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As often as I talk to individuals, congregations and others about Christian stewardship I rarely talk specifically about tithing. Most of us have suffered through enough sermons, testimonies, and banquets where the primary task was to convince us to tithe. I personally believe there are other ways, many ways, to encourage generous giving; and, frankly, the tithe is usually last on my list. There is plenty of Biblical content of which to speak without having to rely on the infamous rule of ten-percent.

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My observation has been that a complicated approach to Christian stewardship is the last thing in the world most church leaders want. They want something simple and, no doubt, the tithe sounds like a winner. Unfortunately, even for those who adamantly insist that the tithe is a Biblical mandate for the church today, there are some things to think about when we make tithing the centerpiece of our stewardship teaching. It is quite possible that tithing could make things more complicated than we might assume.

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Never Reaches Our Hearts

Tithing is often equated with showing up on time, wearing a tie, carrying your Bible, and volunteering in the nursery- assumed to be one of the requirements for being a good church member. During the service, tithing simply becomes a reference point; immediately after praise and worship and before we release the kiddos for children’s church. Stewardship sermons, Sunday school lessons, and small group curriculums may successfully convince us in our heads that tithing is the way to go; but rarely does tithing reach our hearts.

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Difficult Place to Start, Wrong Place to Finish

The likelihood that an individual will transition from zero, one, or two-percent to ten-percent is simply unrealistic. In many instances, individuals who are unwilling to make this adjustment in their budget will simply choose not to give. When they refuse to take this enormous leap of faith, we miss the opportunity to encourage them to take smaller steps of faith. The tithe may simply be the wrong place to start. In contrast, there are also those who refuse to go any further once that leap has been taken. In the life of a generous steward, the tithe may not only be a difficult place to start but an especially disappointing place to finish.

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Don’t Talk About My Money

Ironically, we will discuss all sorts of personal matters in the church with one exception – our finances. Tithing means ten percent which we assume to be ten percent of a person’s income. This simple formula makes tithing an especially vulnerable proposition for fear that one’s financial status will be discovered. This tendency might explain why some people of more humble means refrain from giving at all while those of larger incomes chose to give inconsistent yet substantial gifts during the holidays or during the tax season – all in an effort to conceal what our church culture has decided is the most private of concerns.

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Tithing is about obedience, responsibility, our obligation to the church or to God – everything else we read in the Bible concerning gifts and giving is about grace received, generosity expressed, an act of worship, discovering the joy of giving, being a cheerful giver – giving always measures far greater an experience for the giver than the receiver. Unfortunately, when we try to force tithing into that experience, it get’s complicated.

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Unfortunately, even after asking him to expound on his assertion, I doubt the audience fully grasped what was being said. It frustrates me when I hear everyone from churches to debt-relief agencies to multi-billion dollar health-care providers toss around their tax-status as if it means something to the general public. In most cases, referring to a nonprofit organizations tax-status simply breeds confusion.

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What I wanted the Rotary audience to grasp was that non-profit organizations should be encouraged, allowed, and expected to run as well as there for-profit counter-parts. What this means however requires a complete overhaul of the way that the general public perceives nonprofit organizations. Those of us in the sector have got to change the way we do business. Those who support our organizations have to change their expectations. And those that partner with our organizations from the private-sector have got to negotiate as they would business-to-business.

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Unfortunately, changing the way nonprofit organizations operate might also change the landscape in the sector. I am not opposed to seeing nonprofits fail as a normal consequence of doing what we do. A nonprofit organization is just as inclined to go out of business as the large manufacturing company down the street and the local restaurant on the corner. For some reason, and to the misfortune of the entire sector, some nonprofits are kept alive far longer than they should.

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Smith argues that our obsession with everything cognitive distracts us from the pre-cognitive – the habits, both thick and thin, that truly form our identities. This is the sort of formation and re-formation that occurs before we even think about things. Smith might suggest that, more important than filling our heads with information about generous giving are the habits and rituals that both form and, eventually, reflect our desires to be generous. We have mistakenly convinced ourselves that everything we do in the church can be taught, diagrammed, and put into a formula – a very modern approach to Christianity. We believe, for example, that Christian stewardship can be taught (i.e. The Treasure Principle), diagramed (i.e. Time, Talent, and Treasure), and formulated (i.e. Tithing). These approaches inform the mind of the giver but rarely have the power to transform the life of a giver. We need to work towards discovering patterns, rituals, and habits that shape our desires, define our lives, and reflect our values.

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Smith’s asserts that we can better discern what exactly Christianity is by what Christians do, rather than from texts, doctrines, and theological positions. I’d certainly argue that we can discern far more about Christian stewardship by observing the patterns of our daily lives then we ever will by filling our heads with the how-to’s, what to’s, and why’s.

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Re-citing the Apostles’ Creed in church and rising in unison for the National Anthem at a ballgame are no more powerful rituals than the well-worn path that guides our daily pilgrimage to Wal-Mart. Smith would argue that Wal-Mart uses its size, marketing tactics, and great prices to habitually draw us in and form our desires. I agree and believe that when we formulate patterns and habits around Wal-Mart, it both forms our identities and ends up having a far greater power and influence over us than we could imagine.

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I lead the advancement efforts at Logos Academy; an inter-cultural, Gospel-centered, community school located in York City, Pennsylvania. Our family are members of the City Church community. In addition to my full-time ministry, I routinely speak to groups about Christian stewardship, generous giving, and effective ministry advancement. For more information, you can email me.

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I have had similar conversations with other organizations over the years and I find that the problems are often rooted in an organizations lack of commitment and diligence in fundraising. Even with a limited understanding of what is happening inside an organization, I can usually pick-up on the clues that an organization lacks the capacity to effectively raise funds. If my assumptions are correct, I usually respond by encouraging the organization to answer these three questions; questions that when answered will often determine an organizations fundraising success.

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Who is our leader?

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Frankly, I have read my fair-share of books and articles that insist one way or the other as to who leads an organization’s fundraising efforts; it’s no doubt the board of directors, or the CEO, or whoever is blessed with a title that says so. My experience tells me that when an organization has to ask this question, no one really wants the answer for fear that it might be them. Fundraising is the last responsibility in the world that most non-profit types really want to own- unfortunately, somebody has to or the organization will fail.

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Based on the size of the organization, the size of its budget, and the size of a couple key salaries, I can tell you exactly who should be leading in this area. In some instances, leadership in fundraising remains in the hands of the board, in other instances it should be the responsibility of the CEO, and in some instances, leadership can be delegated to another senior leader.

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Where is the money?

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I met with another organization a couple of weeks ago that by all appearances looks like a healthy organization. Unfortunately, their balance sheet and their revenue streams tell a different story. The organization is currently operating with a multi-million dollar mortgage that they cannot afford to pay. Having built their enormous facility primarily with state and federal grants, the organization neglected the task of developing a broader constituency. The organization is financially constrained by their extremely small donor base. This organization missed the point in their grant-writing class when the instructor explained that grant money is rarely sustainable.

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What is our impact?

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The final question, having less to do with fundraising in particular, is probably the most important question of all. The organization must be making an impact in the community. Without real change occurring, what purpose does fundraising serve to begin with. And by not ensuring that a community recognizes the organizations impact, fundraising is at a great disadvantage.

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One point many organizations miss is that they may have to make some real impact on a shoestring in order to jump-start fundraising. I am never opposed to telling an organization that they may have to go without for a season in order to invest in their capacity for the future. No mission, no money- and the mission must come first.

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Many large organizations have marketing capabilities that allow even the slightest impact to be much more visible. Unfortunately, smaller organizations do not have these capabilities and therefore they must ensure that every ounce of life-changing is recognized everywhere. Trust me, and I am not the first to say this, increasing the impact an organization tremendously increases the organizations ability to raise funds.

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“This is our community room” our guide explained; “…a safe place for students to come and hang-out… We are a missional church.” I para-phrase some but the keywords are on-point. “Safe from whom,” I wondered; and “Missional to what mission,” I wanted to ask. Our guide’s explanation begged the question of who this church intended serve. Were they here to serve the wealthy, white students from the private college several blocks up the street or the black man I saw checking his mail at the apartment building across the street?

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Gentrification is defined as the restoration and upgrading of deteriorated urban property by the middle classes, often resulting in displacement of lower-income people. Across the country, where poverty is concentrated in the heart of many of our cities, in many neighborhoods, this is exactly what is happening. Urban renewal is pulling many affluent, many white, and many church people back into the city. As a result, many poor, many non-whites, and many un-churched people are being pushed out.

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I suspect our guide knew little about gentrification; and she, no doubt, knew even less as to why church leaders chose this neighborhood to be their new home- unless of course her husband was the developer who was redeveloping the dilapidated houses around the corner. Did this church move downtown to serve its current city-dwellers, or is this church awaiting its new city-dwellers? Unfortunately, by all appearances, I suspect the latter.

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I confess that drawing attention to a problem is not a solution, and, therefore, offer Bob Lupton’s suggestions wherein he describes Gentrification with Justice:

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Christians who believe that their highest calling is to love God and love their neighbor are the very ones equipped to infuse into our culture both values and actions that will have redemptive outcomes. We can buy crack houses and renovate them for residences for mission-minded couples. We can structure deals to develop mixed-income housing. We can create innovative housing policies that will induce developers to include lower-income residents in their plans. We can pass ordinances that that will give tax relief to seniors on fixed incomes so they can remain in their homes. We can establish loan funds to give down payment assistance to lower-income home buyers. If we are both caring and thinking people, we can use our influence and resources to develop the means by which “the least of these” can share in the benefits of a reviving city – and foster healthy growth at the same time. We can harness the growing tide of gentrification so that it becomes a redemptive force in our cities. In a word, we can bring about gentrification with justice.

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Here are a few of my earlier posts that you might be interested in…

Does poor church attendance increase giving?

Reading Nouwen’s The Spirituality of Fund-Raising

Is there such a thing as a surplus of generosity?

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One of the concepts I discovered was abundance thinking which changes course from traditional economics. Defined as the study of production, distribution, and consumption of resources, economics usually assumes resources are limited to some degree or another. In the Google economy, that’s not always the case – the lack of perceived scarcity is also known as abundance thinking.

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There is no shortage of anything on the internet. In terms of supply, the internet and global production allow us to think much more positively; we have confidence in abundant supply. Goods, and not just digital goods, can be produced and replicated at such ridiculously low costs that free is now a viable pricing strategy and no one believes supply is limited anymore. (This may have negative implications for some third-world countries but let’s reserve that for another conversation.) Abundance thinking has caused us to begin questioning what exactly we pay for and exactly how much when we do. Our impulse is not necessarily to be thrifty but rather to be smarter consumers. We ask more questions and we welcome more alternatives. We no longer assume that we want must come with a cost. And if it does, it’s not necessarily one that can’t be reduced by a quick check on eBay, Amazon, or Craigslist.

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Books may be the best example of abundance at work. Amazon.com does not create an endless supply of books; the availability of books is still limited to the output for which publishing houses are willing to print. What has changed is our familiarity with just how many books are really out there out there. The supply of books doesn’t necessarily change; in fact, in many instances the supply of books may have decreased. What has changed is our access to suppliers. I do not admire Barnes and Noble; these guys now compete with Amazon.com, Bookfinder.com, Booksalefinder.com, Paperbackswap.com, not to mention the local library, Google Books- this endless list of alternative ways to access the supply of books in our world creates an overwhelming sense of abundance.

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Seth Godin, author of several great books, recently said that just because the tide is out, doesn’t mean there’s any less water in the ocean. We don’t get discouraged by the low tide because, sure, there’s a limit on how much water we could pull out of the ocean but does it really matter?

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Consciously or not, the individuals that give to your organization are becoming much more aware of the abundance that is around them- the abundance of needs, the endless list of giving opportunities, and the enormous variety of organizations willing to accept their support. We all have an endless variety of charitable options that are accessible at their fingertips. To support an organization doesn’t require us to leave our home and it doesn’t matter whether the organization is down the street or across the country.

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A year ago I started working on project I entitled: “Fundraising in a Google-World”. The project was recently presented at the Emerging Philanthropy Conference in Pittsburgh. I asked the questions; what effect will Google and similar technologies have on professional fundraising and charitable giving- how can we improve upon and make fundraising efforts more effective in view of the changing and evolving technologies that are becoming so predominant in our daily lives? The answers were much less about the how to’s of using social media and social marketing and more about the social and economic implications of using these technologies. The Google-World research resulted in a much better of understanding of where fundraising and nonprofit organizations might be going in the future.

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One of the initial concepts I discovered was the Google door-way. In contrast to a room with a view, the Google door recognizes the way in which Google and other progressive companies position themselves in our lives. At the dawn of the internet, search engines prefered to create the experience of being in an enclosed room with a window for us to look out- a room with a view. Many of us felt trapped in these enviroments and in turn we began search out places that were not quite as constraining.

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Mac or PC: Who Cares?

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How many of us are die-hard Mac users? And I suppose the rest of us losers are content to use our PC’s, right. Believe it or not, in a Google World, it doesn’t matter. In fact, allowing you to use what ever system you are accustom to suits Google just fine. No constraints. When a person logs onto a computer it’s either a PC or Mac, sure. But once they log-on, where do they often go – the web. And once you are there, Google doesn’t care how you get there as long as you end up at Google- all roads lead to Google. Rather, all roads lead through Google.

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All Roads Lead Through Google

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Many of us make the mistake of perceiving Google as a window from which to see the virtual world. This was the old school way of being a search engine and many of us still assume that’s the way it works. We might imagine ourselves standing inside a room and looking out in all directions. Leaning out as far as we can and yet still held-in the window frame. Fortunately, Google is not a room with view; Google’s technology better resembles a doorway through which we can move freely in and out as we please with very few constraints.

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For most of us, each time we log onto internet we inevitably end up at the Google doorway. We type in a key phrase or a question and the results are immediately in front of us. At that moment, we walk through the doorway and into whatever virtual room we happen to choose. If we are not pleased with where we find ourselves, we walk back through the doorway and select another option.

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This business of being a doorway as opposed to a room with a view is exactly what Google wants to be. We become loyal to Google as a means to explore the virtual world and yet we are never constrained to Google’s space. We are free to walk back and forth as we please which makes us very comfortable. The back and fort motion creates value for Google. If we were to simply walk around within the Google framework, Google would be unable to observe our interests- our search patterns. Google analytics, a most fascinating tool, allows users to discover these patterns as well.

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Understanding the back and forth motion that Google allows is what I believe is of greatest value to  fundraising organizations. If we allow our donors to move freely in and out of our organizations we begin to know and understand them much better. As a doorway, we ensure our donors feel comfortable and we ensure that they come back again (renewal). However, if we insist on operating as rooms with a view, by creating constraining frameworks, we lose them, scare them away, or we never even have the chance to meet them- they are forced to escape, prefer not to be captured, and they chose to go elsewhere.

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If this concept and others interest you, and you would like to share the Google-world with your team, please email me- let’s talk.

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In order to best understand the difference between mission and vision, I like to use an analogy. Let’s imagine that we are driving to Los Angeles. The destination, Los Angeles, is our vision- it’s our final destination, the end of the tunnel, the big picture. Obviously, many organizations share a similar vision- they all want to arrive in Los Angeles; they want to alleviate poverty, feed the hungry, build safer homes, etc. An organizations mission however, the way in which they get to Los Angeles, is often very unique and this is where the trouble starts; some of us prefer take I-10 across the southern states, others would prefer to use a more northly route which avoids the endless trek across Texas, and in most instances, our choice of mission depends on where we find ourselves to begin with.

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I would challenge you to take a good look at your mission and vision statements. Does your organization have a vision statement? If not, you may not know exactly where you are going? Does your mission statement sound more like a vision statement? If so, you might think you know where you are going but not be real clear as to how you should be getting there. Both statements are essential, top-level, guiding principles that an organization needs to develop, understand, and follow.

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A great teacher of mine once said that your vision should shut you down- once you arrive, you are out of business. Done, no more, sell the truck. Might sound harsh but think about it- once you arrive in Los Angeles, you have accomplished your ultimate goal. Unlike your vision which is usually set in stone and can only be found in one corner of the map, your mission is fluid and changes as you continue on your journey- it is the course that certainly changes sometimes. When you encounter problems on the road you are often forced to take a detour which will either get you back on course or require an entirely new new direction- these changes in course, which should be expected, should eventually be reflected in your mission statement. That is why it’s important that an organization routinely review and revise their mission statement. Vision statements should remain the same over time with very little revision.

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Vision is where we are going; it describes our final destination. Mission is how we intend to get there; it describes our journey.

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Hence you will find that the Apostle Paul, when he wants to urge the saints in Corinth to liberality, does not tell them what they are bound to do according to the requirements of the Law of God, for they are not under the Law—he uses arguments suitable for men who have come under the blessed Sovereignty of Divine Grace!

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He then says:

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But you are not under a system similar to that by which the Jews were obliged to pay tithes to the priests. If there were any such rule laid down in the Gospel, it would destroy the beauty of spontaneous giving and take away all the bloom from the fruit of your liberality! There is no law to tell me what I should give my father on his birthday. There is no rule laid down in any law book to decide what present a husband should give to his wife, nor what token of affection we should bestow upon others whom we love. No, the gift must be a free one, or it has lost all its sweetness.

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And before he offers the first point of his sermon, Spurgeon reminds us we all belong to Christ and all things around us, he says:

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And we, as Christians, are bound to confess that we belong to Christ and that all we possess is to be used by us as stewards under Him, not reckoning anything to be our own, but gladly admitting that He has entrusted it all to us to be used prudently, wisely and discreetly for His Glory.

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I have added this sermon to my resource library which you will find here.

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According to the findings, the number of churches that reported a decline in giving has increased to 38%. This statistic has been showing up everywhere, and I think it’s important that this not be interpreted as a 38% decline in overall giving. What we have here is 38% of the surveyed churches indicating that their total charitable income had dropped; they received less money this year than they did the year before. In actual dollars this could be very minimal or it could be quite significant, and distinguishing between the two might not make this statistic quite as exciting. Nonetheless, this is disappointing; and it reflects what many of us expected to see in 2010. In 2009, some of us were still in denial as to the state of our economy whereas now, like it or not, we have adjusted to the new normal and our giving has adjusted as well.

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The findings indicated that mega-churches suffered this year more than ever before.  Apparently, nearly half of churches with 2,000 to 5,000 in weekly attendance saw a decrease in their giving. These are the seeker-sensitive mega-churches that exploded in the 90′s and have been beating themselves up in recent years for their lack of discipleship. Most of these churches are packed full of baby-boomers who, no-doubt, pulled back on their giving when they saw their retirement accounts begin to shrink.

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The findings indicated that churches intend to preach and teach on finances and generosity in a variety of ways. Didn’t someone once tell us that you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect different results? According to the findings, methods don’t seem to change much. In my humble opinion, preaching and teaching are only a fraction of an effective stewardship plan; and, trust me folks, there are other ways.

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Finally, the findings indicate that Dave Ramsey’s shop is the #1 place where churches are turning for help. And why is that? Because people are so deep in debt that in order to give at all we have to first rescue them from drowning. Even in the new normal, our two-income, three-car, and four-week vacation mentality has got to go before we can embrace what Dave will try to teach us. In short, swap the new Camry for a used Taurus, stop eating at Olive Garden twice a week, and skip Disneyland this summer. Now repeat that for 6-8 years so you can bury Mr. MasterCard.