Make it Transformational: A Blog for Champion Discipleship

It was the longest recorded match in tennis history.

Last week on the legendary grass courts of Wimbledon, American John Isner collapsed victorious after winning his over 11 hr. match against Frenchman Nicholas Mahut. This marathon match spanned the course of three days and broke nearly every conceivable record in the world of tennis. By all accounts it was a powerful demonstration of the mental and physical stamina of two athletes, both committed to compete in such a way as to win (II Tim 2:5). It was a test of their endurance to be sure, but I would propose that perhaps it was their conviction that was under the greatest test.

Over the past few weeks I've enjoyed meeting with various ministry leaders from local organizations here in Raleigh and discussing ideas related to the Transformational Giving principles, and the content from our recent workshop on Thanking & Receipting. And while each conversation covered a variety of issues unique to the organization, I observed a strong theme presenting itself in each.

Without exception, each conversation made its way back to these ideas of conviction and endurance. And while these topics may not be such a long shot for Christians to discuss, in light of the vast amount of attention they're given in the Scriptures, it is a bit surprising (at least to me) how they came up. Invariably, the ideas were brought up, not while discussing the issues associated with non-profit sustainability, but with the question, "what do we do next?"

This very straight forward question, asked with the purest of intentions, led into some deep waters. I suppose the question was intended to produce a simple list of “TG to do’s” that would ensure the asker was on the right track to implementation. What ensued on each occasion was a meaningful conversation about the need to develop clarity of direction predicated on properly cultivated convictions. The type of conviction to first turn from wrong thinking to embrace truth (i.e. repentance). Resulting in a conviction that manifests iteself in a deeply held belief or sense of resolve. The type of conviction not addressed in merely answering the what and how questions, but moves deeper into question of why.

That’s why we’re here. Through a steady exchange of ideas in workshops and coaching calls, your GTO will help you as you develop your convictions around TG. And though it might feel like a volley of wills at times, with many hard fought rallies, we're committed to think through these ideas with you that so that together we might endure.

Here’s a meaningful way to deepen your conviction, if you haven’t signed up already: register for July’s Fundraising Banquets Workshop.

In the Mission Increase Foundation world, we see giving as a significant step on a person’s journey.  This person did something specific; he or she heard God’s voice, listened, and gave – in collaboration with God.  And to that spiritual step we should say (paraphrasing Paul in Philippians 4), “Good for you!  I’m excited for what this means for you and your journey!”

So here’s an interesting question:  What if it’s not good for them?  What if the gift isn’t a step in the right direction spiritually for this person?  What if the gift isn’t given in collaboration with God but is given – I don’t know – even as an act of self-promotion?

Then what?  Consider these scenarios.

• An individual comes to you and says, “I want to start giving you the money I would normally give to my church because I don’t like what’s going on there these days.”
• A person comes to you and explains that he is giving money – a significant sum – to your ministry to specifically launch a “new program around here that I think we’ve needed for a long time”, but you don’t sense God calling your ministry in that direction.
• Someone gives money on a regular basis to the “general fund” but, as this person gives, you discover that he or she wants more and more control and influence over what’s going on with the ministry.

In these cases, I can tell you what most Christian non-profits do.  Take the tithe, launch the new program, accept the money and try to keep the person happy.

But what should you do?

What should you do when gifts are given that actually don’t help givers in their growth process?  They aren’t steps in the right direction spiritually for them?  They aren’t given in collaboration with God?  They aren’t given with the right motives so we honestly can’t say, “Good for you.”

Here's my point:  Not every gift should be commended (or even accepted for that matter)!

When you receive a gift, a good question to ask is simply… What is this gift?

• Is it a first step in the direction of the Cause?
• Is it from an individual already involved in your Cause who’s now moving deeper?
• Is it being given with the right heart and with right motives?
• Is it [fill in your own appropriate blank here]?

One of the things your ministry should consider is standing in the G.A.P.  I’m talking about developing a Transformational Gift Acceptance Policy.  A policy that is developed and understood by your leadership team that helps you determine if gifts should be accepted, AND, overall, makes clear your organization’s response to financial gifts.

For starters, maybe part of your G.A.P. sounds something like this:

• Upon receiving your financial gift, our ministry will thank God, recognizing that this gift represents, first and foremost, God’s incredible faithfulness.  We will also commend you, the Champion, who gave the gift, recognizing that you acted in collaboration (partnership) with God.
• Our ministry will receive your financial gift as an invitation to coach you to further involvement in the Cause.
• Our ministry will respond to each financial gift with specifically-prepared opportunities to help you further impact the Cause.
• Our ministry will graciously return any financial gift we know to be more appropriately given elsewhere.

(This G.A.P. example was presented in Mission Increase's May workshop on Thanking & Receipting.  To see upcoming trainings, go to www.MissionIncrease.org.)

I do believe that situations to not accept, or to return, gifts will only come up once in a while.  But they will come up.  Having a policy in place will help you see clearly through those times, and will give you something to lean on when explaining to someone that you need to decline a gift.  But, most importantly, the policy makes clear to your champions what they can expect after they give – your commitment to help them grow and move forward!

Some things to think about…

I don’t know if you are like me, but don’t you find that our busy schedules sometimes consume us to the point that we never fully make the impact that we were created to have.

We lose perspective and nothing matters other than what we have set out to complete for that day. Those people God has allowed us to connect with often get pushed aside as our agenda becomes our priority.

This month John Wooden, one of the greatest coaches of all time, passed away. Those who connected with him, his players, his students, his family and friends all talk about the great impact he had on their lives. They don’t talk just about his great basketball mind, or how smart he was, but also about how he cared for them and showed them love as he helped them to become the best they could be.

In his book, My Personal Best -Life Lessons from an All-American Journey, John finished with these thoughts that I’d like to share with you.

Mind you, I’m in no hurry to leave, but I have no fear of leaving. When the time comes, it will be a very good day – Nell and I will be together again. In the meantime, each day of the journey is precious, yours and mine – we must strive to make it a masterpiece. Each day, once gone, is gone forever.

My father’s words and deeds – his wisdom – taught me that and more. He gave me direction I continue to try to live up to. His advice was good and his example even better. My mentors, Earl Warriner, Glenn Curtis, and Ward “Piggy” Lambert shared their knowledge and wisdom as all great teachers do. Their interest in students went beyond the basketball court or even the classroom. They wanted to help us have good lives.

I’ve tried to live up to my mentors’ examples in teaching those young people who’ve made my life so rich along the way. My goal has always been to help them become not only better basketball players or English students, but better people. That’s the most important thing a coach or teacher can do, and I have given it my personal best.

And as I hope you find in your own life, none of it amounts to a hill of beans without the love of family and friends. I’m a very fortunate man who has much to be thankful for. Love is the most important word in the English language, and my journey has been filled with so much love. I pray that yours is too – that your own journey is full of love. And that along the way you never cease trying to be the best you can be – that you always strive for your personal best.

That is success. And don’t you let anybody tell you otherwise.

My question then for you, and even for myself, is what do you want others to say about you?

Do you want your champions, which God has allowed to connect with you, to say that you loved them and you cared to help them grow? Or would you rather have them notice your busy work schedsule and accomplishments that diverted your attention from helping others as you reached your goals?

Remember this: Each day of the journey is precious. We must strive to make it a masterpiece. Coaching others and allowing them to come along on this journey with us is essential.

At Mission Increase Foundation our priority and purpose is to help you become all that God has for you to be. We would love to connect with you at one of our upcoming workshops, and subsequent coaching times, as we learn together to improve how we can coach our champions to grow and be all that God has for them in their lives.

In a couple of days last week, two experiences related to ‘getting things for free’ got my attention.   I think a lot about free offerings, you see, because Mission Increase Foundation workshops and consulting sessions are free to qualified Christian ministries.  And here’s the deal: it can be surprisingly difficult to get ministries to take our offer of free training and help seriously. 

The first ‘free’ experience related to an email I received from a newcomer who attended the May Thanking and Receipting workshop.  I was touched that she took the time to share with me something she’d posted in her Giving Thanks Daily blog on Facebook.  Here’s an excerpt:

Sometimes the best things are free. Today was spent in a short seminar for non-profits (titled: Gifting and Receipting) and I, not only learned some fabulous tips for the non-profit I work for, but applications for my life as well. Specifically, the class overviewed transformational giving, rather than transactional giving – and I thought what a great way to look at things, and, oh by the way it is biblical.

The second experience, just two days later, involved a phone conversation with Jeff Gilman, Executive Director, Redwood Gospel Mission (RGM).  Jeff and RGM have navigated from near bankruptcy to ‘a real metamorphosis’ over the past year, thanks to an overhaul of their development practices via Transformational Giving (TG).   We’d had several conversations about how to get the word out to more ministries and had agreed he would personally invite his pastor friends (numbering over 70) to a special introductory Transformational Giving training. 

Interestingly, the topic of our brief phone call was the opposition he occasionally experiences in offering something for free.  Jeff got to the point quickly and said something like: I’ve been struggling the past few days about how to position this event. The truth is there’s no free lunch. All my friends in ministry know this. So they are very skeptical when I tell them about free workshops. They think there are strings attached.

I listened and identified with this challenge that I, too, encounter at times.  I explained our board’s heart to help small ministries grow and impact God’s Kingdom by training them for free.  Then we talked about the costs associated with MIF workshops and consulting – and how the foundation and its TG champions underwrite the real costs so ministries may be served for free.  The explanation made sense to Jeff. 

It was later that I saw the email invitation Jeff sent to his pastor friends.  Here’s an excerpt that had me thanking God: 

…The biggest single reason for our transformation was our introduction to a foundation based out of Portland, OR that provides training and consultation to ministries and churches.  The foundation underwrites the cost of the services, so everything they do is free to the ministries they serve.  There is no “bait and switch,” or any other “free seminar” lies that for-profit consultants try to tease you with.  And frankly, they have been more valuable to my ministry than any other seminar, workshop or training I ever attended.

Of course the excerpt is a fabulous testimony to the value of Transformational Giving.  I also really appreciated his emphatic description of free and valuable services.  As the newcomer to MIF wrote in her blog posting:  Sometimes the best things are free. 

The next time you have a knee-jerk reaction to quickly decline something that’s free, put your skeptical self aside.  Make an effort to better understand the motivation and the heart of the giver.  If the motivation seems authentic, take a chance to accept the free gift.  And, finally, if you need help learning how to receive, take a minute or two and read this blog post from my co-worker Suzanne. 

At Mission Increase Foundation we recently concluded a month of teaching Thanking and Receipting workshops. While that title may sound perfunctory, it proved to be one of our most controversial and game-changing teaching topics.

My colleagues Suzanne Dubois in Colorado and Matt Bates in Los Angeles have provided further guidance on this in their recent posts about receiving well and writing letters that commend instead of thank.

Here’s a little test recently faced by The Mentoring Project (TMP), a Portland, Ore.-based nonprofit ministry to fatherless boys (thanks to friend and fellow TG thinker, Amy Karjala, for the link to the post).

TMP’s marketing director, Justin, received a call saying that a group of young men from Restore International Academy in Uganda wanted to make a donation to help young boys in Portland, Ore.  Many of these boys were former child soldiers whose lives were torn apart by poverty, conflict, and civil unrest.

Turns out, thanks to Restore International, they’d begun planting and tending their own crops and making a profit.  And, they wanted to use a portion of that profit to help fatherless boys in Portland, Ore., most of whom likely still had it far better than these young men.

How would you react?  I imagine most people would initially react like Justin:

"When we heard this news we were shocked, and a little unnerved. What were these young men thinking? Are we seriously going to accept donations from kids in Uganda?"

But, what Justin and The Mentoring Project did next was spot-on-perfect.

“…we realized that accepting the contributions and allowing Ugandan youth the opportunity to give generously is the most empowering thing we can do.”

Simple.  Brilliant.  Justin instinctively knew one of the principles we discussed in the workshop – your acknowledgement of any gift should be focused on God’s work in the giver. He quickly moved from feeling uncomfortable with the gift to rejoicing in and commending the growth the givers were experiencing.

Would you have passed this test?

Hats off to The Mentoring Project for openly sharing this process with the rest of us. We know that giving is something Christians are called to do because it helps them become more like Christ.  So, we shouldn’t deny kids in Uganda or HIV-infected mothers the opportunity to experience that growth. Does that still make you uneasy?  Consider the example in Philippians 4.  Paul’s letter to the Philippians is our best guide for properly orienting our thinking about receiving the financial gifts God blesses us with. The core question we must ask is, “How do I see God at work in this giver’s life and how should that cause me to respond first to God and then to my champion?”