Do the Word

Unless we can come to grips with the idea that a monthly giver might be a lapsed champion, we’ll never understand Transformational Giving.

It’s a crazy idea. But as many crazy ideas are, it’s a biblical one. Check out these words of Jesus from Revelation 2:1-5:

To the angel of the church in Ephesus write:
These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands: I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked men, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary. Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.

When do champions lapse? Not only when their activity ceases. And certainly not only when their giving ceases.

Champions lapse first and foremost when they forsake their first love.

In relation to nonprofitministrydom (did I just write that?), that happens when they stop seeking to walk in the works God has prepared for them to walk in in relation to the cause you both share. Those works are not for their salvation. They’re works designed to grow the champion into the full stature of Christ in relation to the cause He’s given you to coach them in (in collaboration with their local church).

When that happens, the good shepherd will do something more than send a letter that begins:

It’s been a year since you sent me a check and, frankly, I’m concerned about you.

OK, actually I’m more concerned about the check that you are not sending and the fact that my ministry’s finances are going down the hopper. I’ve heard the easiest way to remedy that is to send a letter to the folks who got annoyed the most recently and  stopped responding to all this mail I keep sending even though they haven’t asked me to send them anything at all.

Or something like that.

It’s possible to state what a lapsed champion program looks like in just a few bullet points:

1. Ask, ‘What does the Bible call the cause for which God has called me to coach and disciple His people?’ The Bible doesn’t use words like ‘homeless shelter’ or ‘crisis pregnancy’, but it does have an awful lot to say about every cause to which we ministries are called by Him. Once we identify what the Bible calls the cause to which we’ve been called, we can ask:
2. ‘What does the Bible call every Christian to do in relation to this cause?’ It’s not about earning salvation. It’s about being shaped in the image of Christ. That means God is going to take us through certain experiences, many of which we won’t like or feel passionate about. What are those experiences in relation to your cause?
3. We then ask, ‘What are the roadblocks to champions doing what the Scripture calls for in relation to the cause?’ Once we identify those we can ask:
4. ‘What can our organization do with the champion to remove those roadblacks and enable the champion to grow one step a time closer and closer to the fullness of what God has for them to walk in in relation to this cause?’
5. A champion map developed with each champion then enables us to create with a personalized annual plan to break off and tackle different pieces of that challenge every year.
6. Lapsing happens–or, better yet, losing a sheep happens–not only when the champion stops working the plan, but also when they keep working the plan after losing their first love. In other words, it’s just work then. They give…under compulsion or out of habit. They volunteer…out of guilt. They act…because it’s easier than not acting.

How do you measure a condition of the heart?

A good place to start is with the approach pioneered by World Vision’s Atul Tandon. You can read more about it here. If you are truly, deadly, deeply, madly serious about regularly taking the pulse of your champions and noting it individually, not just en masse, you’ll have no problem detecting a flatline.

Sum up the whole week and say:

Lapsing is a condition of the heart.

It takes more than running a transactional query on giving recency to determine who has lapsed. It may be true that a person who once gave regularly but who stopped giving has lapsed. But in Transformational Giving, it’s only trivially true.

Lapsing happens when the champion, having created a specific champion map with you, based on your mutual discernment of what the Bible calls every Christian to do in relation to the cause you share, begins falling away from the cause in his or her heart, even while their activity may be continuing unabated.

When that happens, what do you do?

You heard Jesus, friend. Yank the lampstand and conk them over the head with it. Mutual accountability, remember?

Don’t miss this month’s Mission Increase Foundation workshops on lapsed champions for more info on this topic. Or if you already have, watch for the DVD of me teaching this workshop from earlier this month in Colorado Springs. Should be available in the MIF Store by mid-summer 2009.

Hope you enjoyed the topic this week. Shepherd, go fetch your sheep!

Last night when I and my fellow passengers aboard United Airlines flight 5830 were stuck on the Indianapolis tarmac for two and a half hours in a plane whose air conditioning was broken, WGM’s Tim Rickel texted me:

Start chanting ‘Passenger Bill of Rights. Flight attendants love that!

Passenger bills of rights. The brand new Credit card bill of rights. Even an Arena Football League Fan’s bill of rights. The concept of bills of rights that provide individuals protection from thoughtless and predatory practices by the organizations with which they do business is certainly gaining steam.

There’s even a Donor bill of rights, which, among the dramatic blows for donor liberty that it strikes, asserts that the donor has the right:

V. To receive appropriate acknowledgement [sic] and recognition.

Hm. That’ll change things.

The interesting thing about bills of right is that they are generally drawn up in situations where people recognize the need to protect a group considered less powerful from a group considered more powerful, usually in the context of a transaction. That’s certainly the feel of the donor bill of rights, which boldly and provocatively asserts that the donor has the right:

X. To feel free to ask questions when making a donation and to receive prompt, truthful and forthright answers.

(Sadly, implementing that one would indeed be an improvement for many ministries.)

Very few husbands and wives draft bills of rights. Other than a few wacky websites, there are not many Christians’ bills of rights. And the one and only ‘friend bill of rights’ was posted on the web earlier this week.

(Pretty good piece, really, though the assertion that as her friend she has a right to ask you ‘to give/receive help moving, driving to/from the airport, and always a place to crash when coming from out-of-town’ does give me the briefest of pause for thoughts. But I digress.)

Generally, if a relationship is transformational (marriage, friendship, membership at a church) and it’s entered into voluntarily by parties, bills of rights just don’t cut it. Sure, they protect against grosser transactional abuses. But one tends to (or ought to) have higher hopes when one marries than avoiding grosser transactional abuses.

That’s why not many bills of rights are found in the scriptures. What is found therein, however, are covenants. What’s cool about the word ‘covenant’ (or berit in the Hebrew) is that it bespeaks two entities on the same side. Synonyms for the word include ‘league’ or ‘confederacy’–a far cry from anything gross or transactional.

Transformational Giving principle five says:

A Transformational Giving relationship between a champion and an organization is primarily a peer-level accountability relationship, not merely a friendship or a mutual admiration society.

A peer-level accountability relationship bespeaks a covenantal relationship, a league, a confederacy focused on accomplishing a cause. And that is indeed the nature of the relationship between the champion and the organization/development officer in a Transformational Giving context.

The simplest form of covenant between the champion and the organization is the champion map–the P/E/O (Participation/Engagement/Ownership) annual plan drawn up collaboratively that identifies the areas where, using the Scripture as a guide, the champion and organization discern that God is calling the champion to grow in the coming year. The implied covenant behind the champion map is this: The champion commits to the growth plan. The organization commits to holding the champion accountable to the plan as well as coaching the champion, with the grace of God, to achieve the growth envisioned in the plan.

(For more on creating champion maps, check out the Coach Your Champions website. Heck, you can even buy the book.)

But the concept of the champion/organization covenant goes even deeper.

A champion/organization covenant is not:

• a statement of faith
• a credo
• a mission statement
• an annual plan
• any one of the fifteen other things nonprofits are taught that they’re supposed to have and probably do but no one can find them because they’re never used

Instead, a covenant defines what and how champion and organization are holding each other accountable to in service of achieving the cause they both share.

Check out these two sample covenant-type docs from nonprofit ministries (neither of which, interestingly, refer to these as covenants, despite them being reasonably good examples of the same). Kudos to Mission Increase Foundation/Arizona‘s Jonathan Roe for the tip.

Note the nature of the language. It’s not a ‘Here’s what you’re responsible for; here’s what we’re responsible for’ approach. There’s no we/you split.

Further, unlike the Donor’s bill of rights, there’s more than money being comprehended here. In fact, the primary category is cause, not money. That doesn’t mean money doesn’t fall under the covenant. Far from it. It means that giving through the organization is the result, not the purpose, of the relationship.

Take a look first at this covenant from Son Life Ministries in Wheaton, IL:

1. Christ commanded me to make disciples–it isn’t an option.
2. Christ–through His life–modeled for me the process of fulfilling the Great Commission. Making disciples involves seeking the lost, establishing believers, and equipping workers: An ongoing balance of winning, building, and equipping priorities, programs, and relationships.
3. Dependence upon God–through his Word, prayer, and His Holy Spirit–is essential to fulfill my part in His Great Commission.
4. The Great Commission is my individual responsibility. In its most critical and basic form, the Great Commission is peer-to-peer, friend to friend and expands from me to the ends of the earth.
5. My love for God and for others motivates me to Great Commission living.
6. The church is God’s chosen vehicle to assist and equip me in the fulfillment of this God-given responsibility.

And how about this piece from our friends up the road at Denver Seminary?

1. We are committed to training people for diverse ministries in and alongside local churches.
2. We are committed to upholding teaching as the professors’ primary task.
3. We are committed to promoting the maximum utilization of faculty gifts of leadership and scholarship to serve God’s redemptive purposes.
4. We are committed to providing graduate level education in which scholarship is placed in the service of ministry.
5. We are committed to applying in the classroom adult education principles which wed relevant theory to the practice of ministry.
6. We are committed to employing biblical truth in critiquing and addressing cultures.
7. We are committed to fostering the moral and spiritual formation of students.

So why all the fuss about a covenant? Why add another document to write on top of the mission statement, vision statement, statement of faith, monthly bank statement, and statement to the press?

Because a covenant is your key to determining mutually with champions when they lapse…and how you will respond.

Tomorrow: the grand finale of our series on lapsed donors.

It’s half time at the Lapsed Champion Bowl!

Today marks the middle of this week’s posts on the subject, so before you run out to use the restroom and grab a bowl of Tostitos (be careful on the order there) and do other half time-esque activities, let’s review the highlights from the first half:

• We discovered that many individuals who are categorized as ‘lapsed’ really aren’t lapsed at all. They’re participants. Participants participate in projects. They might even participate repeatedly, or annually (like a rescue mission donor giving money to provide meals for the homeless every Thanksgiving). As such, they may look quite ‘active’.
• As the apostle John reminds us, however, activity is not the criterion by which we measure whether a champion is ‘of us’. Knowledge of the truth is. We’re not talking here about knowing in the informational sense, but in the King James way of knowing one’s wife that always made us giggle in Sunday school. In Transformational Giving we call this Engagement. Engagement means ‘knowing’ the cause the way Adam ‘knew’ Eve.
• As such, when a ministry defines and declares who’s lapsed on the basis of the lack of recency of individual giving (saying, for example, that all individuals are lapsed who have given two or more gifts in their giving lifetime but none in the last two years), it’s missing the boat. Activity isn’t the issue. And ministries aren’t the arbiters of what counts as lapsed. Engagement with the cause is the issue, and what counts as lapsed is determined by Scripture.
• Even using this language stands to land us quite far downstream from where we want to be biblically if we’re not careful. Jesus doesn’t talk in terms of sheep who wander. He talks in terms of shepherds who lose. So we need something more than a lapsed champion strategy. We need an organizational accountability strategy, in which we repent of and seek to recover the champions whom we have permitted to lapse (or, if you prefer, the sheep we have permitted to wander) on our watch.

So heading into the second half of play (the two posts remaining this week), what should we be looking for?

• A two-sided lapsed recovery strategy, one that addresses not only sheep who wander but also shepherds who lose. We should expect to see the appearance of TG Principle 5, which talks about the relationship between organization and champion being a peer-level mutual accountability relationship. There’s no way this game can be won unless each side recognizes and recovers its authority and responsibility.
• That kind of talk brings the champion map to mind–the P/E/O plan created by the champion and the organization to chart a trajectory for champion growth in the image of Christ in relation to the cause.
• I’d also look for TG 5 to be used to talk about how Scripture needs to be the basis of determining what counts as lapsed, not the need of the organization nor the desire of the champion. That’s likely to involve talk of intensive Scripture study, prayer, and fasting.
• It’s also appearing likely that more is at issue here than a person’s giving. Don’t be surprised if in the second half we see the appearance of the idea that a person could be happily giving regularly and yet still count as lapsed. You could almost see that coming in the first half with the idea in yesterday’s post that an organization could well be humming along and in fact itself be lapsed.
• We’ve seen since the opening kickoff this week that Participation has been sidelined from the lapsed discussion. Engagement clearly is going to be the focus of the second half offense. If the opposite of lapsed isn’t active, you have to think it’s Engaged.
• The whole idea that Engagement is tied to knowledge sets us up well for a revelation that a champion can’t lapse without first ‘knowing’ the cause. That’s definitely going to mean changing the way we deal with all champions, not just the lapsed ones. Likely we’ll see that the best lapsed champion strategy…is an effective P/E/O (Participation/Engagement/Ownership) strategy that plants the seed of ‘knowing’ the cause in every project from P through O. In other words, the key to not losing sheep is clearly connected to keeping them focused on the cause, not just bombarding them with a monthly barrage of heart-tugging appeals.

The fascinating thing to note as we close this halftime show is that we know something new has to be introduced in the TG offense in the second half. Even when you consider the champion maps and a well-formed P/E/O strategy, it’s not enough to keep shepherds from losing and sheep from wandering. We’re clearly looking at a major new piece being added to the TG playbook right here.

The teams are headed back on to the field now, sheep on the left and shepherds on the right. Things are shaping up for a powerful finish to this one.

Whoa Nelly! Call the family and gather ’round the blog for the second half of the Lapsed Champion Bowl!