From Service to Kinship |
Jul 1, 2010 |
I recently heard Greg Boyle speak at my niece’s graduation from a fairly-elite, fairly-wealthy Christian school. Boyle, in his keynote address, challenged the graduates to venture from their comfortable suburban existence to carry the Gospel to dark and forgotten places.
The key to real transformation, he said, is not in service, but in kinship. To paraphrase: “Service of the poor is obvious, it’s to be expected. But service is just a hallway that leads to the great banquet hall of kinship.”
Service, as important as it is, can keep us at arm’s length. Service can underscore and even perpetuate the classifications of us and them, after all, they need us, and we have the goods to deliver.
Most ministry leaders I work with at Mission Increase Foundation recognize that in their ministry, they need to go beyond service to kinship. They need to relate to their clients on common footing as humans, and all us of happen to be in desperate need of a Savior, whether rich or poor, male or female, Jew or Greek. Kinship is key.
Yet how many of these same leaders seek to share this same common ground with their donors?
The Biblical expectation for the nonprofit organization is to actually prefer the needs of the donor above its own. In Philippians 2:3-4, Paul challenges the Philippians to humbly consider others better than themselves, and to look after the interests of others as well as if they were their own. Kinship.
But most nonprofits are hard wired to look after their own needs, not the needs of the nonprofit down the street, not the needs of the local church, and certainly not the needs of their donors. Paul models this kinship when, in chapter 4, his interest is in what can be credited to the account of the Philippians in their giving to him. His concern for them supersedes his concern for his own well-being, though he was writing from prison.
And so it must be for us. Our concern for our donors—for their spiritual well-being—must supersede our concern for our own ministry needs, for our hopes and dreams and even budgets.
Jul 2, 2010 at 3:50 PM Well Said.
The key is not just doing things for people but empowering them to do things for themselves. The key is kinship as you say.
Preach it more through your seminars.
Stan Urban CHE guy