He calls us to do the things He’s passionate about, and, in doing those things, remarkably, His passions become our passions.

P/E/O charts are the heart of equipping in TG. The Coach Your Champions book shows how to develop one for your ministry.

Ministries often ask me, “Do I really need to do a P/E/O chart with each Engaged champion?”

My reply: “Only the ones you want to see grow.”

The Participation (P) phase of Transformational Giving (TG) is all about champions being recruited into a cause by means of a project. The Ownership (O) phase of TG is all about champions recruiting others into a cause by means of a project.

The Engagement (E) phase of TG sits in between P and O. Omit it and you have the next wave of traditional transactional fundraising (ttf), as well as an explanation for 90% of nonprofit social media strategies.

In other words, ttf is rapidly moving towards a P-O model of donor involvement: empower the individual to own a project, and let him or her recruit everyone else to join in.

Problem is, it’s a counterfeit kind of ownership: the donor gets to own the project…but the nonprofit continues to own the cause.

Why?

Because in the ttf mindset the donor can’t possibly be expected to understand the complexities of the cause. They lack the personal experience and education to act in such a way that the cause is genuinely, seriously impacted and social ROI is created.

In ttf, it is axiomatic that organizations create social ROI, not individuals. Individuals invest, and according to ttf’ers, the wave of the future is that they’re given better data to invest in the orgs that create the most social ROI.

But you did not so learn TG.

In TG, individuals create social ROI, not organizations. Organizations are the ones doing the investing, and what they are investing in is individual champions.

The Engagement (E) phase is the crucial differentiator. It’s the piece that ttf cannot replicate (and, truly, has no interest in replicating).

E is where champions are trained to impact the cause. It’s where they live out Ephesians 2 and 4 by being coached to carry out the works God has prepared them (not orgs) to do since before the foundation of the world.

To achieve this, three elements must be present in any Engagement strategy. Get two out of three of these and you still fall short. Get all three and you still fall short unless the Holy Spirit shows up. After all, when the goal is transformation, we can foster the conditions for it…but God must bring the increase.

The three elements that are co-essential for Engagement are as follows:

• Equipping
• Educating
• Experiencing

Sadly, because of our ttf conditioning, we’re prone to mis-read the above list as follows:

• We substitute Encouragement for Equipping
• We substite Informing for Educating
• We substitute Emotion for Experiencing

To these three false cognates and the three true embodiments we now turn in each of our next three posts.

When it comes to recruiting champions, nonprofits like to jump right to E.

That is, nonprofits love champions who understand the cause and know how to contribute to it.

Face it: it gets a little old after a while to have to start over from zero with each new champion.

(This, by the way, is why the responsibility for recruiting new P’s into your cause rightfully belongs to your O’s and not to you. O’s learn how to O by recruiting new P’s. As for you, your span of focus extends from facilitating the P-E transformation right on through to the O-P step where O’s begin to replicate. But that’s another post for another series. So where were we? Oh yeah.)

It gets a little old after a while to have to start over from zero with each new champion. So we nonprofits, brimming with equal parts hope and impatience, approach potential champions by hitting them right between the eyes with the cause and what our organization is doing to impact it.

That looks like this:

Every four seconds a child dies of starvation. BANG! It just happened again. And what are you doing about it? BANG! Another one down. And what are you doing? Just sitting there watching my lips move. BANG! There goes another one.

In other words, in our attempt to stress the importance and significance of the problem our organization is addressing, we magnify the problem to the point where the average listener can only respond by being overwhelmed, paralyzed into inaction.

That’s the absolutely essential role Participation projects play: they make it possible for potential champions to get their hands around a cause by distilling it in the form of a project that they can understand and do:

• Child sponsorship takes the crushing weight of global poverty and says, “Here’s little Anna. For $32 a month you can help her go to school and get regular checkups from the doctor.”
• Prison Fellowship’s Project Angel Tree takes the super scary world of prisons and says, “Here’s little Timmy. His dad is in the pokey. Can you spare a choo-choo train?”
• Habitat for Humanity takes the frustratingly omnipresent problem of poverty and says, “Here’s a hammer. Let’s go build a house on Elm Street with and for the Johnsons.”

These are unmitigated goods. There is not a single bad thing about them.

Except…

Except for when nonprofits conflate the project with the cause, assuring champions that the way to impact the cause even more is by doing more P.

• Solving the problem of child poverty becomes, “If everyone else would just do their part and sponsor a child like me.”
• Expanding the Project Angel Tree program at your church becomes the way you fulfill the Biblical mandate toward the prisoner.
• By helping build a house every year, you feel pretty comfortable that you are part of the solution to poverty in your community and no longer part of the problem.

When these things happen, we run into the Hebrews 5 buzzsaw:

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Growing in maturity in relation to the cause, in other words, means coming to a point where we realize that the cause can’t be accomplished simply through more project-level participation.

Examples:

• A cluster of churches in a community decide to “do their part” to help the homeless. They each agree to take one night a week to serve dinner and provide overnight accommodations. By serving the meals they meet Josie, a single mom with whom they really fall in love. Josie shares how she needs $400 for a bus ticket home. They take up a collection and give Josie the money, happy they can make a difference. They say goodbye to Josie, but one month later she is back at the church again, talking about how her boyfriend stole the money and she was unable to return home. They suspect she is not being honest, and they are, frankly, getting a little tired of hearing stories like this. Why can’t the homeless people just appreciate what the churches are providing?
• A family sponsors Zeina, a young girl, through an international relief agency. They enjoy sending her letters and hearing about her progress in school. Then they hear a report on the news about how the rate of starvation in the country where Zeina lives is actually higher than when child sponsorship began. They love Zeina but wonder if they’ve been misled as to the impact of their giving.
• An American church has a heart for persecuted Christians. They decide to smuggle Bibles into China as part of a nonprofit organization’s program. They are nervous but exhilarated, and when they are successful, they return home feeling that they have done something truly worthwhile and precious. Later they hear that it is actually not hard to smuggle Bibles into China; in fact, authorities are generally inclined to let you do it as long as you don’t bring too many. What they like to do, the American church learns, is to see who you bring the Bibles to, and the recipients of those Bibles are then placed under surveillance. They are sad to think that the people who received the Bibles they smuggled are now secretly being watched by the Chinese secret police.

Are these cases of nonprofit malfeasance to be mourned?

Absolutely not! They are cases of champions moving from P to E–and that is to be celebrated! The only sad part is that the P to E move often happens in spite of nonprofits, not because of them.

In other words, it’s quite honestly great that a cluster of churches wants to take turns providing meals! They should! And through this experience, with the proper coaching, they’ll come to learn firsthand that homelessness is not primarily about a lack of food and shelter but is about broken relationships and burned bridges that individuals don’t know how to repair.

It’s great that a family adopts a child. They should! And through this experience, a coach can help them see that it really does take a village to raise a child–that there are limitations to what western money and international aid can bring to a country, and that child poverty can’t be eradicated even if every child was sponsored.

It’s great that an American church partners with the persecuted church through bringing Bibles. They should! And by being coached through this experience, they can learn that far from being disadvantaged objects of pity, the persecuted church has much to teach the West about faithfulness to Christ’s call.

In each case, Participation provides not only the means to enable a person to get his or her hands around the cause via a do-able project. It also contains the seeds for helping the person understand why projects aren’t enough. They’re a necessary step on the way to maturity in the cause…

…but they’re not the staircase.

The staircase is called Engagement, and its steps are equip, educate, and experience, to which we’ll turn in our next post.

E stands for Engagement, which is the second progression champions pass through on the way to full maturity in the cause.

The first step, Participation (P), should be thought of as paving the way for Engagement. The third step, Ownership (O), should be thought of as flowing naturally from it. In other words, Engagement is the sine qua non of Transformational Giving.

Champions are recruited into a cause through Participation (P) in a cause-related project. Good Signature Participation Projects are:

• short-term
• high touch
• high yield
• understandable without external reference
• synecdochic

That last piece is really the key: Like Russian nesting dolls, every good Participation activity must have a little E inside it.

Engagement is different from Participation by kind, not degree. That is, Participation, Engagement, and Ownership should never be thought of as lukewarm, heating up, and on fire for the cause.

Or, stated differently:

P + P + P + P ≠ E

Engagement is the phase of transformation wherein a champion comes to grasp the cause in all its fullness, making an explicit commitment, often at the invitation of a coach, to grow comprehensively in the likeness of Christ in relation to the cause, as guided by the scriptures under the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

Whereas at the Participation level the focus is the project, at the Engagement level the focus is the champion. The champion isn’t just doing stuff. The champion is being changed–maturing into the image of Christ:

• The Bible defines what comprehensive maturity in Christ in relation to the cause looks like;
• The Holy Spirit empowers the process;
• The coach assists the champion in the ongoing discernment of both of the above.

I used to say that whereas Participation was about project, Engagement was about lifestyle. That’s true, but incomplete. Engagement is really about self-identity. It’s about learning to reflect the fullness of Christ in relation to the cause. At the P level, the nonprofit/coach gives me meaningful stuff to do. At the E level, the nonprofit/coach holds up the image of Christ and invites me to let the Holy Spirit mirror it through me.

Big difference.

And a person doesn’t fall into Engagement. When you cross that threshhold, it’s because you’re choosing to do so, almost always in a moment of great resolution and transformation (and, not infrequently, travail).

In fact, the P to E move looks exactly like this:

1One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret,[a]with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, 2he saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. 3He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

4When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down[b] the nets for a catch.”

5Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

6When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. 7So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

8When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” 9For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, 10and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.” 11So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

One day as Jesus was standing by the Lake of Gennesaret, with the people crowding around him and listening to the word of God, he saw at the water’s edge two boats, left there by the fishermen, who were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats, the one belonging to Simon, and asked him to put out a little from shore. Then he sat down and taught the people from the boat.

When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into deep water, and let down the nets for a catch.”

Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”

When they had done so, they caught such a large number of fish that their nets began to break. So they signaled their partners in the other boat to come and help them, and they came and filled both boats so full that they began to sink.

When Simon Peter saw this, he fell at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!” For he and all his companions were astonished at the catch of fish they had taken, and so were James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon’s partners.

Then Jesus said to Simon, “Don’t be afraid; from now on you will catch men.” So they pulled their boats up on shore, left everything and followed him.

An interesting thing happens when we cross over from P to E:

Learning more about the cause, we wonder whether we set the cause back by doing P in the first place.

More on this in our next post.

I and my Mission Increase Foundation Giving and Training Officer posse are hotly and heavily planning now for what I have the sneaking suspicion will be the most important workshop in last three years in the development of Transformational Giving, namely:

A January 2010 workshop on Engagement.

I think the Engagement workshop will be even more seminal than the newly updated Transformational Giving (TG) seminar (now on DVD) and the Coach Your Champions book, and here’s why:

The TG seminar and the Coach Your Champions book are TG through and through, and yet both have diggable nuggets that can be dislodged and applied by nonprofits that are still straddling the great gulf between traditional transactional fundraising (ttf) and TG.

Engagement, on the other hand, is a thoroughly crazy body of practice that no one in their right ttf mind would contemplate. To do the kinds of things we’re going to advocate you do in Engagement, you have to have the Apostle Thomas level of commitment to TG:

Then Thomas (called Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”

To plunge into Engagement with your champions is to drink the TG Kool-Aid without a sippy cup lid. I’ve seen ttf devotees who profess interest in Signature Participation Projects and the Realm of P. I’ve even had chats with ttf’ers who nod in agreement when I talk about Ownership, Replication and the Realm of O.

But I’ve never seen a ttf practitioner be able to avoid making the Bill the Cat face when we talk about Engagement.

That’s because Engagement is the sine qua non of Transformational Giving, which is the fancy Latin way of saying that unless we’re doing Engagement as the central element of our development program, we’re really not doing TG.

Much of the cool stuff we’ll be saving for the Engagement workshop. But in the interest of spilling a bean or two, I’ll be devoting my posts over the next two weeks to sharing a thing or two about Engagement, the best and most distinctive part of TG.

We’ll start Monday by asking the crucial core question:

Um, which one is “E” anyway?

China Inland Mission founder Hudson Taylor famously said, “God’s work, done God’s way, will never lack God’s supply.”

This is one of the most commonly cited quotes among Christian organizations when it comes to their fundraising, and it is one of my favorite quotes as well…though for a different reason.

Taylor’s quote is typically understood to mean, “If we just stay faithful to doing the ministry God has given us, we’ll have enough money to pay the bills.”

But notice that’s not quite what Taylor said.

It’s the final phrase that’s the kicker:

God’s supply.

Whoever said that God supplies in clean, crisp, unmarked hundred dollar bills?

A quick check of the Old and the New Testaments reveals surprisingly few occasions where God, like a gracious grandparent commemorating a birthday, sends cash.

One could certainly protest that this is because in Bible times cash was a rarity. But really now…

There’s a common thread that runs through all God’s giving, namely:

When God gives a gift, the recipient must be transformed in order to be able to receive it.

In fact, you’d almost think that what God was seeking to accomplish through His giving was not only provision but transformation…

Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! (Mt 7:9-11)

I suspect one of the grave ways we impoverish ourselves as missionaries and nonprofit ministry organizations is that our engines run only on cash; every other kind of gift (and here I’m not talking only about gifts-in-kind but people, especially the various and sundry kind, offering themselves as if they were treasure–the audacity!) just seems to choke the motor.

Taylor’s promise was not that God’s work, done God’s way, will never lack for our supply. Rather, his contention was that God would supply as a good Father giving good gifts to His children. Kids always want cash, but sometimes parents know that other gifts are far more needed by their children.

Think through the scriptures at the gifts God gave, and how each one required an “engine conversion” for the recipient to be able to run on it.

Think through the gifts God has given your ministry–and is continuing to give your ministry–and ask yourself, “What kind of ‘engine conversion’”–i.e., personal and corporate transformation–”is God calling me/us to in order to be able to ‘run’ on this…without growing weary?”

That kind of approach might lead us to suspect that in the midst of recession there’s really no downturn in giving at all…