Do the Word

When we coach champions, the greatest joy we can have is not receiving a six-figure gift in response to our solicitation of them or having them invite us for a promising evening gathering with their wealthy friends.

The greatest joy we can have is watching them move from participation to engagement to ownership.

Bob Faulkner is a champion for North Korea through Seoul USA, the organization my wife and I founded going on a decade ago. We met because the good folks at Voice of the Martyrs/US recommended that I talk to Bob. Though he loves the persecuted church at large, he really wanted to focus on persecuted Christians in North Korea.

When Bob and I met (and we’ve only ever met electronically and then talked once over the phone), we talked about Bob’s dreams and goals, and we set to work together on achieving what we discerned that God had called him to do.

Notice I didn’t say, “We talked about Seoul USA and the volunteer and giving opportunities we had available that might interest Bob”. That’s because I was coaching a champion, not soliciting a potential donor/volunteer.

Bob was already writing a blog–a really good one, in fact. So I asked him if he’d like to extend his reach by adapting his blog for Seoul USA and perhaps even posting some unique entries there. So he did. Rather than my wife or I writing the Seoul USA blog, Bob does. And he does a magnificent job.

Bob and his wife, Pyong, and their church now give regularly and generously to Seoul USA, and Bob’s even flying out to Colorado for the Seoul USA banquet on April 2 and heading to Korea with Pyong for the summer to minister with North Koreans through Seoul USA.

Truly Bob has been thoroughly engaged with the cause of North Korea, and he has found Seoul USA to be a God-sent platform for him to grow.

But yesterday Bob did something even more amazing.

Yesterday Bob officially became a card-carrying “O”.

Check out the following email I received from Bob yesterday. Note in it how Bob is not responding to a solicitation from Seoul USA but is responding to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. We are supporting him, rather than soliciting him to support us. And now he is owning the cause of North Korea in his sphere of influence. And that’s what makes him an “O”.

And that is the greatest joy a coach of champions can have.

And now, let’s listen to Bob the champion as he champions:

Had a serious time of prayer today and I truly believe that God is now leading to begin a Seoul-USA-based group in Chicagoland. I did not want to make commitments while I still had so many other irons in the fire. But those irons are growing colder and it’s time to do what I believe is on your heart too.

In keeping with the UU extension vision, but also in keeping with the desires of our own hearts (and Pyong is overwhelmed with joy at the prospect) we’d like to establish, through much prayer, a ministry group that will meet at least monthly, maybe more, to do 3 things:

1) pray fervently. I add the adverb because I know the other group is dying because prayers had become too commonplace and even boring…

2) learn NK facts , both from secular and spiritual perspective.

3) work. Projects will be discussed and assigned.

All of this must flow from our relationship to Seoul USA. You will send us prayer requests. You will suggest the project(s) . Of course we are not denominational in heart and know that the Spirit will speak directly to us also, but your vision for NK will be much or most of what we do. (Happens to be my vision too, by and large!)

This is a turning point. All the elements of this decision were out there, but when God called me aside today to put this in my heart, I knew this was not just a good idea, but a revelation of the “next step” I have been praying about.

May the Lord bless your cause with many Bobs as you stop soliciting donors and start coaching champions!

Speaking of World Gospel Mission, the organization’s Director of Champion Development, John Lee, checked in around 2:30 in the morning, infant son Jace in one hand, Reggie McNeal’s book The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church in the other, and the keyboard at his toes.

John notes that McNeal’s six challenges to the church are spot-on for nonprofit ministries seeking to coach their champions:

Quotes John quoting McNeal:

A church member culture will develop these resources quite differently from how a missionary culture would. Here’s an overview of the distinction between the two cultures in how they approach resource development.

Resource: Prayer
Member- praying for members, church program needs
Missionary- praying for unchurched, outreach efforts

Resource: People
Member- recruiting members into church activities
Missionary- deploying into community

Resource: Time
Member- finding time for church activities
Missionary- creating time for missions expression

Resource: Money
Member- raising money for club activities
Missionary- channeling money to mission initiatives

Resource: Facilities
Member- maintaining the clubhouse
Missionary- seeking ways to move out into the community

Resource: Technology
Member- supporting church ministries
Missionary- creating ministry opportunities in the world

A little cutting and pasting (substitute champion for member, nonprofit for church, cause for mission) and you’ve got a veritable primer in Transformational Giving. Thanks, John. You should sleep less often.

And while we’re shifting paradigms, let me give a tip of the cap to .W’s Matt Dubois who, as he did in the comments a few posts back, would remind us that the shift can’t simply be a shift of activity from internal to external, lest we inadvertently prompt our champions (our ourselves) to think that we’re saved by activity, or that God’s primary concern for us is to get off the couch and just do something.

The real motivation for shifting our focus from internal to external is not just that it is good development practice (which it is) nor that God is wringing His hands and moaning, “Will somebody please do something down there????” (He’s not; after all, this is the God that can raise up a substitute for Esther if she’s too busy, and the God Who can have the rocks cry out if your donor file is too wrapped up in your capital campaign to notice the play on the field).

The real motivation is that once the Spirit of Christ dwells within us, He focuses our attention on the cause/the field/the community and embodying God’s character within that in order to demonstrate the Gospel as we proclaim it. Because that is the character of God, and our ultimate Cause is to embody that.

In other words, His eye is on the sparrow, not the Humane Society.

So take a look at your recent newsletters and prayer letters and communications with champions: Are you informing them about your organization’s latest sparrow saving campaign? Are you soliciting them for  your organization’s latest organization saving campaign?

Or are you coaching them to have God’s heart for the sparrow and to move out in God’s power to bring God’s Word and God’s comfort to–OK, this analogy is breaking down because I don’t think sparrows understand English or like it when people touch them. But I hope you catch my point.

But if cause and organization still seem inseparably intertwined or even synonymous to you as you coach your champions, check out the bedtime story John was reading to his son this morning. I understand it put Jace back to sleep and kept John up all night, excited to put it into practice.

In most missions agencies (and in most nonprofits in general), your brain surgeon becomes your primary doctor and treats you for everything from gout to halitosis.

Problem is, brain surgeons don’t tend to know a lot about body parts below the neck. They’re, you know, brain surgeons.

Which is why World Gospel Mission is instituting a massive overhaul of their partner/champion structure to let the brain surgeons focus on brain surgery while instuting a whole new front line of general practitioners.

Permit me to explain:

If you are a nonprofit, it seems like the most natural thing in the world to manage donors’/volunteers’/champions’ activities, not the gaps between the activities.

So if you call up a missions agency and say, “My church group would like to go on a short-term mission trip,” they connect you to the short-term mission department. Or if you say, “I’d like to put Missionary Jones in my will,” they connect you to the planned giving office. Or if you say, “I’m considering full-time missonary service,” they put you through to the full-time missionary service office.

But what happens if you talk to the short-term mission department and decide you don’t want to go on a short-term mission trip? Or what happens if you get the brochure on career missionary service and it’s not for you? Or how about if you actually do put Missionary Jones in your will? What happens next?

Answer:

Typically you end up in The Gap–AKA The Mailing List.

In most nonprofits, you get added to the mailing list as a way to make sure the nonprofit can still stay in touch with you. When you’re in The Gap, you get The Newsletter and The Occasional Appeal Letter–neither of which you probably asked for–because the nonprofit hopes that you will see something in The Newsletter or The Occasional Appeal Letter that will cause you to contact the organization again and reconnect with a different brain surgeon, which is to say a department that specializes in a particular function.

Nonprofits manage organizational functions when they should in fact be coaching donors through the gaps.

The logic is compelling when you really stop to think about it:

If I call your agency and inquire about long-term mission service, and then I decide I’m not interested, you will likely call me once or twice or maybe even three times before consigning me to The Newsletter List. But if I decide I’m not interested in long-term missionary service, there’s at least a pretty good chance that I’m not sure exactly what I want.

Which is why nonprofits should focus on coaching champions in the gaps, which can best be done by making sure that every champion is assigned to a “general practitioner”–a champion development officer who serves as a generalist, able to talk with and coach a champion through everything from short-term mission service to making a planned gift to becoming a full-time missionary.

This is The Great Leap Forward in which WGM is now engaged.

Instead of having a volunteer department and a donor department (which is typically divided into mass fundraising and major gifts and planned gifts) and a gift-in-kind department and a short-term missions department etcetera etcetera, WGM is now organizing its partner and champion functions into three departments:

1. A partner department, where, as we talked about in the previous post, each organization will be coached by a partner development officer/generalist who can help the church plan how to grow in missions on every front.

2. A champion department, where the same thing happens with individuals. Doesn’t matter if you want to volunteer, donate a car, go on a mission trip, or become a full-time missionary, you won’t be shuttled from department to department. You’ll have one person to coach you along all phases of your journey.

3. A partner and champion services department. What were formerly front-end functions passing champions and partners around like hot potatoes now become second-line specialists to which champions and partners are referred but never relinquished to as those champions and partners walk through specific parts of the journey. You may fill out a long-term service application with a career missionary specialist, but you won’t get transferred to him or her permanently–any more than you would leave your family doctor and have a brain surgeon take over your general care after the family doctor sends you to the brain surgeon for a consult.

It’s called coaching through the gaps. And it makes eminent sense, because the gaps are where champions and partners have the greatest likelihood to grow.

Why would you leave that to your newsletter?