I was talking with Generous Mind Jon Hirst last week about how Participation is rightly understood as but a prelude to Engagement and Ownership is rightly understand as but Engagement’s logical consequence; Engagement, in other words, is the core of Transformational Giving.

Jon portrayed this magnificently in a visual that not only shows the Einsteinian weight that Engagement should be given in the TGverse but also functions as a really helpful chart for you and your ministry to work through as you trace how/whether your P naturally flows into E and your O naturally flows from your P:

(If you click on the chart a few times, it should become large and easy to read. If not, try right clicking and saving the image or smooshing your eyes right up against the screen. OK, or post a comment below and I can email it to you.)

Here’s why I like the chart:

• If when you chart out all your champion activities you see that the preponderance fall in the Participation category, that means that the “weight” of your development program will always keep you “out of balance” when it comes to coaching your champions, i.e., you’ll have a lot of immature Participants which require constant tending and yet yield comparatively little fruit.
• If you have Participation activities that do not clearly lead into Engagement, you really should consider discontinuing or seriously refining those Participation activities so that they serve primarily as a prelude to Engagement.
• If you have both Participation and Ownership activities but no Engagement activities, it likely indicates that your Owners aren’t really owners but are actually self-replicating P’s, committed to owning and spreading a particular project they like rather than owning the cause in their sphere of influence.

Jon has supplied us with a powerful tool here, friend. Take the time to chart out your ministry’s champion activities and see–visually–what you can learn from the process.