Do the Word

A recurring Transformational Giving question goes something like this:

“I understand how a local ministry could get its champions to participate in ministry projects and then coach them into engagement in the cause. But my ministry is international. How do I get champions and potential champions to participation and then on into engagement in my international ministry cause if I can’t get them to the field?”

Answer:

An overwhelming number of champions are already active internationally–we just didn’t know it and didn’t think to ask!

Consider the following beefy, information-rich quote from Robert Wuthnow’s brilliant new book, Boundless Faith. Granted, it’s the longest paragraph in history, but what a paragraph!

[I]nternational telephone traffic quadrupled between 1991 and 2004. Another indication is that the number of air passengers traveling from the United States to other countries grew from about ten million in 1975 to nearly sixty million in 2000. Nearly two-thirds (62 percent) of active church members in the United States have traveled or lived in another country. One in seven (14 percent) has lived in another country for at least a year. More than four in ten (43 percent) have friends or relatives who live outside the United States. Vacations, foreign study, military service, and business all contribute to these international connections. Eleven percent of active church members have served in the armed forces. Among church members currently working, 37 percent say they routinely interact with people from other countries at work. Immigration is another source of transnational ties. Although the United States is historically a nation of immigrants, the pace of immigration in the past three decades has been considerably greater than it was during the preceding half century. Approximately twenty-two million more came as undocumented workers. The impact was especially evident among young males in their twenties, the percentage of whom were foreign born jumping from 4 percent in 1970 to 18 percent in 2000. Currently, 8 percent of active church members are immigrants, 14 percent are children of immigrants, and 74 percent attend congregations in which recent immigrants are present. Besides having personal ties and experiences abroad, most Americans regularly consume information about the wider world through the mass media. Among active church members, 38 percent claim to be “very interested” in news about other countries. Three-quarters watch news about other parts of the world on CNN, MSNBC, Fox news, or other channels at least once a week; a quarter read about international news at least once a week in a national newspaper; and four in ten obtain information about foreign events at least once a week from the Internet.

Crucial insight:

If we can get champions to think missionally about the international contacts they already have–daily!–we have a powerful and readily available platform for growing them in international ministry causes.

I once saw an organization overlook that insight a million times on the same day–and they’re still paying for it.

I’ll tell you that story in the next post.

Some months back I wrote a post that begin like so:

Unless we can come to grips with the idea that a monthly giver might be a lapsed champion, we’ll never understand Transformational Giving.

It’s a crazy idea. But as many crazy ideas are, it’s a biblical one. Check out these words of Jesus from Revelation 2:1-5:

To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

The sixth and final key to growing in generosity is the recognition of this great truth:

Growing in generosity is not about giving more. It is about giving more deeply.

The peril in giving strategically and systematically, then, is that we will in a perfunctory manner, with less than our whole hearts and intentions.

The cure for this peril, however, is not to revert to giving that is sporadic and random; after all, “heart” in the Bible means more than “feeling”.

Instead, the cure is to ensure that each gift we make is first and foremost and offering to God.

Simple suggestions, but ones that work for me in this regard:

• If you give via EFT (i.e., an auto-transfer from your bank account), don’t have your donations all come out on the same day. Spread them throughout the month, and, as the gifts auto-deduct one at a time from your account,
• Offer each one prayerfully to the Lord. To get you started, here’s a list of offertory prayers that you can adapt to your family’s own giving circumstances. (You are going to do this with your family…right?) Pray them with your family each day you make a gift, and as you prepare your offering before you go to church each Sunday.
• If EFT makes you less mindful of your giving, stop giving by EFT. Better to enter heaven with your checks cut than to take the broad information highway which leads to destruction.
• If you give by writing out checks, write out the checks as per usual, but pray over each one using prayers like the ones noted above.
• Call your contact at the ministry to which you’re giving and together pray an offertory prayer with them each month as you give your gift.
• Sing! The doxology (“Praise God from whom all blessings flow/Praise Him all creatures here below”) never ceases to draw me into gratitude and worship. Why not sing as you carry your donations to the mailbox, or as you enter your EFT gifts into your checkbook?

It is not hard to come up with rituals to help you give more deeply.

It is, however, easy to auto-forsake your first love as you seek ways to be more efficient with your time and money.

Yes, the worker deserves his wages. And yes, those who preach the gospel should earn their living from the gospel.

But we Christian workers employed by churches and nonprofit ministries face a subtle but very real temptation when it comes to our time, namely:

We’re willing to work endless extra hours without compensation for our own ministry or cause…

…but what about donating our time to organizations and causes other than our own?

“Well, yeah, but…” we want to splutter and mutter with every fiber of our overworked beings. “The last thing I need is to spend more time doing ministry. I need to spend more time with my family, and relaxing, and…”

Oh, agreed. Absolutely. No worries–I’m not talking about us adding more hours to our days.

I’m talking about us transferring part of our precious limited daily allotment of minutes away from the ministry jobs we get paid for…

…and toward ones we don’t.

Just as the Sabbath reminds us that God gets along just fine without our labor when we rest one day in seven, giving away an increasing percentage of time without compensation outside of our ministry orgs means that God’s gotta step up and fill that irreplaceable gap that is us when we’re not there.

That was sarcastic, by the way.

Freely offering God our time in the causes that move His heart other than the cause to which our own ministry is called does two other very important things:

1. It reminds us that we are called to be comprehensively formed in the likeness of Christ…not simply well-trained (and well-paid!) specialists committed to one organization.
2. It reminds us that God’s passions are broader than our own organization. It’s a healthy thing when we realize that our own church or organization isn’t the center of the universe and doesn’t deserve the idolatrous devotion of our time and money.

So just as with the other disciplines we’ve discussed in this series, start small. Calculate the amount of your time you give away…

• completely outside of your own organization;
• completely without compensation (and remember, one form of compensation is networking for better career opportunities);
• completely outside of your primary skill set;

…and make a plan to increase that percentage annually, reallocating it where necessary away from our paid ministry gigs.

Where should you spend that reallocated time?

Just as you develop an Eternity Portfolio for your money, do the same thing with your minutes. Take a look at the two axes…

• Location: Local, regional, and global
• Allocation: Reaching (evangelism), teaching (discipleship), and ministering to needs (mercy)

…and see where you’ve got holes. Then make a plan to donate time in those “holey” areas, because they are, you know, holy.

Now, no fair starting a new ministry in your church and donating time there, or spending time at a friend’s nonprofit. Remember what we talked about yesterday: give anonymously, where only God can see it. Especially with your time.

It will do you good to rest your preaching voice and instead wash dishes at the local rescue mission without any of your coworkers or church members around.

Did wonders for Brother Lawrence, y’know.