Do the Word

Yesterday we shared a blueprint for champion development from Spencer Cowan at Dare2Share Ministries.

Today Partner Development is center stage.

As we mentioned yesterday, “partner” refers to churches and organizations (essentially, formal networks) that we are coaching to full maturity in our shared cause.

One of the most exciting figures to watch in the area of partner development is World Gospel Mission‘s Todd Eckhardt.

Here’s Todd’s Partner Development Department blueprint.

Do crib liberally, dear reader; this is exceedingly good stuff.

(Note that World Gospel Mission uses the phrase “CMS”, or “Champion Migration Strategy”, as their name for the Transformational Giving process.)

Partner Development

Purpose:  To equip our partners in fulfilling their Biblical role in the Great Commission.

To achieve the stated purpose we will:

• handle the partner in the context of serving the partner’s mission goals.  We will always keep in mind how God may use us to increase the maturity of the partner and their view toward missions.  We will strive to help them define their role in the Great Commission and then do what we can to help them fulfill this role
• interact with partners at the level of transformational giving
• assist partners in overcoming barriers that prevent them from fulfilling Great Commission

The following are practical steps to be used by the Partner Development Officer (PDO) to achieve our purpose:

• Ask questions about the current partner’s mission program.

Operate in the context of serving their mission goal. (Sample questions to ask Partners)

“How can we serve you?”

“Why do you want a missionary?”

“What ministry do you need our missionary to address with your group?”

“When WGM leaves your group what would like to have seen happen?”

“What would you identify as a success as a result of our serving you?”

“Where would you like your group to be in relation to [X] discipline of missions activity?”

PRAY

• Listen to what their needs are

PRAY

• Identify needs of partner in the area of the Great Commission

• Make every touch strategic

Following the information gathering stage that you do through questions and listening, develop intentional steps that you can take in serving the partner.  Then make every touch with the partner intentional according to your plan. People have steps in mind but rarely a strategy.  Be strategic.

Did I mention the need to PRAY?

• Identify passions of partner

As you work with partners their passions will rise to the top whether they were ever stated or not in the listening stages of your information gathering. Help flesh out if their passion equals their Biblical call. Are they being obedient to the call or simply following a passion? They are not equal.

• As the PEO strategic plan unfolds for the partner the following ‘paths’ will take shape in building a strategy for the partner

Move through the PEO process

• Participation
  • Project oriented
  • Short-term high touch events/projects
  • High yield events/projects

Some Examples :

–          Concert of Prayer

–          Small project from Great Co-Mission Catalogue

–          Work team

–          Fund raising event

–          World Go Manual

–          Gospel Outreach Weekend (GOW)

• Engaged
  • The partner equips others beyond short-term projects to the cause.
  • Move beyond one regional project to causal activity

Some Examples:

–          Work team leader training

–          Partnership with national church as follow up from a short-term team

–          Use Great Co-Mission Catalogue to teach Stewardship principles

–          Duplicate international work team in local area (If team went to Honduras to help street kids, help street kids in own town or a US city)

–          Move from Concert of prayer to small group prayer times for the Great Commission

–          Teach World Go Manual

• Ownership
  • Supporting others to advance the cause
  • Provide tools to the partner and to help them partner others
  • Transfer of cause

Some Examples:

–          Nappanee Missionary Church having church members serve on the board of the AGC Baby Center

–          Pastors teaching other pastors about GOW

–          Adavance Volunteer Network service

–          Butler, GA getting other churches involved in the dump in Honduras

Commentary on migrating churches with the above guidelines in mind:

1. Everything we do is to be done in context of serving
2. Grow the partner during the process not WGM, and avoid the myth that activity equals growth.
3. Work with a goal in mind
4. Keep thinking of next steps
5. KEEP STEWARDSHIP AND GIVING AS PART OF THEIR MIGRATION.  We must not fear finances while at the same time not making them a false ultimate.
6. Keep the Biblical mandates always in the forefront and build your language around the Biblical call of service to achieve the Great Commission.
7. Every partner will enter the process at a different level, so meet them where they are.
8. Help the partner do locally what we want they want to do internationally.
9. Come as a gift to the partner.  Work to be sure they are richer when we finish than they were when we first met them.

Cautions about giving:

1. CMS does not remove presentations about getting funded.
2. Giving is great but not enough. Prayer is great but not enough.  Going is great but not enough. All three must be in place therefore it is appropriate to broach the need for giving.
3. The need for giving must come out of the Biblical call to stewardship not our need to get funds.

In Transformational Giving (TG), we use the term “champions” to describe individuals who are being coached to full maturity in Christ in relation to the cause. We use the term “partners” to refer to churches and organizations that we’re coaching along the same path.

Tomorrow we’ll have a real-life blueprint from an organization on the edge of the TG partner development frontier.

Today we’re going to take a look at a real-life champion development blueprint, from Spencer Cowan, new development manager at Dare2Share Ministries.

I’ve had the great honor of working with Spencer and D2S  on TG for the last two years, and every monthly meeting we have , in addition to being hard work on the edge of TG, is just plain fun.

Take it away, Spence!

The Purpose of the Development Department is to further THE Cause by coaching Champions to understand and carry out what Scripture calls them to do as it relates to THE Cause.

Six Foundational Principles

1. We are not pastors, friends or simply fundraisers to our adult Champions. A friendship can develop along the way but that is not our primary focus.  Our ministry is to inspire, coach and unleash Champions to fulfill their God given responsibility in the Great Commission as it relates to mobilizing Christian teenagers.  We are God’s gift to the Champion, to help them walk in their ministry as it relates to THE Cause, not to take their ministry away from them.

2. Our role is to appreciate the convictions and values that are already important to the Champion while challenging them to embrace their Biblical responsibility regarding THE Cause (even what might not be appealing to them).  As Jesus did with the rich young ruler after hearing how he ‘kept all the commands since his youth’ Jesus responded with the words, “You still lack one thing…”  If we are faithful in prayer for each conversation and effectively use Scripture with the Champion the Holy Spirit can convict them and bring them to maturity, that is His job.  Our job is to communicate the message clearly as well as to model THE Cause in our own lives.

3. We will focus on those that are being called.  Practically that means we will give ourselves more fully to those that are “of us.”  Like Jesus describes in the parable of the sower we will be faithful to scatter the seed (i.e. engage all people in conversation about THE Cause) but will seek out and focus on those that Jesus called “good soil where it produced a crop – a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”  Our takeaway is to coach those who will understand THE Cause, personalize it and recruit others who will follow their example.  In finding and focusing on these people THE Cause will accelerate much quicker.

4. Our fundraising strategy will be transformational not transactional.  The end goal is not to ‘cultivate the donor so we can receive income to do ministry’ but is to see a greater number of adult Champions completely transformed by THE Cause.  When this is done right the resources will come and will be a testimony to God’s faithfulness to HIS Cause.  This attitude will help us keep the motives of our heart directed toward furthering THE Cause THROUGH Champions instead of raising the money to do it ourselves.  The example here is the way Jesus ‘coached’ His disciples knowing He would be gone and it would be in their hands (i.e. “feed my sheep”).

5. Even though the way we do fundraising is not transactional we will not be afraid to ask the Champion for a transformational gift.  Generous giving towards THE Cause is a key defining mark of a true Champion.  We will continue to work together to develop the way we communicate this.

6. Full Networking is a priority.  Over the next year we are going to attempt to understand and implement this idea.  A full network is one in which Champions are talking to each other, as well as to us.  For example, if a Champion mentions a barrier that another Champion has successfully overcame help them connect, instead of helping them yourself.

All of our communication to Champions will become more and more discipleship focused as it relates to THE Cause.  As we identify these Champions we are adding them to our ‘team’ (i.e. our notify list) and engaging them in a coaching relationship.  An easy formula to remember in personal communication are the following steps (see the Coaching Diagnostic for more detail):

1. Get behind the ‘why’ of their giving

2. Begin a dialogue on THE Cause

3. Get permission to begin a coaching relationship with them

The Participation/Engagement/Ownership architecture runs on sanctification software.

That is, absent a robust theology of sanctification, it doesn’t make any sense to talk about growing champions comprehensively in the likeness of Christ.

That’s particularly challenging for us in a day and age when no small portion of contemporary evangelical Christianity refers to the term “works” only perjoratively , in conjunction with the term “righteousness”.

Christianity today has a surprisingly hard time distinguishing between sanctification and works righteousness.

I say “surprisingly” because although some branches of the Protestant family tree may talk about sanctification more than others, all branches–whether Lutheran, Calvinist, Wesleyan, Anabaptist, or Anglican–have always historically affirmed that Christ not only frees us from the penalty of sin, but that He also progressively frees us from the power of sin.

In say “Christianity today” because I was absolutely shocked by Mark Galli’s article, We’ve Won the Lottery–Now What?, on Christianity Today’s website at the end of July.

Galli begins with a fair question:

Why does the evangelical community end up with sinners like Governor Mark Sanford (adultery) and Ted Haggard (immorality) and CEO Kenneth Lay (fraud) and evangelist Jim Baker [sic] (licentiousness)—to take but a very few examples!

His analysis?

What has gone wrong? The first answer seems to be that we are not thinking right or doing enough. Some put their chips on redefining the gospel in social terms; they assume the problem is individualism. Others bet on spiritual formation; the problem is that we’re lazy and spiritual disciplines point the way to a more godly future. Some say we need the dynamism of the Holy Spirit; the problem is formalism. Others plea for more accountability groups or more thoughtful worship music or more time in prayer or more of some other magic bullet. If we only do something more, things will improve.

We’ve tried all these, and tried them time and again. The lamentable conclusion seems to be that while the gates of Hades will never prevail against the church, the spirit of moral mediocrity has pretty much won the day. This is not to deny those wonderful moments when the church really acts like the church, when outsiders notice Jesus Christ as a result! Such moments are pure gifts, signs of the coming kingdom. But history suggests they are intermittent. The usual reality is that the church, from corrupt Corinth to amoral America, remains a sinful institution, full of sinful people.

Perhaps it’s time we try a new approach, and do less.

Inexplicably setting aside two-thirds of what the Apostle Paul actually wrote, Galli asserts:

The primary issue for Paul was not striving for transformation but resting in forgiveness. That he continued to sin, and sin woefully, was not as important to him as the fact that no sin he could commit was beyond God’s desire to forgive—nothing, not even his ongoing sinfulness, could separate him from the love of God in Christ! No wonder he lived in gratitude—doing less!

Since when did a robust theology and practice of sanctification become antithetical to justification by faith? Certainly not in either the New Testament, the Protestant Reformation, or orthodox Christianity through the ages.

It’s hard to get less controversial a resource than The New Bible Dictionary, which ticks off without hesitation the abundance of New Testament passages relating to the essential and praiseworthy nature of works in the Christian life:

The believer also demonstrates by his good works the divine activity within him (Mt. 5:16; Jn. 6:28; 14:12). Conversely, the man who has no faith demonstrates by his evil works his separation from God (Jn. 3:19; Col. 1:21; Eph. 5:11; 2 Pet. 2:8, etc.). Good works are therefore the evidence of living faith, as James emphasizes in opposition to those who claim to be saved by faith alone without works (Jas. 2:14-26). James is in harmony with Paul, who also repeatedly declared the necessity for works, i.e. for behaviour appropriate to the new life in Christ following our entry into it by faith alone (Eph. 2:8-10; 1 Cor. 6:9-11; Gal. 5:16-26, etc.). The works rejected by Paul are those which men claim as earning God’s favour and securing their discharge from the guilt of sin (Rom. 4:1-5; Eph. 2:8-9; Tit. 3:5). Since salvation is given by God in grace, no degree of works can merit it. The good works of the heathen are therefore unavailing as a means of salvation, since the man himself relies on the flesh and not on the grace of God (Rom. 8:7-8).

Wood, D. R. W. ; Marshall, I. Howard: New Bible Dictionary. 3rd ed. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, Ill. : InterVarsity Press, 1996, S. 1249

Do we really want to submit Sanford, Haggard, Lay, and Bakker–and by extension adultery, immorality, fraud, and licentiousness among Christians–as evidence that we Christians have taken spiritual disciplines, accountability groups, and moral training too seriously?

Or is it possible that the church has, by and large, simply lost the ability to disciple Christians and that Apple Computer does a better job in this arena than we do?

Participation/Engagement/Ownership should never be diminutively understood as an organizational fundraising strategy. It is nothing less than an effort to restore works to their rightful place in the Christian life, in the context of a robust theology of sanctification that arises not in opposition to justification and forgiveness but rather as its boon companion, like thunder follows lightning.