Do the Word

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.

As I’ve written about before (here and here), I am not a big fan of the Christian stewardship movement.

Not that I am against Christian stewardship by any means–after all, some of my best friends are Christian stewards. Rather, as I wrote in the two prior posts on the subject noted above, I am against the idea that the primary giving image/category/role discussed in the Bible is that of the steward, and I am against the idea that our primary goal is to be “rich toward God”.

That being said, one of the truly great “rich toward God” verses in the Bible that never gets much play in the Christian stewardship movement is Matthew 6:1-4, where Jesus says:

Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Would you like to be rich toward God, asks Jesus? Then give unrewarded in any way so that only your Father may reward you.

Most of us are able to discern the grosser form of such rewards–I mean, it’s been at least a good three or four years since my wife and I have had a building or a communicable disease named after us due to our largesse.

But think about the subtler forms of being “seen by men”.

How about, say, donation receipts for income tax purposes?

“Wait wait wait wait wait,” some of our Christian stewardship friends may say. “Being able to deduct your donations on your income taxes is good stewardship. It enables you to be able to give more money away.”

Again. Enough with the stewardship talk. There’s more going on in biblical giving and generosity than maximizing the total dollar amount you give away or the impact your donated dollars can have.

There’s Matthew 6:1-4.

And understand that Matthew 6:1-4 isn’t an ode to random acts of generosity. In other words, just because you’re giving in cash doesn’t mean you need to (or get to) be any less strategic in your giving than we’ve talked about in the previous posts in this series.

It just means that before you go to church you run by the ATM, withdraw your weekly offering in $20 bills, and put it in the plate in an unmarked offering envelope.

Or your next gift to a nonprofit organization involves you stuffing their enclosed reply envelope with a fat $100 bill…instead of a check or EFT auto-deduct.

I suspect that for most of us, giving in this way will actually be harder than increasing the percentage of money we’re giving away to charity.

So let’s work our way up to it.

Once you set your giving percentage for the year, set an initial percentage of that percentage (1%? 5%? 10%?) to give away anonymously and unreceipted…and then increase that percentage each year. Absorb the tax hit as part of the cost of giving in secret, consoling yourself by noting that charitable giving may not be tax deductible forever the way things are going, and you’re just getting a jump start on the training to be generous when the only reward you’ll get for your donations comes from your Father in Heaven, who sees what is done in the secret places of our hearts.