Development as Donor Catechesis, Part I: What Fundraisers Can Learn from the Worship Wars

Posted on April 6, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Maybe you and I should order copies of T. David Gordon’s Why Johnny Can’t Sing Hymns–right after we order copies of my new The Whole Life Offering: Christianity As Philanthropy, of course. The books have a surprising amount in common.

Check out Gordon’s comments in a recent CT interview:

I’m not so sure that accommodation to an individual’s consumerist preferences is consistent with the gospel call. The gospel doesn’t say, “You’ve got most things right, you just need to throw some Jesus in there.” Rather, it says, “You’ve got everything wrong, because you’re not correctly related to God. Therefore, you’ve got to be willing to give up everything—mother, father, sister, brother, daughter, whatever—to follow Christ. And if not, you’re not worthy of him.”

Will some people swallow hard and say no to that? Yes. But I’m not sure we should say, “Well, what kind of music do you like? After all, we’re just worshiping God here, and we have no standards other than what you like.” Saying “it’s all about you” isn’t the way to go about evangelism.

It might be better to say, “You may wonder why we sang a hymn today written by Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century. We do it because we think it’s a good reflection on what our Redeemer did. We don’t really care whether it’s new or old.” That might cause a person to say, “Here’s one institution in the entirety of our culture that isn’t driven by consumer preference. Isn’t that curious?”

It’s that last comment that grabs and inspires me: With fundraising today reduced to little more than an effort to figure out how to talk about our causes so that people will throw money at them, what would it be like to be the kind of nonprofit about which people would say, “Here’s one institution in the entirety of our culture that isn’t driven by consumer preference. Isn’t that curious?”

So what would it look like for fundraising to be driven by something other than consumer preference?

I’m suggesting–as I do in The Whole Life Offering book–that we be driven by whatever it takes to bring donors to fullness in Christ in relation to the cause we’ve been given to steward. I believe that faithfulness to that goal would lead us to some very unusual donor development practices, things like:

  • Supplying donors with study materials…and then removing them from our mailing lists if they fail the required tests that we supply
  • Requiring donors to reflect on and then share with us why they are giving…before we are willing to accept their gifts
  • Evaluating the success of our fundraising activities not on the basis of which produce the highest percent response or the most money…but rather the most quantifiable growth according to biblically-based standards of personal maturity in Christ

That’s the tall order we’ve placed for ourselves in this latest series we’re undertaking, entitled, “Development as Donor Catechesis.” So pull up a copy of The Whole Life Offering as in our next post we explore–and commend–the practice of testing donors as a means of determining who stays on our donor files…and who does not.

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Why the Confession App May Be A Good Idea But One Bible Per Person May Be A Bad Idea

Posted on April 4, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Seeing as I had previously given a thumbs-halfway-up to one of several confession apps now available on the iPhone, I was happy to see Christianity Today offer similarly hedged enthusiasm in their editorial entitled iPhone Apps and the Old Adam:

We believe the confession app generally points Christians of all stripes in a helpful direction. For one, it asks them to turn inward to examine broken patterns of thinking and feeling, thus preventing a rote faith that relies solely on priests to deal with sin. The app also chastens the believer who thinks he’s on his merry way to sanctification. As the iPhone is ever before the user, helping him manage e-mail and to-do lists and travel routes, so those pesky but piercing questions are ever before him, hopefully inciting the same sorrow over sin as the psalmist’s (Psalm 51:3). And, as good evangelicals, we welcome most any new technology that could introduce a generation to Christ and spur believers’ growth in him.

That last sentence is as good a statement of the value of a Participation project as one is likely to find. As we’ve shared in multiple previous posts (just type “SPP” into the search box on this site for dozens of ’em), Participation projects are designed to be short-term, high-touch, high-yield, understandable without external reference, and inducing a thirst for something more and deeper.

The CT editorial does note a legitimate potential negative about apps like this, namely, the possibility that they might further privatize faith:

But more perniciously, the app—unless used in a small group or service where every person holds an iPhone—cannot help being individualistic. And this is precisely how the Devil would have us try to address sin. “Sin demands to have a man by himself,” observed Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a long meditation on confession in Life Together. “It withdraws him from the community. The more isolated a person is, the more destructive will be the power of sin over him.”

That’s why in my post I suggested that the Penance app, deeply flawed though it obviously is, provides the best path forward, since it requires users not only to be involved in the confession process but the absolution process as well.

But at a deeper level, the concern raised by CT is, I think, valid even at the level of causing us to ask what sounds borderline heretical:

Are we really helping ourselves grow in Christ through the mass profusion of Bibles under which the average Christian family is buried (the typical Christian family in the US owns nine Bibles, says a Zondervan study, and is actively seeking to buy one more)?

Or, put differently, as crazy as it sounds to ask, do “personal Bibles” (one to ten per family member) promote Christian growth better than one shared family Bible?

I ask after reading James Alexander’s long out-of-print Thoughts on Family Worship, now brought back into circulation by The Legacy Ministry. Some of the content is, er, quite 1847ish (e.g., “The fondness of the black race for music is proverbial. It is rare to meet with an african who does not sing”), but in other places the text holds its own in 2011.

It certainly has me thinking that, sure, it’s possible to say, “Let’s give everyone in the family a Bible (or three or four) and also read from one of them aloud in family worship.” But what happens when the Bible becomes the family’s book, studied and read and heard together (“Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it,” intones John in Revelation 1:3) rather than separately?

We’re so accustomed in our day to reading our Bibles separately and praying separately that a confession app may not be our biggest enticement to the sin of individualism.

The cheerfu’ supper done, wi’ serious face,
They round the ingle form a circle wide;
The sire turns o’er wi’ patriarchal grace
The big Aa’ Bible, ance his father’s pride:
His bonnet reverently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets wearing thin and bare:
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care;
And, Let us worship God! he says with solemn air….

The priest-like father reads the sacred page,
How Abram was the friend of God on high,
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage
With Amalek’s ungracious progeny;
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie
Beneath the stroke of Heaven’s avenging ire;
Or Job’s pathetic plaint and wailing cry;
Or rapt Isaiah’s wild seraphic fire;
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred lyre.

Compared with this how poor religion’s pride,
In all the pomp of method and of art,
When men display to congregations wide,
Devotion’s every grace except the heart;
The Power incensed the pageant will desert,
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole;
But haply in some cottage far apart,
May hear well-pleased the language of the soul,
And in His book of life the inmates poor enroll.
—from Thoughts on Family Worship, pp. 20-22

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Nonprofits: Poster Children for Conversational Narcissism

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Pastor Foley

After two posts containing shameless plugs for my new book that’s set to release (whoops–make that three posts containing shameless plugs), it seems especially appropriate to laud and study Wesley Hill’s exceptional post on conversational narcissism:

Charles Derber’s little book “ The Pursuit of Attention: Power and Ego in Everyday Life,” coined the phrase “conversational narcissism.” Derber distinguishes between what he calls “support responses” and “shift responses” in conversation. If your friend says, “I’m going to walk the dog in the park today,” you could reply, “Hope the rain holds off!” That would keep the focus on your friend’s statement (a support response). Or you could reply, “I went to the park yesterday and saw the senior girls playing soccer” — a rejoinder that transfers attention from your friend’s comment to your own interests (a shift response). “Conversational narcissism involves preferential use of the shift-response and underutilization of the support response,” says Derber.

True confessions time, nonprofit leader:

Are your conversations with donors characterized more by support response or by shift response?

  • Support response would here refer to conversations in which we talk to donors about their involvement in the cause while leaving our 800 pound gorilla (i.e., our nonprofit organization) chained up outside.
  • Shift response would refer to conversations in which any mention of the cause quickly spirals into the black hole (i.e., our nonprofit organization).

Sadly, nonprofit development specializes in the shift response. It’s not altogether unfair to suggest that development technique (e.g., “moves management”) is largely an effort to implement the shift response across time with the donor or prospective donor.

Note, however, that if shift response-style development isn’t already dead, it’s at least being chased out of the village by donors brandishing pitchforks and torches.

Recommendation:

Check out Derber’s book and rebuild your donor development program along its central axis. Not only will you have more fun, but your donors will, too.

Case in point:

I was just speaking to our Seoul USA intern Brett Leather. He was making phone calls to folks who had heard me speak on North Korea last month at a Voice of the Martyrs regional conference in Kansas City. He said, “Man, these calls are taking longer than I thought. No one wants to gets off the phone.”

God bless Brett. He had no idea that he was experiencing a problem for which most nonprofit development officers would gladly yield up a kidney. And why does Brett have this problem?

Because our Seoul USA presentations don’t focus on Seoul USA. They focus on North Korea, the persecuted church, and how Christians in the West can prepare for persecution. When we speak, we refer people to the best books, videos, articles, and blogs on these subjects. We don’t seek to make money off the resources we sell; instead, we offer resources that are either out of circulation or not available in the West. As a result, donors like to talk to us when we call. Weirder still, it was our donors that goaded us into creating a twice-monthly Prayer Partner Update chock full of links, guidance on how to pray for NK, and notes on newly available resources. (If you want to get on the emailing list, you know the guy to write: Brett Leather. Just let him know who sent you and what you want.)

The moral of the story?

Repent of conversational narcissism, ye nonprofit pal of mine. Shift your development program away from shift responses and toward support responses. Redirect conversation (dare we say it) away from your nonprofit and toward the cause.

And, like Brett, prepare to spend long nights on the line with donors who don’t want to get off the phone.

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