A shout out to Joanne Fritz for pointing out the article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that asks:

Is now a good time to start a nonprofit organization?

Well, is it?

If you’re contemplating starting a nonprofit or becoming a missionary and you find yourself thinking, “Somewhere out there, there must be a foundation or some folks with money willing to support me to work on this super important cause that I really love and am quite good at,” then please know that now is a really bad time to start a nonprofit or become a missionary.

And so is next year.

And the year after that, should Jesus tarry.

That’s because the day has come and (thankfully) gone where running a nonprofit or becoming a missonary meant finding people to pay us to do the meaningful and super-important work we love.

(For those holding out hope for a major donor prince to come, Tom at The Agitator affirms in his post last week that large gifts are the ones likely to rebound the slowest in the current recession. And as we’ve chronicled before, the new mantra for traditional transactional fundraisers is “it will take more resources to raise smaller and fewer gifts”.)

So why do I say “(thankfully) gone”?

Because scripturally, Ephesians 4:11-13 outlines a clear relationship between Christian workers and the body of Christ.

It is, indeed, a support relationship. But it’s the opposite of the relationship that’s typified Christian workers and the body of Christ in the modern (and now moribund) nonprofit era.

In the modern nonprofit era, the body of Christ has been called upon to support (professionalized) Christian workers who do the heavy lifting of the faith.

Contrast this with Ephesians 4:11-13, where Christian workers are called to support the Body of Christ, developing ordinary Christians in the causes close to God’s heart, training them to walk in the works He has prepared for them (not us) to do since before the foundation of the world.

High calling, that.

And, fortunately,  the nonprofit world–the secular perhaps even moreso than the Christian, sadly (for evidence, see Manny Hernandez’ post on transitioning from social media cloud to nonprofit org)–is catching up with it.

So if you find yourself thinking, “There is a cause close to God’s heart in which He has grown me to maturity in Christ; I want to coach the people in my sphere of influence in that cause, equipping them by the grace of God to also grow to maturity in Christ, and serving as a supportive platform where they can give and serve impactfully in a mutual accountability relationship with me,”  then now is a great time to start a nonprofit or become a missionary.

This site isn’t a bad place to start learning to do that.

Here‘s where I’d recommend you begin.