An e-mail came into my spam folder today with the subject line: “How to avoid recession.” It offered the brilliant solution: “Just keep in mind that emotional stress would not help your health and take an antidepressant from our store.”
I much prefer the advice I got from my pastor this week. “One of the secrets of surviving a bad economy is to zig when everyone else zags.”
The smart “zig” for support raisers would be to back off from the immediate rush of panic and look at the big picture which clearly shows that there has never been a better time to raise ministry support.
Oh, but what about high unemployment? The last I checked at least 90% of American workers have secure jobs. Most of these are baby boomers at the stage in life where they think less about safety and security and more about purpose and meaning. The mission-minded Christians among them are thinking about the eternal legacy of their lives and if they will ultimately be rewarded for obedience to God’s purpose.
These boomers also happen to be recipients of the greatest generational transfer of wealth in human history. Their parents accumulated unprecedented wealth during boom times since World War II, and now they are slipping off to Heaven by the thousands. One demographer profiled the boomers this way: “They’ve inherited the lakefront property their parents bought for $2500 in 1959 and since they haven’t been there since the kids were little, they want to sell it. Today it’s worth $250,000.”
How do you connect with this wealth laden generation in an ugly economy? Again you have to zig when everybody else zags. Most missionaries are still raising support by speaking in churches and writing newsletters. Consequently they are taking two to four years to finish if they don’t drop out in the process. They get approximately one supporter out of every ten churches they speak to. They haven’t learned yet that boomers are the relational generation, the “hands-on” generation. They don’t trust institutions and don’t respond to mass appeals. Our experience shows that you have a five times better chance of getting support by talking to one individual or couple in a room than you have talking to two or more couples or individuals in the same room.
After all, when someone signs on to partner with a young missionary at a hundred dollars a month for 20 years it becomes a $24,000 transaction. Even in the business world that is a big deal, worthy of cultivating a special friendship.
Boomers respond to personal relationships. They respond to someone who puts value on them spends a little time with them. They don’t want to support your ministry so much as they want to support you as an extension of their ministry.
They definitely don’t want to support you simply because you have a need. They assume, hopefully like you assume, that God has obligated himself to meet your needs. They want to support you because of their own need to be the expression of Christ to the nations.
We are learning that about fifty percent of Christian boomers respond with support when missionaries:
1. Make an appointment and pay them a personal visit
2. Learn who they are, who they love and what they value in ministry outreach
3. Share stories of ministry challenges, successes, miracles, heartbreaks and heartaches, even failures
4. Present their work with passion, enthusiasm and urgency
5. Ask for their partnership in a direct and businesslike way
6. Follow through by staying in touch.
It is ironic! While most missionaries are debating whether or not they should ever ask for support they are surrounded by a generation or believers eagerly desiring to be asked. Those who understand this generation don’t buy into the panic. They zig when others zag and they consistently raise their full support in less than ten months.
