It’s half time at the Lapsed Champion Bowl!

Today marks the middle of this week’s posts on the subject, so before you run out to use the restroom and grab a bowl of Tostitos (be careful on the order there) and do other half time-esque activities, let’s review the highlights from the first half:

• We discovered that many individuals who are categorized as ‘lapsed’ really aren’t lapsed at all. They’re participants. Participants participate in projects. They might even participate repeatedly, or annually (like a rescue mission donor giving money to provide meals for the homeless every Thanksgiving). As such, they may look quite ‘active’.
• As the apostle John reminds us, however, activity is not the criterion by which we measure whether a champion is ‘of us’. Knowledge of the truth is. We’re not talking here about knowing in the informational sense, but in the King James way of knowing one’s wife that always made us giggle in Sunday school. In Transformational Giving we call this Engagement. Engagement means ‘knowing’ the cause the way Adam ‘knew’ Eve.
• As such, when a ministry defines and declares who’s lapsed on the basis of the lack of recency of individual giving (saying, for example, that all individuals are lapsed who have given two or more gifts in their giving lifetime but none in the last two years), it’s missing the boat. Activity isn’t the issue. And ministries aren’t the arbiters of what counts as lapsed. Engagement with the cause is the issue, and what counts as lapsed is determined by Scripture.
• Even using this language stands to land us quite far downstream from where we want to be biblically if we’re not careful. Jesus doesn’t talk in terms of sheep who wander. He talks in terms of shepherds who lose. So we need something more than a lapsed champion strategy. We need an organizational accountability strategy, in which we repent of and seek to recover the champions whom we have permitted to lapse (or, if you prefer, the sheep we have permitted to wander) on our watch.

So heading into the second half of play (the two posts remaining this week), what should we be looking for?

• A two-sided lapsed recovery strategy, one that addresses not only sheep who wander but also shepherds who lose. We should expect to see the appearance of TG Principle 5, which talks about the relationship between organization and champion being a peer-level mutual accountability relationship. There’s no way this game can be won unless each side recognizes and recovers its authority and responsibility.
• That kind of talk brings the champion map to mind–the P/E/O plan created by the champion and the organization to chart a trajectory for champion growth in the image of Christ in relation to the cause.
• I’d also look for TG 5 to be used to talk about how Scripture needs to be the basis of determining what counts as lapsed, not the need of the organization nor the desire of the champion. That’s likely to involve talk of intensive Scripture study, prayer, and fasting.
• It’s also appearing likely that more is at issue here than a person’s giving. Don’t be surprised if in the second half we see the appearance of the idea that a person could be happily giving regularly and yet still count as lapsed. You could almost see that coming in the first half with the idea in yesterday’s post that an organization could well be humming along and in fact itself be lapsed.
• We’ve seen since the opening kickoff this week that Participation has been sidelined from the lapsed discussion. Engagement clearly is going to be the focus of the second half offense. If the opposite of lapsed isn’t active, you have to think it’s Engaged.
• The whole idea that Engagement is tied to knowledge sets us up well for a revelation that a champion can’t lapse without first ‘knowing’ the cause. That’s definitely going to mean changing the way we deal with all champions, not just the lapsed ones. Likely we’ll see that the best lapsed champion strategy…is an effective P/E/O (Participation/Engagement/Ownership) strategy that plants the seed of ‘knowing’ the cause in every project from P through O. In other words, the key to not losing sheep is clearly connected to keeping them focused on the cause, not just bombarding them with a monthly barrage of heart-tugging appeals.

The fascinating thing to note as we close this halftime show is that we know something new has to be introduced in the TG offense in the second half. Even when you consider the champion maps and a well-formed P/E/O strategy, it’s not enough to keep shepherds from losing and sheep from wandering. We’re clearly looking at a major new piece being added to the TG playbook right here.

The teams are headed back on to the field now, sheep on the left and shepherds on the right. Things are shaping up for a powerful finish to this one.

Whoa Nelly! Call the family and gather ’round the blog for the second half of the Lapsed Champion Bowl!