Do the Word

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!

And the sum total of church annual campaign stewardship drives that focus on meeting the church’s budget goals rather than increasing the generosity of each person in the congregation?

1 in 5 Protestants give nothing to their local church, according to a post last week by the Presbyterian Outlook.

The post quotes Michael O. Emerson, who co-authored Passing The Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money (a book whose research we like but whose conclusions and proposals we don’t, as we’ve written about in a previous post).

Emerson also notes that roughly 60% of the money churches recieve comes from 5% of American Christians, and that 50% of American Christians account for 1% of the total.

My favorite stat remains the one related to income: American Christians making $25,000 or less a year give a greater percentage of their money away than do any other income group.

Emerson goes on to note that the average Mormon gives nearly 3 times as much as the average Protestant, though Pentecostals are slightly better than the rest of the Protestant bunch.

Anyway, great stats. Wildly sad, of course, but not remotely surprising. After all, when churches’ measurements of success (see? I’m slowly rounding the bend to finish up my Blognum Opus on measurement) focus on total dollars raised rather than an increase in generosity in each individual giving unit (the result of which would logically spill over into an improvement in total dollars raised), why would we expect to see anything different?

What’s disappointing are Emerson’s prescriptions for change:

• Churches should learn to ask better
• Churches should provide other media for giving, like ATM machines
• Churches should do a better job of telling congregation members where their donations went and what they accomplished
• Churches should help congregation members “give, then live”, that is, give first and live on what’s left

[Editor’s note: Emerson also predicted, “One day man will travel to the moon”.]

Missing from Emerson’s prescriptions?

A core conviction of Transformational Giving (TG), namely TG Principle #9, “Giving is learned, not latent”. It does not arise simply from asking better, putting an ATM machine in the lobby, telling them how we spent their money, or telling them to make their first check every month their check to the church.

Rather, it comes from training people how to give, by leaders giving opportunities designed systematically to grow them, by the grace of God,  from participation in projects to engagement in God’s work to ownership of that work in their sphere of influence.

That doesn’t happen through an inspiring and challenging stewardship sermon. It happes through a one-on-one discipleship process.

“But I can’t disciple everyone,” says The Pastor.

“And you’re not called to,” says The TG Practitioner, quoting 2 Timothy 2:2 to show that biblical discipleship involves us leaders comprehensively training just a few (just like Jesus and Paul did) such that those few comprehensively train just a few more who, because of how we taught them to teach others, train just a few more as well.

Sadly, as we’ll talk about in tomorrow’s post, the Presbyterian Church (USA) is heading in a different direction, responding to Emerson’s statistics by resorting to the oldest (and now most outdated) traditional/transaction tactic in the book to boost denominational giving.

What’s that old saying about insanity being defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

I’m still exulting over the lead my Generous Mind man Jon Hirst gave me yesterday, forwarding me a copy of the free Masterful Mentoring e-newsletter from Triple Creek Associates, specialists in open mentoring to the corporate world.

(Why, oh why, are we consistently behind the corporate world in principles that we Christians once knew but increasingly neglect? I suspect on my worst days that I might learn more about biblical discipleship working for Quiznos or Kinkos or Cheerios than a church, since churches are still imitating the business practices that corporations are now eschewing, and corporations are blind squirrels stumbling onto biblical nuts with astonishing frequency these days. But I digress.)

Anyway, this month’s Masterful Mentoring e-newsletter focuses on generational impact on mentoring. Well worth a thorough read; absolutely relevant to Transformational Giving from beginning to end. By far and away the highlight is a chart summarizing the core elements of each generation’s understanding of mentoring:

I’m already overlaying this in my mind on top of the behavior and outlook of different champions I’m coaching from different generations, and I’m liking how it’s helping me to understand certain behaviors and attitudes I’ve observed.

For example, I’m realizing I’ve got to be cognizant with Millennial mentees that their default is to view my mentoring as situational, transactional, and temporary. That definitely squares with my experience, but I’d not yet recognized it as a generational characteristic. I’d always thought it was a character shortcoming in the specific young people with whom I was dealing. “Where’s their commitment?” I’d roar. “How can they tell me one day they’ll give their life for this cause, and then the next day they’ve found another cause to devote their lives to?”

I’m also seeing aspects of Baby Boomers’ and Generation X’s understanding of mentoring that gives me hope that we can engage these groups more constructively through Transformational Giving (TG) than has been possible through traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf), where these groups have hardly distinguished themselves by their commitment.

Finally, I see why many of the older TG practitioners I mentor doubt they can mentor their long-distance champions. As the chart indicates, Traditionalists believe mentoring only happens face to face. I hope they’ll check out the post from yesterday for an alternate take.

Worth asking yourself: Do you fit into your generation’s view on mentoring in the chart above? And does the chart help you to gain any insights that may be useful in shaping your champion coaching program with champions of various ages?