“Dear Missionary, Please Stop Sending Prayer Letters. Sincerely, The 21st Century”

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Here’s a new year’s resolution for all missionaries:

Stop sending prayer letters. Switch completely to regular personalized electronic communication with your donors in 2011.

I know, I know. You have no time for communication while you’re in the field, etc etc. Older donors can’t use anything more electronic than a blender, etc etc. People treasure generic letters sent out with old news months behind schedule, etc etc.

These are all great reasons to stick to printed prayer letters, except for one thing:

They’re all based on data which is staler than the Christmas cookies still remaining on your counter.

Christianity Today ran a nice update piece on missionary/donor communication just in time to help you toss out old thinking about support raising and ring in the new. Among the insights:

  • A third of Wycliffe missionaries email daily from the field with supporters back home
  • Around 70 percent of those missionaries have 40+ hours of Internet access weekly from the field; 75% have high-speed connections
  • 50% of the missionaries Wycliffe surveyed are able to stay in the field longer and make furloughs shorter because of electronic communication

Those are staggering numbers with which most missionary communication strategies have yet to catch up.

Missionaries with older constituents may be tempted to disregard this data, consoled by the certainty of the incompatibility between the elderly and the ethernet cable.

But the times, they have a-changed.

  • Facebook use among those aged 65+ increased by 100% in the last year alone, which means a quarter of those in that age category are now Facebook active (half of those between the ages of 50 and 64 are as well)
  • 11% of adults aged 50 to 64 now use Twitter
  • Old people can’t read the prayer letters you send anyway because you always make the font so small so you can fit more in on a single page

OK, so the last one is just a personal rant. But as long as I’m indulging personal rants, permit me one final question:

Why is it that the missionaries who tell me that they’re too busy to communicate with their donors while in the field are the same ones whose Farmville and Mafia Wars updates are constantly clogging up my Facebook page?

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Forget Your Brochures; Here’s A Far Better Tool to Help Your Nonprofit Help Churches Grow in Your Cause

Posted on January 7, 2011 by Pastor Foley

I am swooning with love over a booklet I received in the mail today, about which I was tipped off by Jonathan Powers at Theology in Worship.

The booklet is S.T. Kimbrough, Jr’s Songs for the Poor: Help Us Make the Poor Our Friends, a compilation of thirteen hymns written by Charles Wesley to help the church grow in its theology and practice related to the poor.

At the time I’m writing this, there is only one copy–used–remaining of this book on amazon.com. Were I you, I’d snatch it up before you finish reading this post. I mean, it’s $6.00 plus shipping.

As to what this has to do with helping your nonprofit help churches grow in your cause, let’s turn first to the thoughts of the aforementioned Jonathan Powers, who begins with the genesis of the original Methodist hymn book:

[T]he purpose of this collection was to be a daily devotional guide as much as a musical book used in worship. John Wesley writes in the prologue to the hymnbook that its purpose was to provide “a full account of scriptural Christianity” and “the experience of real Christians.”

Thus, the hymnbook was used to help focus an individual’s spiritual growth from the time of conversion to the incorporation with the fellowship of believers. The content Charles Wesley wrote was broad in theme, ranging from lyrics on the Eucharist, Trinity, and Holy Scriptures to lyrics concerning Easter, Church calendar, and other Church celebrations.

Very few of Charles’ writings on poverty made the hymnbook. In fact, many of his poems and hymns dealing specifically with the poor were never published at all. These hymns most likely were circulated around to nearby churches and pastors, but they were never bound into a collection. Yet, we do know through collections of sermons and letters that both John and Charles had a deep conviction for the poor, and often preached very bold sermons warning on wealth and extravagant living.

Charles Wesley wrote hymns as theology. The hymnal, thus, was more than a collection of songs printed so that people knew what words to sing. It was a devotional guide, given to people to meditate on and think about not only when they were in worship but when they weren’t.

The invention of the overhead projector and Powerpoint didn’t make that obsolete.

(Side note of pastoral privilege: There may be very good reason not to use overhead projectors and Powerpoint in your church worship services. Imagine purchasing or creating hymnals that church members are instructed to bring to church with them, along with their Bibles, and to take home with them when they go–for the purpose of daily singing-studying certain select songs for the coming week’s worship. Korean Christians use a combined Bible/hymnal for just this purpose. And one major denomination recently undertook just such a “take your hymnal home” campaign.)

(Second side note of pastoral privilege: And why keep switching the songs in church every week, anyway? Why not pick four songs for the month, introducing one each week and practicing it and digging into the theology of it until the church actually learns it and the theology it contains? OK–now back to the nonprofit world.)

So what’s the payoff here for nonprofits seeking to help churches grow in relation to their cause?

Develop a hymnal booklet containing hymns (for singing in congregational worship and personal devotion and family worship) related to your cause. Share this with churches rather than your brochure. Stop talking about your ministry and start supporting churches to learn how to think Scripturally and theology about your shared cause.

Talk about a useful leave behind! There’s a far greater chance that parishioners will get cause-related hymns stuck in their heads that motivate them to action than that they’ll actually do anything with that glossy prayer partner card of yours, anyway.

Got to love Charles Wesley’s lyrics. Why didn’t these ones make the main hymnal?

Ye pastors hired who undertake/The awful ministry/For lucre or ambition’s sake/A nobler pattern see!/Who greedily your pay receive/And adding cure to cure/In splendid ease and pleasures live/By pillaging the poor.

Imagine the pastor’s face when you lead the congregation to sing that one during your visit to church on Sunday.

Which of the Christians now/Would their possessions sell?/The fact that you scarce allow/The truth incredible:/That saints of old so weak should prove/And as themselves their neighbors love

And why are we stuck just preaching and showing Powerpoint during our presentations? Why not take the time to teach the congregation a cause-related hymn that they don’t know?

Savior, how few there are/Who thy condition share/Few who cordially embrace/Love, and prize thy poverty/Want on earth a resting place/Needy and resigned like thee!

Your cause need not be poverty. I’m already thinking, for example, about a hymnal booklet related to Christian persecution for our Seoul USA work related to North Korea. How many persecution hymns do you know, after all?

Oh–and if you’re the lucky person who gets the last copy of Kimbrough’s book from amazon, post a note in the comments section and let me know what you think of the book. It was my first book purchase of 2011, and I wouldn’t even be disappointed if it turns out to be my best all year.

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A Generally Favorable Review of Kelly Kapic’s New Book, God So Loved, He Gave

Posted on January 3, 2011 by Pastor Foley

Regular readers to this blog will note my ongoing exasperation with those who insist we need to regularly be in touch with our “inner sinner” in order to reassure ourselves that we really are bad enough that we can only be saved by grace and not works.

This is my cutesy way of saying that I am continually amazed by the number of Christians that need to be reassured that the Bible is in favor of us doing good works. In fact, not only is the Bible in favor of us doing good works; it actually goes so far as to say that we were created in order to do them. And no less a “grace” guy than Martin Luther famously wrote in “The Freedom of a Christian,”

We do not, therefore, reject good works; on the contrary, we cherish and teach them as much as possible.

And by good works the good Luther had more in mind than believin’ in Jesus.

The Reformers had no bone to pick with good works. Their bone was with Christians who believed good works were necessary for salvation.

Unfortunately, as I noted in an earlier post, that has translated today into the idea that good works are optional for the Christian life, rather than the grace-based warp and woof of it.

Which is why I generally like Kelly Kapic’s new book, God So Loved, He Gave: Entering the Movement of Divine Generosity. It’s the kind of book you’ll want to have on hand to give to Christians who are nervous about a diet heavy in good works. Covenant College’s Kapic soothingly reassures readers that good works are the logical outflow of a grace-based Christianity, not the impediment or repudiation thereof.

A typically thoughtful passage from Kapic:

Following the King, God’s people witness to the kingdom in both their words and deeds. Whenever the church chooses between these two, it ends up in trouble, both misunderstanding the King and misrepresenting the kingdom. Having received eyes to see and to experience the reality of the kingdom, the church seeks to imitate the concerns of Jesus’ life because we have been liberated by his death. We now seek to fight against the tyrannical powers that create so much pain for humanity. We seek to foster harmony between humanity and nature; we faithfully join in the efforts to promote healing where there is sickness; we fearlessly fight against the demonic powers of oppression and fear that capture so many and wreck so much.

But in all of this, we do it in light of the proclamation of Jesus as Lord, the crucified and risen King who alone has power over death, sin, and the devil. Word and deed always go together in God’s kingdom, for here alone is true liberty found and new life enjoyed. This is not merely a “spiritual” life, but a life set free to generously help those in need, and, in that, point them to the King.

If Kapic and I part company anywhere (and I’m not sure we do; a book is a book, after all, not the complete statement of an author’s position or purpose or life), it may be in Kapic’s reluctance to specify exactly how we are to give. Writes Kapic:

We must also be careful before trying to specify certain behavioral norms since even the most devout and thoughtful Christians can differ widely over such details, and our individual callings and particular situations will inevitably impact the way Christ’s cross takes shape in our lives.

I’ve already written previously on how Scripture does establish behavioral norms for giving, and how failing to incorporate these in the discipleship process leads  Christians to default to their own preferences, comfort levels, and limited experiences. But that’s the subject of my own forthcoming book, The Whole Life Offering: Christianity as Philanthropy, so we’ll leave a fuller response to that tome, due out in February.

Between now and then, be sure to grab a copy of Kapic’s book, and keep an extra copy on your shelf for the special works-averse Christian in your life.

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