Great post this morning (well, it’s morning in Korea anyway) on the temptation to raise money transactionally when our organizations hit dry patches.

The author is my dear brother Greg Stier, founder and president of Dare2Share Ministries. I told Greg when I first met him, ‘Greg, you’re the guy who would have hit up the rich young ruler for a donation’. Since then, Greg has gone on to become one of the best and most articulate advocates for a biblical approach to fundraising. He wrote the preface to my book, Coach Your Champions, and frankly it’s my favorite part of the book.

In Greg’s post this morning on the temptations of fundraising, he likens Saul’s premature and ill-conceived sacrifice in 1 Samuel 13:8-10 to the way we nonprofits often choke in the clutch and succumb to secular fundraising approaches at precisely the moment we need to be steadfastly committed to doing things the Lord’s way.

The Apostle Paul noted in Philippians 4:11-13 that he had learned to be content in a little and a lot, and this is a discipline nonprofits are reluctant to learn. We have the (decidedly unscriptural) sense that if fundraising is down, we must be doing something wrong, and if fundraising is up, we must be doing something right.

Paul thought otherwise, lived otherwise, and wrote otherwise. Greg’s post this morning is a great (and typically entertaining, as Greg’s posts always are) restatement of that great truth.