Do the Word

Missionaries and ministries send prayer (read: “support”) letters all the time.

Why can’t a champion or church send back a letter indicating the kind of support that they themselves need and, scripturally, have a right to ask for from seasoned Christian workers?

Jonathan Martin oversees Global Outreach Ministry at Good Shepherd Community Church in Portland, Oregon. In his recent book, Giving Wisely, he graciously includes the letter that he sent to a number of local missionaries and ministries the church supports. Goes like this:

We here at the church want to thank you for all your faithful service to our community over the years. You have been serving our Lord faithfully and have been fruitful. That’s why we’ve been supporting you.

We’ve recently made a philosophical change, and we’ll be looking to support those ministries that get our people serving in the community. What we’re asking of you is to train our people as you do your work. The more of our people that you take with you and train to do your ministry, the more fruitful we believe you’ll be as you multiply yourself, and the more fruitful our people will be. The kingdom wins. To quote from Ephesians 4:10-13:

“And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.”

We really do see the primary job of those we support as ministers in the community to be to train those in the body to do ministry. We’ll do anything we can to get you into the many classes at church to share your ministry and to recruit folks to go with you. We’re even glad to interview you in front of the whole congregation to connect you with those in the body. But fundamentally we believe local ministry is for everyone to be involved in, and our money will go to those getting our people involved and in touch with our community.

Thanks,

Jonathan

Jonathan is spot on. The only change I would make is to also send this letter to national and global missionaries as well. After all, which is better–for a missionary on home assignment to travel from church to church seeking support by telling touching stories while showing a DVD and PowerPoint presentation…or for a missionary on home assignment to travel from church to church creatively providing hands-on local field training to interested Christians in how to grow in their biblical calls to:

• assist the stranger
• comfort the afflicted
• instruct the ignorant
• reprove the wicked
• provide food, clothing, and drink to those who have none?

The local community setting provides a great gymnasium for missionaries and international ministry workers to train Christians in the very skills that such workers use halfway around the world…and that all Christians are called to grow in on the way to full maturity in Christ.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to the showers after I finished teaching the Mission Increase Foundation free workshop on Engagement in Colorado Springs last week.

I had made my usual number of harsh and derogatory comments in the workshop about the school of fundraising known as friendraising (like I’ve done on this blog here, here, here, here, here, here, and, um, here), when what to my wondering eyes did appear Betty Barnett, author of one of the couple books with the title, Friend Raising.

(The other prominent book on the topic, Friendraising, was written by Hildy Gottleib, who has not yet showed up at any of my workshops or flamed my blog. Interestingly, she just made a fabulous post on Ken Berger’s blog–you really need to read it–about how we should be measuring collective improvement in communities rather than individual organizational effectiveness. But I digress.)

Betty was so incredibly gracious  that it didn’t feel near as awkward as most of the rebukes I have received in my life. She noted that she agreed with everything I had taught, that what I had taught was congruent with the principles she wrote about in her book, that we really should be looking for points of commonality and upbuilding rather than difference, that the term “friend” has biblical resonance, and that she would like to ask that in the future I draw a distinction between abuses/misunderstandings of the term “friendraising” and the system she describes in her book.

And then she gave me a copy of her book and indicated she’d like to stay in touch so that iron can sharpen iron.

You can’t ask for a more pleasant Galatians 6:1 moment than that.

So I thanked her for her kindness and indicated that I would of course read the book and share with her and others what I thought.

So this I will do.

By this point you’d think I would have learned to just not say anything at least until I’ve read the book, but…

You know, on the cover the subtitle reads “Building a Missionary Support Team That Lasts”. And in the nicely ample forms that Betty provides in the book’s appendix, there’s a form titled, “Thank you for your support of my ministry!”

One of the apparent differences between Transformational Giving and Betty’s Friend Raising approach (based on my exhaustive study to date of the cover and one of the forms in the appendix) would seem to be that Friend Raising involves the missionary/ministry raising supporters, whereas Transformational Giving involves the missionary/ministry supporting champions to develop their own ministry in the cause in order to help them grow into the fullness of Christ.

Which would explain why Coach Your Champions is subtitled “A parable about how cookies changed ordinary donors into champions” and why my appendix (well, the one in the book, that is, not the one beneath my sternum) has champion coaching forms in it.

I’m just saying.

But of course it would be foolish to judge a book by its cover.

Even if we at MIF are preparing to teach a workshop (in March) on how thanking champions is unbiblical.

It’s January 8. The flimsiest of our New Year’s resolutions have succumbed to reality. At the YMCA where I work out, the New Year’s resolution-swollen crowds are already beginning to thin (faster than the individuals themselves, interestingly).

It’s time for New Year’s Resolutions That We Really, Really Need To Do.

My recommendation at the top of the list for you, dear nonprofit leader?

This year, embrace Transformational Giving as your development strategy with reckless abandon.

I’m indebted to Seth Godin for the persuasive logic here (and Seoul USA‘s Amy Karjala for the link):

Often, someone will riff on a concept or approach that characterizes the revolution that we’re living through online, and heads will nod. “Sure, that sounds great [insert idea here… like Free, or social media or permission or ideaviruses or empowered consumers or treating people with respect, etc.] within reason.”

It’s the last two words that make it a lie.

The last two words allow you to weasel your way into failure. Within reason means, “without bothering the boss, without taking a big risk, without taking the blame if we fail, without alienating our current retailers… be reasonable!”

And so you do it half-heartedly and you fail.

And who beats you?

The people who did it without reason.

Look. Here’s the score (from Ben Gose’s December 10 Chronicle of Philanthropy article):

• 93% of charity leaders say their organizations are feeling the effects of the economic downturn
• 80% have lost financial support
• 40% of charity leaders say their group’s financial situation has worsened over the past six months.
• More than 40% say their groups have laid of staff

Do you really think this calls for a tweak?

A dabble?

A bit of an admixture of traditional transactional fundraising and Transformational Giving?

You’ve officially found yourself alive in a year where continuing to abide by the “safe” status quo presents more danger to your organization than to cast yourself into the river of radical change.

(P.S. Have a cookie. By the time you’re done with it, everything will be right as rain.)