Do the Word

A post in Get Religion this week made me realize it’s time for you and I to have That Talk.

Get Religion links to a piece from Bob Allen at Associated Baptist Press that points out that:

One in eight background checks conducted on volunteers or prospective employees through Lifeway Christian Resources found a criminal history that might have kept an individual from working or volunteering at a church.

While most screenings returned clean records or only minor traffic offenses, Lifeway said, 80 found serious felony offenses and more than 600 had some type of criminal history that may have disqualified them from volunteering or working at a church.

While not a statistically representative sample, 450 churches is 1 percent of the 44,848 Southern Baptist congregations claimed in Lifeway’s most recent Annual Church Profile. Projected onto the other 99 percent of Southern Baptist churches, that would add up to 8,000 serious felony offenses and more than 60,000 people with some sort of checkered past in churches across the convention.

Given that Transformational Giving thinks in terms of “all-in” champions being comprehensively coached to advance the cause within their sphere of influence (as opposed to donors just writing checks), does that mean that we should run background checks on all of our champions?

Doing that kind of screening on people at the Participant level would seem to be impractical, but a case might be made for including a background check as part of the explicit covenant you make with champions transitioning from P to E, or for O-level champions whose activity has a more direct bearing on or connection with your organization. I think this is at least worth a serious discussion on a ministry-by-ministry basis, but I’m not so sure it would be my first move in every case.

Reason, which Bob shares in his article:

The Centers for Disease Control say background checks are only one tool in screening and selection of church workers. By themselves, they can be counterproductive, creating a false sense of security.

They recommend guidelines on interactions between individuals, such as a “6/2 rule”, a policy that states anyone working with children or youth must be an active member of your church for at least six months before assuming a position of leadership and that there must be at least two non-related adults in the room with minors at all times.

Other safeguards include monitoring and supervision, ensuring safe environments for children, having a plan in place to respond to inappropriate behavior and training about prevention of child sexual abuse.

A few notes about this:

• This is not an added burden a ministry acquires when it decides to take a Transformational Giving (TG) approach instead of a traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf) approach. Even the most ttf ministry absolutely must have systems like this in place.
• The CDC advice is telegraphed to churches and prevention of child sexual abuse, but it can (and should) be broadened in our understanding and application to include all Christian nonprofits and all causes where vulnerability of individuals is an issue. That includes everything from dealing with individuals with marital problems to rape cases to ministry to the homeless to virtually every cause that deals with people, frankly.
• When we approach the matter biblically, we’re not just looking at a negative duty to prevent harm but also a positive duty to ensure healthy relationships and coach for growth in the likeness of Christ. We’re not just dealing with issues that a background search would turn up (though don’t discount the usefulness and necessity of such tools in your situation). We’re also talking here about emotional and spiritual issues that arise anytime an individual becomes passionate about a cause.

Case in point: I’m helping a ministry deal with a challenging discipleship situation at the moment involving a champion who came on strong as a veritable bundle of passion related to the cause. No sacrifice was too great, no involvement opportunity too taxing, no donation too much to give.

Sounds perfect, right?

Now, a year in, the champion is struggling with severe issues of anxiety and depression. The champion confessed channeling all donations to the nonprofit, canceling other donation commitments including any to the local church. In the process of being “all in”, the champion got burnt “all out”.

Would such a thing show up on a background check? Unlikely.

Does the ministry have a responsibility to know these things about individuals ahead of time? Unfair.

But can a ministry set up processes and safeguards such that champions are limited for their own good from being overwhelmed by their passion and overcommitting to the cause?

This is where cooperation with the local church–in the form of champion-consented “pastor checks” (or even informal consultations) on individuals seeking to make major commitments of time, energy, and even financial resources to your cause and through your organization–may be the most essential background check we can ever make.

Golf scrambles, auctions, jog-a-thons, and wine and cheese tasting events:

The problem with utilizing the aforementioned activities in your development program is that they attract people on a basis other than the cause, building a relationship with you from the outset that is not a mutual accountability relationship.

The traditional/transactional formulat goes something like this:

• golf and then hear about our cause in the clubhouse afterward;
• bid on an item totally unrelated to our cause so that we can use your money to impact the cause;
• taste the wine and cheese with your friends, and don’t mind me while I tell you a little bit about our cause.

It all sounds so sensible, but I can’t resist asking just one teeny-tiny question:

Why do we assume that our causes in and of themselves are so unattractive to people that they must be paired with wine and cheese to make them palatable?

What, in other words, would it look like for you to do an event where the evening’s activities are based entirely and only around enabling individuals to directly participate in the cause?

The key is that the event needs to provide the occasion, the equipping, and the opportunity for your owner-level champions to invite those in their sphere of influence to actually do the word related to your cause. Not just learn about it. Not just be emotionally impacted by it. Not just to give money towards it. But to be it.

There is a potentially risky but highly rewarding path, however, that involves your ministry taking these kind of traditional/transactional events (e.g., golf scrambles, auctions, jog-a-thons, and wine and cheese tasting events), completely upending people’s traditional experiences of them, and utilizing them to enable direct participation in the cause.

I say potentially risky because:

• What many ministries do when they hear this is to keep the essential traditional/transactional structure of the event intact but add a transformational element or two. There’s certainly nothing illegal about that, but there’s nothing highly rewarding about that either. If you’re still recruiting people on the basis of the wine and the cheese, you’re still recruiting people on the basis of the wine and the cheese.
• You don’t want to do a bait-and-switch. The idea isn’t to convince people they’re coming to a traditional golf scramble and then surprise them by assigning a homeless person to their threesome. There again, you’re recruiting people on the basis of the golf scramble and upending their expectations…in the wrong order (and in a way that will make you far more foes than friends).

So the key is to do the upending in the invitation process. That is, make sure the potential guest knows what they’re getting into. Do it right and not only will your owner-level champions have a powerful vehicle for recruiting new people to the cause, but the event may gather a word-of-mouth velocity of its own that causes even participant-level champions to want to replicate it in their own sphere of influence.

I saw a particularly powerful example of this last week, with Yorba Linda-based With This Ring.

Much of the gold and diamonds used in wedding rings is mined in Africa. Although “blood diamond” abuses are more rare these days than in the past, there’s no denying that the mining takes its toll on the miners themselves (in the form of low wages), not to mention the environment (runoff from mining can contaminate water sources). You can see more on the With This Ring website.

What With This Ring does is to invite people to donate their wedding rings to the organization so that the organization can sell the rings and use the money to drill drinking water wells in Africa. It’s a neat P/E/O organization that enables champions to be involved in any number of ways at each step in the process.

Recently With This Ring began holding auctions…but not the typical nonprofit auction where a mishmash of items and services are sold to raise money for charity.

Instead, With This Ring auctions are auctions of the actual wedding rings people have donated…and the story of how they came to donate the ring, as well as the history of the ring itself, are told as part of the auction.

In essence, the auction enables a ring to be “redeemed”.

After all, engaged couples are unlikely to be satisfied by going ringless or using crayons and colored markers to decorate cigar bands. Why not “redeem” a ring by purchasing it through the With This Ring auction, such that 100% of the proceeds of the purchase don’t go to the jeweler but rather back to Africa to aid the people who mined the materials in the first place?

And while you’re at it, why not take your honeymoon to Africa and participate in the drilling of the well that your donation helped make possible?

Note, by the way, that the auction is a platform With This Ring provides to its champions. The champions are the ones providing not only the rings themselves but the stories and the histories that make the rings compelling items on which to bid.

How can your ministry redeeem an event like an auction or a wine and cheese tasting event or a golf scramble? World Vision transformed the “-athon” into direct interaction with the cause through the 30 Hour Famine. What about you?

I’m really going to have to encourage World Gospel Mission‘s Todd Eckhardt to write a blog, or at least guest-write on mine. Brother’s got a knack for Transformational Giving, and I love reading everything he writes.

One of the principles Todd utilizes in coaching WGM’s missionaries is that your calling is not something that you turn on and off like a light switch. If you work with kids on the mission field, work with kids when you’re on home missionary assignment. If you oppose gambling while on the mission field, help your champions oppose it when you’re back home. It’s a great approach because it keeps the cause center stage. In addition, you’ll be equipping your champions to imitate you as you imitate Christ in relation to the cause.

Eavesdrop with me as Todd coaches a WGM missionary who serves at a hospital in Africa on how she can coach her champions from the field.

The missionary writes:

I just finished reading Coach Your Champions during my recent vacation and enjoyed the book.

However, I am a bit confused because my support team isn’t “next door” to me, so I am not sure how I could get them involved actually seeing the work when they can’t just jump in the car and come to the hospital in Africa to a birthday party of one of my “grandkids” because I have lots of “kids” as our students and graduates.

It seemed much easier in the book to get the Champions involved and involve others when they were “next door”.  Maybe you can explain how to help get them personally involved except for prayer and financially for many of my champions.  Or are they supposed to personally help nurses in the USA and pray for me in Africa?

It is true that your champions cannot pop over for a ‘party’, however this does not prevent them from acting in other ways, both for you and for their home community.

For example:  Every nurse taking one of your exams would love for people to pray for them.  Sometimes my kids will call their grandma the night before a test and ask grandma to pray for them.  You can do the same with your students.  Ask some of your champions if they would be willing to be assigned a student and then they can pray for the student. Perhaps even have the champion and student exchange emails so that when a student faces an exam or a difficult time they can email their “grandma/grandpa” and ask them to pray.  Then a day or two after the exam the champion can email back and see how the exam went.  If a student does not have email perhaps you would be able to facilitate this with your email. The champion could also reach out to a local nurse as you suggested.

Just think if a woman’s group at a local church organized with a hospital or doctor’s office to come once a month during lunch or break time and had 10 minutes of prayer with the nurses?  They could ask the nurses to share needs and pray for them.  Then if they ask why they can tell them about Jesus and about you and how you are nursing in Africa and through you touching their lives as your champions they wanted to touch other nurses lives to ‘pay back’ in the name of Jesus. They could even have your prayer cards with them in case they would want to connect with you and your nursing role in Africa.

As far as nursing (me being a nurse and a Parish Nurse), I am intrigued with the total care and chaplaincy (spiritual) care that is taught and practiced at the hospital in Africa. I did not know if you had something like that in your area in the States and sharing that with nurses and engaging them this way. It would be a way to teach principles to the nurses here as well as make them aware of your ministry in Africa. I could talk to you more about it.

I just finished reading Coach Your Champions during my recent vacation and enjoyed the book.

However, I am a bit confused because my support team isn’t “next door” to me, so I am not sure how I could get them involved actually seeing the work when they can’t just jump in the car and come to Tenwek to a birthday party of one of my “grandkids” because I have lots of “kids” as our students and graduates.  However I do think my emails help people with email access to “come and see” and hear what they are doing as I send out my picture emails.

It seemed much easier in the book to get the Champions involved and involve others when they were “next door”.  Maybe you can explain how to help get them personally involved except for prayer and financially for many of my champions.  Or are they supposed to personally help nurses in the USA and pray for me in Africa?