Do the Word

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!

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?