Do the Word

Our Mission Increase Foundation free workshop/lab sequence for August/September is Marketing Your Ministry. (If you haven’t attended yet, do make sure to sign up now.)

One of the core concepts of the workshop is that in Transformational Giving, marketing is actually not the work of the nonprofit. Instead, it’s something we mentor our O-level champions to do as they spread the cause in their sphere of influence, recruiting new P-level champions for the cause.

The Signature Participation Project is the vehicle for that to happen. Typically we (the nonprofit) create it as a tool for our O-level champions, but they’re the ones who execute it largely on their own.

For a fuller explanation of what a Signature Participation Project is, and to learn about my former favorite Signature Participation Project, click here.

But let me tell you about my new favorite Signature Participation Project:

Secret Church.

The brainchild of David Platt, pastor of The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, Secret Church received a nice send-up in a Christianity Today post this week.

It’s well worth letting Pastor Platt set this up at length:

We have severely dumbed down the Word, and shown a lack of trust in the sufficiency of the Word in the way we preach. We find it necessary to supplement it with entertaining stories and quips or good practical advice for living the Christian life that are not based in the Word. This deficiency transfers into people content with a little “Word for the Day,” in a devotional book at best, as opposed to deep knowledge of Scripture.

We’re trying to hit at the problem from a variety of angles at Brook Hills. First of all, in worship we’re quoting the Word, singing the Word, and engaging in intensive study. We’ll study 55 minutes to an hour. We try to really saturate the community of faith with the Word when we gather together.

I go to other places, such as house churches in Asia, and they study for 11 or 12 hours, knowing they risk their lives. They’ll dive in deep. We came back and tried to do something similar here. We call it secret church and do it a couple times a year. We gather together for intensive study with no frills, nothing flashy, no entertainment value. The first time, about 1,000 showed up. We studied Old Testament overview from 6 p.m. to midnight, but usually it goes longer, supplemented by times in prayer for the persecuted church. It’s all ages, but the predominant demographic is college students and young singles. It’s grown to the point where we need to offer tickets at $5 for reservations and the cost of a study guide. We’ll do it again in October with 2,500 folks. It’s theological in nature. We’ve done a night on the Atonement, another on the doctrine of God. This time we’re doing spiritual warfare. It’s one of my favorite sights as a pastor to look out at 12:30 a.m. and see a room full of 2,500 people, their Bibles open, soaking it in.

Think of it like this:

How do you grow people in the cause of Hebrews 13:3, “Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering”?

Obviously it’s helpful to hear and read the testimonies of persecuted Christians. But Secret Church takes things one step further.

Through Secret Church–the simple act of gathering under cover of darkness for extended Bible study, punctuated by periods of prayer for the Persecuted Church around the world–participants participate in an act of solidarity with the Persecuted Church, namely, gathering together for intensive study and prayer.

From the Secret Church website:

When we think of “church” in America, we think of going to meet at a building, singing, praying and hearing a message from a Pastor or teacher. But in many places around the world, “church” meets in a home, an apartment, even in secret. These small groups of Christ-followers often meet for many hours in study, prayer and fellowship, as it is dangerous to travel to “church” and they want to make the most of their time together.

Best of all, though the Secret Church webpage credits Open Doors, one of the largest and most prominent nonprofits associated with ministry to the Persecuted Church, Secret Church is clearly not an event to promote Open Doors. In fact, the site links to a total of nine Persecuted Church ministries (the only one missing there is Seoul USA!).

Sum it up and say:

• Here’s a Signature Participation Project (SPP) that beautifully and brilliantly advances the cause and gives people a real sense of participation in it.
• The church is an Owner of the cause of Persecuted Church ministry. They’re doing this SPP. All the nonprofits related to Persecuted Church Ministry are part of the stage…not the actors.
• The SPP itself is a deepening of, not a deviation from the church’s core ministry of taking the Word seriously and engaging with it deeply.
• The whole thing is about fidelity to scripture, not just creative marketing.

An absolutely flawless SPP, with the church at the center of it all. Imagine!

We’re in the process this week of judging the Transformational Giving Implementation Award winners for the Mission Increase Foundation lapsed champion workshop/lab series we did earlier this summer.

The homework assignment?

Create a champion covenant and share it with a lapsed champion from your organization. Propose it as the basis for a renewed and rightly centered mutual accountability relationship designed to advance your shared cause.

(For a description of what a champion covenant is and why you’ll want to have one as you engage in Transformational Giving in your organization, click here for the Magnum Postus on the subject.)

I can’t reveal any of the winners yet, but there was a really well-done covenant that deserves honorable mention, even though it didn’t snag a prize. The authors were Colorado Springs-based Alpha Relief.

What I like about this covenant:

• It removes the we/you split between organization and champion. In this covenant, “we” means all those committed to the cause of the persecuted church.
• It’s comprehensive but not vague. It gives Alpha Relief a nice Participation/Engagement/Ownership discipleship framework.
• It nicely encapsulates the organization’s values. When I read this, I get a sense of what it would be like to be a part of what the covenant refers to as “the Alpha Relief family”.
• It doesn’t sound diminutive or silly or gimmicky. If I as a champion were asked to abide by this covenant and grow in the areas it outlines, I would feel like I was being asked to do something that would aid my Christian walk, not be ancillary to it.
• It’s specific to their cause. It doesn’t read like a generic champion covenant.
• It embodies Transformational Giving. We received more than a few submissions that were covenantal in form but traditional/transactional in approach, saying things like, “We will consistently thank you and gratefully acknowledge your prayer, material and financial support, providing appropriate receipts for your tax deduction purposes in accordance with existing federal income tax regulations”.

With that prelude in mind, here’s the covenant:

Alpha Relief Family Covenant

1. We make a commitment to do all we can do with what God has given us physically, emotionally, and spiritually to aid, serve, and ensure hope for persecuted Christians.

2. We make a commitment to continually pray for God’s persecuted ones, for their health, prosperity, freedom and strength.

3. We make a commitment to facilitate the growth of Christ’s underground, persecuted church through creative, organized and Divine means.

4. We make a commitment to uphold and encourage the Alpha Relief family members (staff, volunteers, supporters, partners) emotionally and spiritually, regardless of their level of involvement.

5. We make a commitment to be a resource for churches, organizations, foundations, or individuals who are seeking to serve persecuted Christians.

6. We make a commitment to honor Christ and exemplify his great love through our actions and words whether at work, home, church, traveling, or elsewhere.

Great work, Alpha Relief! You didn’t win a Mission Increase Foundation Transformational Giving Implementation Award, but for appearing in today’s blog you do win an ant in a matchbox and our enduring respect and admiration.

Now, dear reader, go and do likewise, creating a champion covenant for your organization!

In yesterday’s post we shared Michael Emerson’s report to the Presbyterian Church (USA) concerning the (sad and sorry) state of church giving.

In today’s post we share the PC-USA’s groundbreaking response:

To boost  denominational missions giving, the PC-USA will be sending missionaries to speak in churches to raise support.

Hm?

There are flyers and advertisements promoting the event that churches can download, built around the theme of “partnership”:

Partnership is at the core of the way Presbyterians participate in missions. Presbyterians at home partner with missions workers to share the good news around the globe. Mission workers partner with local churches in their country of service to support that part of Christ’s body.

Flyers, advertisements, “partnerships”, speakers. I don’t suppose any of this sounds too familiar to you?

I’m certainly not sure what in this is groundbreaking (although the website is at least duly modest in calling this a “second of its kind effort”).

Larry Lloyd at the Memphis Leadership Foundation told me the other day, “Transformational Giving first requires a change in the self-identity of the nonprofit leader. TG leaders have to be fundamentally committed to mentoring their champions to do the ministry. Absent that self-identity change, TG can never take root in an organization.”

In the PC-USA “Mission Challenge”:

• The missions self-identity of the congregation is supplier-of-money-and-prayers;
• The missions self-identity of the missionary is doer-of-ministry;
• The missions self-identity of the church in the country where the missionary is serving is receipient-of-ministry.

This has been so uncritically unaccepted by churches, missionaries, and mission churches for several generations that today missionaries and denominations like the PC-USA believe that the major hold-up in missions is that US congregations aren’t doing their part to supply money. They quote statistics like the ones we shared from Emerson yesterday, saying:

If American Christians were serious about giving more, the impact could be stunning. For example, if committed Christians (meaning regular church attenders or those who describe themselves as “strong” or “very strong” Christians) tithed, that would provide an extra $46 billion a year, the book concludes. With that, “we could basically end poverty,” eliminate diseases such as malaria, feed and house and clothe the world’s refugees, provide five million microloans, “and have a lot left over,” Emerson said.

Or, as Emerson states more explicitly in the story:

Most American Christians are pretty stingy.

The PC-USA is banking that the cure for this stinginess is sending out missionaries to talk more about themselves and their work.

But what if the problem is not that congregations haven’t heard enough missionary speakers but that the self-identities themselves are faulty…that what we’re seeing is an inevitable consequence of (unscripturally) defining some people as ministers and other as human ATM machines?

I don’t believe that American Christians aren’t actually “pretty stingy”. It is, after all, the generous Holy Spirit that is coursing through them. Rather, I believe American Christians are pretty poorly discipled, working from faulty self-identities that have been bequeathed to them (and reinforced by countless speakers) that give them a deflated sense of both what they can do and what God is calling and empowering them to do.

Moreover, I believe American Christians have the good sense to know that being a Christian must mean something more than, different than, giving money away to professionals to do ministry.

The corrective? A deep dive into scripture to remember what are self-identities are supposed to be, what God’s goals are for the church, what God’s roles are for leaders in the church.

May God raise up a generation of missionaries with self-identities formed by Ephesians 4:11-13!