Do the Word

My bookshelf is now happily recharged with three copies of Alan Gotthardt’s The Eternity Portfolio.

If you haven’t read it yet, good heavens–please do. I can’t recommend it highly enough. And you can typically buy used copies through amazon.com for under a buck. So I buy 2 or 3 at a time and then recharge my bookshelf after I give them away, which occurs most of the time I run across someone in person who hasn’t yet read the book.

Truthfully, I’m not sure the inner sleeve of the book, the amazon.com reviews, or even the Eternity Portfolio website really do justice to what I think is truly revolutionary about the book’s content.

What the inner sleeve/amazon/website verbiage communicates is a series of overused phrases like “maximize your giving”…”ultimate results”…”biblical reasons to give”–all the things you’d expect from a book by a Christian financial planner. Hardly the reason to pack this one on your next trip to a deserted island. Even the “eternity calculator” (available to those with the key ring decoder on the Generous Giving website) which actually computes the eternal financial return on Kingdom investments according to the interest rates Jesus quotes is novel, but not the reason I recommend giving the book out to each (yes, each–it’s less than a buck a copy in most cases, y’know) of your E- and O-level champions.

The real power of Gotthardt’s work is Chapter 6, God’s Asset Allocation.

There, Gotthardt fleshes out the reality that biblical stewardship calls us to do more than to give to areas of our passion, or even areas of genuine need. Just as a healthy financial portfolio contains a mixture of stocks, bonds,  and cash, a healthy giving portfolio must likewise contain a mixture of giving to different causes to match the range of areas in which God calls us to invest.

Gotthardt proposes a variety of overlays on our giving:

1. The Jerusalem, Judea, and The World overlay, in which we selfconsciously build a giving portfolio consisting of local, regional, and global giving in correspondence to the calling God lays out for all Christians in scripture. It’s not enough, in other words, to say, “I really feel called to give to North Korea projects.” Great!…but that doesn’t absolve you of building a giving portfolio that comprehends local and regional projects as well.

2. The Evangelism, Discipleship, and Mercy overlay, in which we selfconsciously build a giving portfolio consisting of investments made in each of those three areas, in fidelity to what the Bible calls us to do. Gotthardt suggests subdivisions for each area (such as church planting, bible translation/distribution, group/event focus under evangelism), but he does so modestly, allowing that other subdivisions are possible. The important thing, he stresses, is that we’re consciously giving in each of the three areas.

3. The Local Church overlay, which Gotthardt divides into Personal Mission, Spontaneous Opportunities, and The Poor. I especially like the way Gotthardt develops this section, since too often in books of this type church giving is simply undifferentiated, viewed as Obligatory Instititutional Support. He also speaks passionately about giving related to the poor; sadly, this area gets far too little direct attention in evangelical circles, where the burden of proof is far too often on the poor to demonstrate their worthiness.

As regards Transformational Giving (TG), there is a limitaton to Gotthardt’s book, namely, that it’s directed purely at financial giving rather than comprehensive involvement in the cause. That’s no fault of the book, however: Gotthardt didn’t set out to write a text on comprehensive discipleship. Further, the Chapter 6 framework that Gotthardt lays out lends itself quite nicely to a P/E/O chart, particularly one done with a pastor or in conjunction with one’s local church wherein one is thinking through discipleship comprehensively, not only in relation to one specific cause.

In any case, the book is a revelation to me each time I read it. Plunk down 54 cents today with amazon.com and land yourself an extra copy or three to apply to your own life and to share with your champions.

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?