The Whole Life Ten: Christianity-as-Philanthropy

Posted on September 17, 2010 by Pastor Foley

From my second book, The Whole Life Offering: Christianity as Philanthropy, which is scheduled for release in January 2011. This list is intended as a fundamental re-visioning of the Transformational Giving Ten I wrote a few years back. The TG Ten list has worn well, praise God, but I’ve had a desire since I wrote it to create a list that could be equally useful to individual Christians, pastors, churches, and Christian nonprofits rather than just, as in the case of the TG Ten, Christian nonprofits.

The Whole Life Offering Ten

Preamble:

Philanthropy is the comprehensive attitude and pattern of direct contact, warm relationship, and unfailing and unwarranted beneficence on the part of God in Christ toward human beings, mirrored into the world by the recipients of that beneficence.

The Whole Life Offering is how Christ’s philanthropy—his pouring everything into us, the destitute and unworthy ones who now have been reborn by his grace as the sons and daughters of God—constitutes the possible length and breadth and comprehensive content of our philanthropy to others. Nothing we give to God or to others can draw from anything but the philanthropy of Christ, whether we recognize it or not. This Christianity-as-philanthropy is really Christ’s whole life offering continually extended to his beloved humanity through us. Our own whole life offering, when it mirrors his into the world, is transformed into a means of grace and constitutes our spiritual service of worshipping God.

This list is intended as a modest companion to the Scriptures. Its goal is to enable the philanthropy of Christ to be magnified more fully in the life of the reader, and to equip the reader to mirror that philanthropy more fully into the lives of others as a continual act of worship.

To that end, ten principles drawn from Scripture are necessary and sufficient to ground us in the practice of Christianity-as-philanthropy and in the preparation of our own whole life offering as a mirror to his own.

  1. We are each called to full maturity in Christ, learning and reflecting him rather than being specialists, supporters, or solvers.
  2. We grow to full maturity in Christ as we partake of the Works of Mercy and Piety as means of grace, embodying the philanthropy of Christ in each aspect of our lives.
  3. Works of Mercy that are not grounded in Works of Piety lack power; Works of Piety that do not issue forth in Works of Mercy lack impact.
  4. Full maturity in Christ is learned, not latent.
  5. What constitutes full maturity in Christ is determined by Scripture, not by the needs, preferences, or skills of the individual, the church, a ministry, or the world.
  6. Nonprofits and parachurch ministries are church renewal movements, called to equip the church comprehensively in a particular work of mercy so that work may once again be normative for Christians.
  7. God has already given us everything we need to accomplish his purposes, provided it is prepared and presented back to him as an offering.
  8. Our offering in each work of mercy begins with Participation (in projects), progresses into Engagement (where the offering becomes a normative part of our Christian life), and matures into Ownership (as we call others into Participation).
  9. Our offerings are not solo acts but rather are embedded in three communities: the household, the local church, and the church as a holy nation.
  10. We ourselves are the offering, growing in comprehensiveness and proportionality as we exhibit the fruit of the Spirit in ever-maturing love of God and neighbor.
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Whole Life Offering Book Excerpt 6 of 6: What is the Whole Life Offering?

Posted on September 15, 2010 by Pastor Foley

What is the end, purpose, or goal of Christianity-as-philanthropy?

Paul explicates this in Romans 12:1-2 (NIV):

1Therefore I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 2And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

In this passage Paul makes clear that the end of Christianity-as-philanthropy is not the giving of gifts but rather the Christian’s offering of the whole self to God with the world as an altar consecrated by the blood of Christ. In this way the philanthropy of Christ is mirrored through us to the world he loves—just as Christ mirrored his father’s philanthropy to us. “I tell you the truth,” says Jesus in John 5:19 (NIV), “the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.”

The word Paul uses for worship in Romans 12:1, latreia, is a philanthropic term. It is Greek for a type of worship that means service to God. What Paul suggests here, as in Titus 3, is that our bodily service—our direct, beneficent, unwavering, unwarranted friendship with others arising from God’s beneficent friendship with us—is worship of God, our priestly service of mediating God to the world.

This is the Whole Life Offering: God’s whole life is offered to us in Christ; our whole life is then offered to God as we embody God’s comprehensive philanthropy to others.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, The Whole Life Offering: Christianity as Philanthropy, scheduled for release in January 2011. A set of ten foundational principles—The Whole Life Offering Ten–sketch the contours of this Whole Life Offering. We’ll debut that list in the next post.)

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Whole Life Offering Book Excerpt 5 of 6: Not Christian Philanthropy but Christianity-As-Philanthropy

Posted on September 13, 2010 by Pastor Foley

We are not talking here about Christian philanthropy but rather about Christianity as philanthropy—that is, Christianity as the full flower of the philanthropic enterprise, initiated by the one true God in Jesus Christ and mirrored into the world by those who have partaken of the divine’s lavish friendship. The practice of Christianity in a way that is faithful to its philanthropic roots is philanthropy in full bloom.

To contend that all Christianity is philanthropy is not, of course, to contend that all philanthropy is Christianity. The robust practice of Christianity as philanthropy, however, can stand as a testament to philanthropists of all backgrounds that money can never become the seat of true philanthropy, that impact and effectiveness do not define philanthropy’s width and breadth, and that comprehensive friendship love and beneficent, direct relationship must ever remain the foundations of the discipline.

If that is true for philanthropy in general, how much more ought it to be true of Christianity-as-philanthropy in particular? The co-inherence of the two practices is the consistent witness of scripture, from verses like Jesus’ admonition, “Freely you have received, freely give” (Matthew 10:8, NIV), and Paul’s command, “So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith” (Galatians 6:10, NASB). Jesus’ summary of the law—“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27, NIV)—is the very essence of the Christianity-as-philanthropy which Paul unpacks in Titus 3.

(Excerpted from my forthcoming book, The Whole Life Offering: Christianity as Philanthropy, scheduled for release in January 2011.)

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