Do the Word

This misconception is predicated on the idea that Transformational Giving is like a switch that you throw. One minute your development efforts are transaction transaction transaction, the next they’re transformation transformation transformation.

That’s not how it works.

I began stumbling into the rudiments of what’s now Transformational Giving in 1996, while serving as a Vice President at the Russ Reid Company and working on the Million Man Gathering for Promise Keepers. Just seeing how certain individuals (who called themselves Promise Keepers, not Promise Keepers supporters) owned the Ten Promises of a Promise Keeper in their sphere of influence gave me pause for thought. ‘The organization is like the stage, the convening mechanism,’ I mused.

And then I came down from Transformation Mountain and promptly helped to create a January fund raising appeal package for the Los Angeles Mission called ‘Don’t Throw Christmas Out with the Tree’.

It was as traditional and transactional appeal as they come.

(It was also as bad an appeal as I’ve ever done. But I digress.)

The point is that at the very time that I was drawing up the first draft of the TG 10–the backbone of Transformational Giving–in 2005, I was still freely using the word ‘donor’ (which today I rue) and writing pieces like a ‘lapsed donor reactivation letter’ that began, ‘I haven’t heard from you this year, and frankly I’m concerned.’

The transition from trasactional fundraising to TG is almost always two steps forward and one step back.

Along the way, however, we see transformation busting out all over…sometimes even in transactional fund raising programs.

That became quite apparent to me in 1997, when, in a one-step-back reversion to transactional fundraising during my time as President of the Los Angeles Mission, I wrote a really moving appeal letter about Michael, a former crack addict who was now clean and serving on the staff of the mission as one of our work start chaplains helping our rehab program grads land jobs.

A ‘donor’ who normally sent in small gifts sent in a big gift–big enough to prompt me to call her.

‘What in the world did you send such a big check in for?’ I asked her.

‘Well,’ she replied. ‘It’s kind of personal. My son has been homeless for years. He may be dead, for all I know. When I saw the story about Michael, I thought that if I made a gift, maybe somehow it would be like helping my son.’

I invited her down to the mission to meet Michael personally. When they met right outside my office door, the woman collapsed into his arms and started sobbing.

Transformation’s been happening for years, you know, even in the most transactional places. All we’re doing through TG is to create a solid biblical foundation where transformation is the standard, rather than the exception. That takes time to learn. And you can’t force it to happen (true transformation is the work of the Holy Spirit, not marketing creativity). You can only foster it.

So in our monthly free workshops and labs, my question each month after teaching each different topic is:

What one step can you take towards implementing Transformational Giving in this area of your development efforts?

When you ask people that way, they rarely say, ‘Well, it’s just one great big theory.’ Instead, they say, ‘Well, I could probably do that one thing you talked about where…’

I’ve noticed in my years of teaching Transformational Giving that transformation is contagious. It’s like it breaks out in your development program, appearing first here and then there. Jesus said that’s the way it is with Kingdom things.  Like yeast in bread. Don’t despise the day of small beginnings and all that.

When you think about TG as the mustard seed, then what begins to happen is that you see it every day. It rarely appears in a super-systematized form (though it sometimes does). Instead it happens in a champion conversation here or a magazine article there.

Like tonight. I started writing this post, took a break to go to the Y, and then came back. I was thumbing through the latest issue of Christianity Today when I ran across an article about Bel Air Presbyterian Church pastor Mark Brewer’s effort to equip Los Angeles churches to fulfill their biblical responsibility to the homeless–a TG premise if ever there was one.

The project, Imagine LA, offers the following blessedly transformational math equation on their website home page:

8000 homeless families [that’s the total number in LA]
+
8000 faith-based organizations [that’s the total number of churches, synagogues, and mosques in LA]
_______________________________________
0 homeless children

The website goes on to say:

Just imagine if each one of these faith-based organizations helped a homeless family achieve long-term stability and sufficiency.

Bingo. Transformation. It’s breaking out all over. Note the great P to E (Participation to Engagement) quote from Kurt Frederickson, the chair of the Faith Community Subcommittee of the Simi Valley Task Force on Homelessness:

It’s real easy to live in the suburbs and go to skid row and pass out sandwiches [editor’s note: that’s the P project]. It’s a whole lot harder to circle around another person and say, ‘I’m going to be with you for the long haul’ [editor’s note: hello E!].

Transformation, like the Kingdom of God from whence it comes, is among us.

I have to admit that of all the objections to Transformational Giving, this one vexes me the second most. (The objection that vexes me the most is the one we’ll be covering tomorrow. Stay tuned.)

I think the reason why some people assume Transformational Giving takes longer to produce results than traditional/transactional giving is because of Misconception 1, which we dealt with yesterday; namely, the idea that in Transformational Giving we don’t talk about money.

It’s definitely true that if you don’t talk about money, you’re typically going to be waiting an awful long time to see the champion grow in their giving in relation to the cause. As we shared yesterday, we talk plenty about money in TG, perhaps even more than in traditional/transaction fundraising.

(As often as we write it, we need an abbreviation for traditional/transactional fundraising. How about ttf?)

Where TG differs from ttf when it comes to talking about money is that in TG the relationship and the conversations within it are not driven by–nor initiated because of–the intersection of our funding need and the champion’s comfort level.

Instead, the relationship is:

• a mutual accountability relationship
• with an individual in our sphere of influence
• in which together we seek out the fullness of what the Scripture calls us toward in relation to the cause
• and we hold each other accountable to take specific and comprehensive growth steps toward that fullness.

Contrast that with ttf, where we’re dealing with:

• building a ‘friendraising’ relationship (think golf/fishing/birthday cards)
• with a total stranger (aka a ‘qualified prospect’–after all, we wouldn’t dare pull this on people we’re actually friends with)
• in which we make appeals for funds based on us convincing the ‘prospect’ that what we ourselves consider important should actually now be important enough to him or her to hand us money
• and, if he or she does respond, we offer profuse thanks (as if we’ve just been done a big favor)…and we begin the process of asking for a bigger gift.

Explain to me again how TG takes longer to see results?

Today we begin a five-part series designed to dispel the most popular misconceptions that cling to Transformational Giving. We begin with the most common misconception of all, which goes something like this.

Wow! I’m so glad I came to this Transformational Giving seminar! It validates what I’ve always believed, which is that I don’t need to ask people for money.

It’s understandable how that misconception arises. After all, Transformational Giving principle 8 says:

Giving is not the process but rather one vital result of the process of a champion being comprehensively coached to share the cause effectively within his or her sphere of influence.

That almost sounds like, ‘Don’t worry about talking about money. People will give money if you talk about everything else.’ But that notion is dispelled by Transformational Giving principle 9, which says:

Giving is learned, not latent.

So let’s spend a few minutes talking about how and when and why we talk about money in Transformational Giving.

The place to begin is Ephesians 4:7-13, from whence Transformational Giving draws its charter. That passage shows a giving progression that goes as follows:

• God gives leaders to His people
• Those leaders prepare God’s people for works of service
• The Body of Christ, having been built up by these leaders, attains the full maturity and measure of Christ and renders its full harvest to God

This is a complete inversion of traditional/transactional Christian fundraising, which has the arrows running in the opposite direction:

• God gives gifts to His people
• God’s people support leaders by giving those gifts to them
• Leaders render the work unto God

In that latter scenario, the result is completed work. In the former scenario, the result is a completed church. Guess which one God is after? (Note that it’s possible to accomplish the first without the second, but it’s not possible to accomplish the second without also accomplishing the first in the process.)

That’s why TG  9 says that giving is not the process but is the result of the process. Giving–fundraising–is just not a big enough word to describe the process. The process is sanctification–growing in Christian maturity in relation to the cause. Generosity is one of the fruits of that process.

So if generosity is a fruit of the process, won’t it just happen automatically if we work on everything else?

Answer: No.

Reason:

Sanctification is a Holy Spirit process. We can’t make it happen; however, there are a couple of things that we can do and that as Christian leaders we are called to do in support of and collaboration with the Holy Spirit:

• We can help the individual we’re coaching search the Scriptures in order to understand what God has in mind for all Christians (and thus for them) in relation to the cause–the general will of God, or ‘What God has in mind for all Christians in relation to this cause’.
• We can serve as a platform or gymnasium in which the individual carries out that general will of God in relation to the cause.
• We can mentor the person in relation to the cause, encouraging them to imitate us as we carry out our calling related to the cause.
• We can serve as mutual accountability partners in (1) helping each other know and carry out God’s general will for us in relation to the cause; and (2) discerning what God has for us specifically in relation to the cause–our ‘calling’.

So the question remains: Can all of the above be done–can the person be coached to full maturity in Christ in relation to the cause–without talking to the individual about his or her giving to the cause?

I would be absolutely flummoxed if anyone could straight-facedly answer that question in the affirmative.

It would be like saying, ‘I think an individual could grow to fullness in Christ in the cause in the area of prayer without us working through some specific prayer disciplines.’

Or, ‘I think an individual could grow to fullness in Christ in the cause in the area of their actions without us working through some specific projects or involvement opportunities.’

Giving, in other words, has to be an intentional area of growth in which we openly coach each champion. They don’t naturally become more giving people as we work on everything else. Giving isn’t latent inside them. And even though generosity is a fruit of Christian maturity, fruit grows from a seed, and that seed has to have a field where it can be planted.

In other words, the Holy Spirit brings the growth. Prayerfully and scripturally we seek to supply the opportunity and the coaching, not with our own needs at the forefront but with a clear sense of where the champion currently is and what giving opportunities are next steps the Holy Spirit can use.

That’s why talking to a champion about giving is different than simply asking them for money for what we need.

When we talk to them about giving we are helping them to understand the general will of God in relation to the cause and then discern the specific will of God related to their part in it. So we can (and need to) help them understand that they’re called to give in relation to the cause, but we can’t presume to know that they’re called to give to this specific project for which we’re raising funds. We can, however, say, ‘This project seems like a good fit based on the goals we set together. What do you think?’

Sum it up and say:

What drives the giving process in Transformational Giving is not our organization’s need or the champion’s comfort level, but what Scripture calls them to do generally and what the Holy Spirit is calling them to do specifically. As leaders, we’re called to help each champion walk in the works God has prepared for them. That requires open and honest conversation, even–and often especially–in the area of giving.

And, as God would have it, not infrequently an area of need for us turns out to be the perfect giving opportunity to challenge a champion and bring them growth in relation to the cause.

As with all things related to Transformational Giving, trust in God that this will be the case is what enables us to set aside concerns we have about whether He’ll supply. Scarcity concerns should never drive our conversations with champions. Instead, we should be driven by a commitment to help every champion grow to the fullness of Christ in relation to the cause we share. When we’re talking to them in this way, rather than out of self-interest–when we’re talking about God’s call for the champion to give rather than about our need to receive–it’s s amazing how our own need always gets met.

Tomorrow’s misconception: ‘Transformational Giving takes a long time to get results compared to traditional/transaction fundraising.’