Do the Word

…and we in regard to the unmeasured things will not boast ourselves, but after the measure of the line that the God of measure did appoint to us — to reach even unto you… (Youngs Literal Translation, 2 Corinthians 10:13)

‘The God of Measure’ is not one of the names Christians typically use for God.

In fact, if you look up 2 Corinthians 10:13 in your NIV or KJV or NASB or Message Bible, you won’t even see the phrase translated that way into English. (The other translations choose to highlight that what Paul appears to be talking about in this section is super-apostles invading the sphere of influence that was divinely measured out to him, namely the Gentiles.)

But for those with an Greek-English Interlinear handy (here, borrow mine), there it is, plain as day in the Greek:

Theos metron. The God of measure.

It makes sense to think of God as the God of measure. Do a search in your concordance and you’ll see that God is quite big on measurements.

Then I looked up—and there before me was a man with a measuring line in his hand! (Zech. 2:1)

Ezekiel and John (in Revelation) are both sent a-measuring. And whose earnest efforts to read the Bible in a year hasn’t ground to a halt with the looooooooong, mega-detailed sections on measurement of the tabernacle and the temple?

So, God being a big practitioner of measurement, and Transformational Giving (TG) being an effort to exposit the scriptures related to the subject of development (which we take to refer not to fund development but rather to our development into the fullness of Christ), it makes sense that if we’re trying to nail down what we ought to be measuring in TG, we ought to ask the question:

• What does ‘The God of Measure’ measure?

And once we determine that, we ought to ask the follow-up question:

• Ought we to be measuring the same thing?

Which would lead to the truly transformational question:

• What would a Christian nonprofit look like if it was measuring (and seeking to maximize and to base its decisions on) the same things The God of Measure measures?

And that, dear reader, is the subject of our blog posts this week.

As if to underscore yesterday’s post on orienting concerns–those ‘worries’ that we bring to every question of theology and fundraising–there was a really clear illustration of the orienting concern of traditional/transactional fundraising (ttf) in the great post yesterday on Beth’s Blog related to measuring the fundraising impact of social media like Facebook.

TTF fundraisers twist in the wind when it comes to figuring out Facebook and Twitter and other social media because even telemarketing and door-to-door fruitcake sales are often still more potent income generators for nonprofits than Facebook. And this is a problem for ttf’ers, since as Betsy Harman is quoted as saying in the piece:

It’s still all about building relationships, telling your story, and taking potential donors through the process of cultivation, stewardship and solicitation.

There’s the orienting concern of ttf–organizational finances–rearing its head again: Everything is measured against its potential to generate income for the organization.

The challenge is, nowhere more than with social media does such a goal drive ttf adherents to drown in sorrowful and desperate tweets. Social media is tenacious and consistent in its resistance to this kind of income calculus. Yet ttf fundraisers can’t ignore that ‘everyone is doing it’–getting involved with social media, that is.

Social media simply resists to the core of its being you and I ‘taking potential donors’ (yikes! What a phrase) through ‘the process of cultivation, stewardship, and solicitation’.

Hard to ‘take’ anyone anywhere on Facebook or other social media. It’s a media that relies on giving something–in the case of our work, giving mentoring, counsel, networking, and interesting opportunities to connect with others to do with others what they can’t do on your own. Giving without thought of return because it’s in service of the cause.

TTF fundraisers totally understand the concept that social media requires a gift mindset. They just for the life of themselves can’t figure out what to do with it.

From Beth’s Blog yesterday:

The other thing to remember is that a lot of social media culture is built on the ‘gift economy:’ the notion that it’s a good idea to do things that are just good ideas. There’s no expected return when you do someone a favor, or when you take time to share research for free. You realize that it’s making the whole environment richer with your unique participation — you don’t expect anything else from it.

The problem for ttf devotees is that at some point they have to make things shift from the organization making a gift with no expectation in return, to the other person making a gift back to them. One always runs the risk of smacking of insincerity when you expect nothing on the way to expecting everything.

Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, in other words, are virtually impermeable to the orienting concern of nonprofit financial health. People on Facebook, in other words, could care less about the financial health of our nonprofit.

On the other hand, TG’s orienting concern–Is the champion/partner being shaped comprehensively in the image of Christ in relation to the cause?–is tailor-made for social media. Social media opens up opportunities to coach champions that are unlike any opportunities we’ve ever had before.

And we can port all of our TG agenda onto social media without Facebook friends feeling like we’ve baited and switched them. We can (and should) even talk openly about how to give to advance the cause, because our orienting concern is helping the champion comprehensively impact the cause, not the financial health of our nonprofit. People will actually appreciate it when we can coach them in how to use all of their personal and corporate assets to impact the cause.

At the end of the day, social media measurement is one more demonstration of the potency of TG when compared to ttf. TTF is left to hem and haw about how social media builds ‘social capital, goodwill, and influence‘…but it can’t figure out how to put that in the ttf fuel tank that only runs on dollars.

TG, on the other hand, is completely comfortable in the social media environment, since it’s designed to allow us to give all the things we are called to give: coaching, accountability, and opportunity.

Now having exposed the lack of clothesiness of the ttf emperor in relation to measurement, we turn next week to what the Bible has to say about measurement (an astonishing amount, actually) in order to ask:

According to scripture, what does God want us to measure anyway?

That’s the question that needs to drive TG measurement–and the answers turn out to be things that, while nothing short of spiritually revolutionary for us as Christian nonprofits, are remarkably do-able from a practical standpoint.

One of the appeals of traditional/transaction fundraising (ttf) is that it’s so easy to measure. It’s all about the Benjamins, baby! You know if your ttf efforts are succeeding or failing by looking at your gross and net incomes and your cost of fundraising. Simple.

On the other hand, Transformational Giving (TG) appears to require more complex, softer measurements. After all, in TG we’re concerned about more than giving. In our P/E/O charts (which in and of themselves are a measurement), we’re seeking to measure each dimension of growth required for a person to grow from being what I call a pukey face fall down in the mud gentile that doesn’t know nothin’ from nothin’ in relation to the cause…to a disciple comprehensively shaped in the image of Christ in that dimension of Christian service.

That sounds like TG might need a few more measurement gauges than ttf.

Or does it?

Let me unleash a little Randy Maddox on you, from his amazing tome, Responsible Grace. The air will get a little thick in here for a second, but crack a window and resist the urge to skip ahead:

I have come to believe…that what gives consistency (if there is any) to particular theological traditions within a religion are not unchanging doctrinal summaries, or a theoretical Idea from which all truth is deduced or given order in a System; it is instead a basic orienting perspective or principle that guides their various particular theological activities….

I want to make clear that it is not simply one theological concept or metaphor among others. It is a perspective within which one construes (or a ‘worry’ which one brings to) all of the various types of theological concepts….

Its role is not to be the foundation from which doctrines spring or the pattern into which they must fit, but the abiding interest which influences the selection, interpretation, relative emphasis, and interweaving of theological affirmations and practices.

Sum it up and say:

As we contended in our TG seminar (click here to download a complimentary PDF of the seminar workbook), ttf and TG are both, at root, theological systems. And theological systems are built around a basic organizing principle or ‘orienting concern’. Given our focus this week, you might say that the orienting concern is the fundamental measurement employed in the system.

For ttf, the orienting concern is the financial health of the nonprofit. As you’ll see in the seminar workbook notes, there’s a biblical term for that:

Idolatry.

Let me state it flat out:

Making decisions about how to relate to people/donors/champions based around an orienting concern of the financial health of a nonprofit is idolatrous.

Let’s return to something to which we alluded earlier this week.

There are three entities involved in development:

1. The champion or partner
2. The nonprofit
3. The cause

What ttf does is to split these up into two distinct and independent sets of measurements:

1. Champion/partner-nonprofit income measurements
2. Nonprofit-cause impact measurements

This is why ttf so frequently leads the nonprofits that practice it away from their cause:

Because the income and impact measurements are two separate sets of measurements.

Raising money is one thing, impacting the cause is another. It’s why the so-called ‘program’ folks at nonprofits look down their noses at the ‘fundraisers’.

In TG, it turns out that the orienting concern–the measurement–is simpler, not more complex. There’s only one measurement, not two disconnected sets of measurements. The measurement is this:

• Is the champion/partner being shaped comprehensively in the image of Christ in relation to the cause?

The orienting concern that underlies the measurement is this:

• The champion/partner is called to walk in works prepared by God for the sake of being shaped in the image of Christ, to the glory of God.

Because that is our orienting concern, every other measurement becomes subsidiary.

(Yes, even income measurements. With this orienting concern we can distinguish between ‘good income’ and ‘bad income’ for an organization based on whether that income is the product of growth in the cause–fruit produced from the giver being shaped in the image of Christ–or not.)

With these principles in mind, tomorrow we can lay out a truly TG system of measurement–transparent, collaborative, and built around God’s fundamental orienting concern…which is most assuredly not a nonprofit’s balance sheet.