Do the Word

In a post last week, we talked about two approaches to development that are often mistaken as country cousins to TG but are in fact counterfeits. The first is a form of friendraising, in which we talk to champions about anything except for money in the hopes that God will then put it on their hearts to talk to us about money. The second I call fee for service, in which we help grow the champion in relation to the cause and then we say, ‘Hey, while we’re talking, let me mention a financial need my ministry’s facing, now that you’re more or less indebted to me.’ These two counterfeit forms are kissing cousins of each other in that both see the champion giving money as a consequence of us doing anything except talking to the champion about giving to the cause.

The third form of counterfeit TG is different, though equally counterfeit: chaplaincy.

In the chaplaincy approach, we assume responsibility for coaching the champion in all areas of Christian growth, not just the cause we share in common and on which our nonprofit is called to focus. We, in other words, supplement or displace the role of the local church in general in the life of the champion.

Not good.

Why this happens (and why it’s often mistaken for TG) is understandable. TG stresses the nonprofit’s coaching/mentoring role in relation to the cause the nonprofit and the champion share. It’s not an infinite leap from coaching in relation to the cause too coaching in relation to everything.

Sometimes the chaplaincy role is overt, such as in the case of a ministry who attends our training whose executive director told me how their largest donor said to him, ‘I got hurt by the church, so I stopped going and now I’m giving you my tithe instead.’

Far more often, however, the chaplaincy function is less overt, like for example when a well-meaning nonprofit says to its champions, ‘How can we pray for you?’, to which the champion dutifully responds, ‘Well, my uncle goes in for goiter surgery next week, and…’

So what’s wrong with being a chaplain?

The chaplaincy role obscures and confuses both the purpose of the nonprofit and the purpose of the church.

Rather than asking the champion, ‘How can we pray for you?’, the purpose of the nonprofit is to ask, ‘How can I assist you in praying for this cause we share?’

Rather than seeking to coach the champion broadly in the Christian life, the purpose of the nonprofit is to coach the champion deeply in relation to the cause in such a way that what s/he learns she can teach throughout his or her sphere of influence, including, ideally, his or her church.

Rather than replacing the church in the life of the champion, the nonprofit can imbue that role with a new vigor, meaning, and purpose.

Beats praying for the uncle with a goiter and calling it TG.

Got a great-and-sobering note from a dear brother of mine–a leader at a great missions agency–this week.

Subject? The traditional dial-a-church model of missionary funding is becoming such an exercise in futility that it’s really best termed SPAM.

Here’s the note:

‘We’ve been calling 200-300 churches a week and getting one service out of that.’

That’s the quote that was ringing in my head when I woke up this morning. Last night on our conference call with [a couple of our missionaries] I asked them how [their support raising] was going. That was [one missionary’s] reply.

When I think about my job and think of having to make two to three hundred cold calls a week and getting a ‘no’ every time but one, I wonder just how long I would last. I once sent out one hundred resumes in a month and the feeling of rejection was overwhelming.

As a [mission leadership team] we have had discussions about not wanting to SPAM our constituency. With our past model, if [every missionary raising their support] was as zealous as [this missionary], then from our 60 plus missionaries on home assignment, we would have 12,000 to 18,000 cold calls going out each week to churches asking them for a chance to speak in their service. Is a picture forming in your mind?

The current missions support raising model is on track to run out of gas in our generation. In its last gasp it is managing to cheese off a lot of churches who are ever more tired of and guarded against missionaries who are still taught this funding model as if it were Gospel.

Sadly, the greatest casualty may be the budding missionaries on the receiving end of all those no’s from churches.

I wasn’t surprised to hear from another staffer at the same agency (which is in the process of scrapping the traditional fundraising approach in favor of a Transformational Giving model) that one young couple preparing for missionary service interviewed three agencies before choosing this one.

The basis for the couple’s decision?

They couldn’t stomach the traditional approach to fundraising but resonated deeply with the TG approach.

Read Frank Viola’s From Eternity To Here while slogging away on the Precor machine at the Y tonight. The book’s dedicated to enabling Christians to see the church as what Frank calls ‘God’s ageless purpose’. Some moving passages in there, truly.

Development guy that I am, the voice in my head kept saying, ‘Dang, do we ever need that in fundraising.’ I consider it part of my duty to try to read each new book on fundraising that comes out, as well as checking numerous blog posts each day. I find that it’s harder and harder to read the stuff, however,as what all of it seems to have in common is an unshakeable sense of the ‘donor’ (blech) as human ATM machine.

• In the cult branding/marketing evangelism movement, the donor is a passionate ATM machine
• In the stewardship movement, the donor is a disciplined ATM machine
• In the friendraising movement, the donor is a very well affirmed ATM machine
• In mass fundraising, the donor is on average still a reasonably reliable ATM machine, especially if you apply the best tricks and techniques
• In the upper crust of fundraising and philanthropy, it takes some effort to identify the right ATM machine and even more effort to learn the secret PIN code that sets the large denomination bills kerchunking out the chute, but the allure of that kerchunk seems well nigh irresistable to many nonprofits (Christian nonprofits forming no exception, sadly)

Oughtn’t we to be troubled that this is the diminutive (and just plain dim) light in which we view the saints of God?

I don’t normally read Frank’s stuff, but I picked up the book out of a sense that every so often I just need to remind myself who these folks are with whom we’re deailing. Terms like ‘regular’, ‘middle’, and ‘major’ ‘donor’ sound about like a wind-up monkey with clanging cymbals when read against the backdrop of passages like Frank’s paraphrase of Ephesians 5:25-27:

Jesus Christ loved His bride and gave Himself to die for her. He died to make her holy and pure. He cleansed her with His own blood, washing away every sin she ever committed or will commit. He cleansed and washed her so that He could present to Himself a glorious church…a church full of heavenly glory. She is now without spot in His eyes. She has no stain upon her. She is also without wrinkle. That is, there is nothing old in her. She is new and forever young, free from the aging process of the fall. She is void of all spots, all wrinkles, or ‘any such thing’–which includes warts, moles, scars, knots, etc. She, the bride of Jesus Christ of which you are a part, is utterly flawless. She is as holy as the face of God..and without blemish.

Two weeks away from our first US-based Transformational Giving seminar (still time to sign up), and I find that the term ‘donor’, which I used to be unable not to say when I talked about development, now disgusts me.

What we need is not new tools, techniques, and strategies for raising more money from donors for the nonprofits we consider precious. What we need is a revelation of how God sees champions (individual Christians) and partners (organizations and local expressions of the body of Christ) such that our passion is to raise up and equip His saints, and we are willing to cast our nonprofit organization crowns at His feet as we join Him in preparing His bride to walk in every good work He has prepared for her–giving included.