New and Better Results – June 2010
This week I looked over the records of the folks who have been through KCT training and coaching since the beginning of the year, to see how long it is currently taking them to achieve their full funding. I could hardly believe what I saw!
We’ve known for some time that it took our trainees an average of about six months to reach their full funding. We’ve also noticed that as our coaches gain experience in helping people over the obstacles, it takes less and less time.
What left me awestruck is how much less time it is taking. The 22 people who reached 100%, who began their coaching in January or later and have averaged four months to reach their full funding. Most have done it in a matter of weeks.
A few examples:
- Caroline came with 4% of her monthly support in February and reached 100% in eight weeks.
- Jacob came with 47% and was fully funded in four weeks.
- Dr Jonathan started with 22% and finished in six weeks.
- Louise started with 68% and achieved 100% in three weeks.
- Cathy began in February with 35% and ended with 100% in three months.
Those results started me on a quest to identify what has made the difference.
The initial training hasn’t changed significantly. We have observed for some time that about 75% of the ministry visits our trainees conduct result in monthly support. The biggest delaying factor is that people are afraid to pick up the phone and make appointments. The only human variable I see to explain these improved results is the growing skill of the KCT coaches at keeping people on track, making the appointments and doing the ministry visits.
One missionary commented, “The one thing I fear more than making phone calls is facing my coach when I haven’t done it.”
Cathy (the last example above) , writes. . .
The Training was very motivating. It helped me refocus and gain confidence in sharing my ministry with prospective partners. It was really informative to listen to the others in my course as they developed their stories and as I developed mine. The feedback was tremendous–the instructor was willing to spend the extra time necessary to help me develop my presentation into captivating, effective stories.
As I went through the training, I had no idea of how many people God was putting into my path to join with me in my ministry, although I thought I did. It helped open my eyes and give me the boldness to pray about sharing with those people. The number of positive responses to my presentation was staggering.
The coaching was crucial. I am a very motivated person, however I found myself working harder because of my weekly coaching meetings. It was nice to have someone help me put together a reasonable goal for each week, then gently talk and encourage me through the process. Gabi was fabulous and had answers for all of my detailed questions. She understood my initial fears and frustrations, then helped me work through them so I had no more fear or issues blocking my progress.
When they said in the class that people end up enjoying partnership development, I didn’t believe it. But now I understand why that is, and that God has used my partnership development to bless those who allowed me to share my ministry with them.
I strongly encourage anyone who needs to raise their own support to take this training and coaching. Nothing should be of higher importance to a missionary than to be 100% funded. This training and coaching equipped me in the most efficient way to be motivated and to reach that 100% goal with more joy and confidence than anything I had previously tried on my own. The amount of relief I have because I don’t have to worry each month about being fully funded is more than I can even describe. It is truly freeing and allows me to spend more time in ministry now. I cannot emphasize enough how valuable this class is. Thank you Kingdom Come Training.
Moreover Cathy, thank you! You represent our greatest joy and blessing.
– Jerry Long
What Am I Getting for the $95 a Month?
This question recently came by e-mail from a missionary appointee who was understandably questioning why he should pay a monthly fee for weekly coaching and accountability while he raises his support. I realized there must be others who have this question on their minds, but aren’t so forthright as to ask it.
As you may already know, raising support for faith ministry is a daunting and formidable task. It is currently taking from three to five years for those raising a full budget for long-term ministry.
KCT trainees who follow the training and coaching guidelines take an average of six months to become fully funded. The most important factor that makes the difference is the coaching and accountability relationship. So the quick answer to the question is that your $95 monthly ($570 total based on the average of six months) buys two to four years off of the time it will otherwise take to become fully funded. That puts the actual cash savings in the thousands.
Everyone who engages in KCT accelerated partnership development faces internal and external obstacles which are very difficult to overcome without continual and active guidance and support.
The main internal obstacles that come to mind are the sense of isolation, fear of rejection, internal accusations and a failing sense of urgency. The external obstacles are distractions, negative feedback and the tragic old false paradigm that you can raise support just by speaking in churches and Sunday School classes, showing up at mission conferences and writing letters. All of these obstacles demand continual attention by a coach that is trained to recognize them and to de-fuse them.
Isolation – Every individual or couple raising support regularly feels alone and isolated in the process. Their coach is their connection with the dozens of others facing similar issues, and their source of encouragement and reassurance that it can actually be done.
Fear of rejection — It’s universal. Jesus made it clear that if they rejected Him, they will reject us. This normal fear needs to be continually acknowledged and addressed. Your coach knows the signs and will keep you reminded that your partnership development ministry meets an urgent need of the church to be connected with a major purpose for redemption — to be the expression of Christ to the nations.
Internal accusations – They come at the point of highest vulnerability. You hit the 50% plateau and stay there a couple of months and suddenly you are thinking. . .
“Am I really called to do this?”
“What makes me worthy to ask people for support?”
“I feel like a beggar!” . . . the list goes on.
Your coach is familiar with all of them and skilled at helping you re-connect with your original calling and purpose.
Failing sense of urgency – When the going gets tough, among the first things that falters is your sense of urgency and momentum. Again, the coach is skilled at spotting the symptoms and challenging them.
Distractions — There you sit with a list of names and phone numbers on your desk. It’s time. . . for another cookie from the jar, or . . . oh, that garage really needs cleaning out. . . and on go the distractions. The primary goal in the accelerated partnership development process is “keeping the main thing the main thing.” Who is in your life, other than your coach, who has weekly contact with you and who assumes the responsibility of helping you stay on task?
Negative feedback — It is painfully common for people raising support to get stalled for weeks or months by an offhanded comment from a friend or family member.
“Maybe you should think about getting a real job,”
“Can’t you find a mission organization that pays a salary?”
“Isn’t it terrible having to go around begging for money?”
“I don’t think I could live on handouts like that.”
You may know there are clear, right and reasonable responses to these attitudes, but when you are out there alone, frustrated and discouraged, it is a huge advantage to have a coach to help you keep focused on the fundamental principles of why we minister in this way.
False Paradigm– It is when your are faced with making phone appointments for face-to-face presentations that the “telephone terrors” set in. It is a universal phenomenon. That is when the old paradigm creeps back in with thoughts like. . . “There has to be an easier way! Surely if I just speak in churches, Sunday school classes, home groups and invite people over for dessert, people will respond with support. Your coach is there to reinforce the proven fact that you have a five times better chance of receiving partnership when you share your ministry with one couple or individual than you would if there are two or more couples or individuals in the room.
By Steve Moitozo
This October I was invited to attend my first missionary fund raising banquet. I wasn’t sure what to expect. As I took my seat at the table Ron, who was sitting directly across from me, saw my name tag and said, “So, you’re a missionary with Wycliffe?” “Yes”, I said. Immediately he said, “Great. I have some questions for you.” He explained that he was a Dentist and had been on several short term mission trips to Uganda where he used his skills to help people with their medical needs as a way of opening the door to sharing the Gospel. Then he said, “I’m starting to think that we are being called to full time missions. Do you know if missions agencies like Wycliffe let people go self-funded? I can’t bear the thought of begging people for money.”
I said. “Yeah, they probably would. I know where you’re coming from. In fact, not long ago I would have been asking the same question. Let me tell you Ron, no one was more self-sufficient than me. Nine years ago I was living a block from the beach on a barrier island in Florida, where I drove brand new cars and made a huge salary. I had been recruited into my last two jobs and my income had tripled in one year. But that was about to change. God, in His infinite wisdom, had brought me to that point so that He could take it all away. The dot-com I worked for closed its doors. So did many others at that time, which made it hard for me to find a job as a Software Architect. We moved to Maine where He eventually provided a good job at a private College. Two years later we lost our first child to miscarriage. Four years later my parents marriage began to fall apart. A year after that the church where I was an Elder experienced a split. But through it
all God grew my faith in Him. As He would take things away He would replace them with the peace and hope that come from relying on His promises in Scripture. It’s hard to explain, but I got to the point where I trusted God to provide the necessary hope and peace to get me
through any difficult situation. I came to realize that God would always provide whatever I needed because I am His and while all things may not be pleasant I can believe that they are for my ultimate good.”
“Ron”, I said, “As I’ve studied the Bible, and dealt with my own journey, I have come to the conclusion that God’s design for any endeavor, especially missions, is such that no one should be able to take all the credit for the work they do. We cannot be Lone Rangers. If this were permitted God would not get the glory. Instead, God has put us all in positions of dependence on each other. In order for Him to get the glory for the work we do He has made it so that we must
depend on the prayer and financial support of many, many people. But as a result, each and every one of them will share in the eternal reward for the work we do. By telling people what God is doing and sharing our needs with them we are giving them a front row seat in God’s theater as well as an opportunity to participate in His mission. In this way God’s Name is made great and His blessing is spread across His Church. If we all acted like missionary Lone Rangers, going it
alone, then this would not happen. Worse yet, we might be tempted to take the credit for ourselves. If we do this we will be robbing God of His glory and robbing His people of His blessing for being part of the fulfillment of His Great Commission.”
A minute or two later the main presentation began and my conversation with Ron ended. The speaker took the stage and as he shared his incredible story of translating the Bible for a remote people group in Brazil he unwittingly reinforced every single point I had made to Ron. After the speaker was done the MC took the stage again and introduced Glenda and me. We spoke briefly about our ministry with Wycliffe and when we were done we took our seats near our display. At the end of the banquet the MC was guiding the audience through the particulars of making out their faith promise cards. Just then Ron walked over to us, grabbed a chair, and plunked it down in front of me. He said, “Steve, I love this ministry of Bible translation, but I don’t want to send my money to some company’s general fund. I want my money to go to a person who will communicate with me and involve me in their ministry. My wife and I have decided we are going to support you. What do we do?”
A New Solution for Field Assigned Missionaries Low on Support
Today we received an e-mail from a missionary in Panama saying, “In looking at your video, I know we need help. However, we are already on the field. Does the training you provide also allow us to raise support through means other than face to face?”
Increasingly, we at Kingdom Come Training receive messages from desperate field-assigned missionaries who’s support has dropped off for one reason or another. You could be one of them. You may serve where the weakened dollar has caused your living costs to shoot up. You may be hurting because the poor economy at home is causing your supporters to drop off. Is there a way you can avoid sinking hopelessly into the red during the months or years before you get home to engage in partnership development?
Absolutely, there is a way!” Again it’s technology to the rescue.
First, you need access to high speed internet at or near your field location. KCT will use web-based multipoint videoconferencing to give you the training you will need to make it happen. The training takes an hour and a half a day, four days a week, for three weeks with follow up weekly coaching until you are back to 100% funding. The objective is to help you produce a presentation that will allow you to effectively share your vision live and face to face with potential partners at home. You will also receive instruction and practice in using the videoconferencing technology. Our experience indicates that more than half the people you connect with using this technology will decide to invest monthly in your ministry. This means that if you put aside the time to make two or three live video presentations a week you will likely add about $100 of monthly support each week and bring yourself back to full funding in a surprisingly short time.
How is this possible? While you’ve been away a majority of people at home have gained access to high speed internet. Most of them have already invested in webcams and headphones. If they aren’t equipped at home, they could probably connect over live video at church or at a friend’s house. The idea of having a live visit with a missionary overseas is novel, exciting and fun. We can train you and coach you in setting up appointments, making presentations and following up in such a way that people at home readily catch your vision and partner in your ministry.
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Failure to go face to face
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Stalling out at the point of phoning for appointments
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Making appointments that get cancelled
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Dull, boring presentations
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Failure to ask for support
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Failure to ask for referrals
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Failure to follow up
When someone joins your partnership team and supports you $100 a month for 20 years it turns out to be a $24,000 transaction. Raising support for ministry has a lot of similarities to marketing a service, and to just about any marketing enterprise, $24,000 is a big deal. It deserves personal time, individual tailoring, careful cultivating and lots of tender, loving “customer care.”
We address a generation today that responds to relationship building, not mass appeals. Almost totally gone are the days when someone hears a missionary speak in church, picks up their prayer card from the display table and makes a commitment to support them.
On the other hand, if you make individual appointments to spend forty minutes to an hour building relationships and sharing your story with clarity and passion, nearly half the people will respond with some kind of support.
The first call is the toughest, but the second isn’t that much better. You would rather eat a slug, brush the dog’s teeth or go for a root canal. However, if you manage to persevere, the 50thcall is a breeze and it actually becomes fun. It is especially enjoyable once you’ve learned to make the calls with a positive expectation that you will get the appointment and people are going to be delighted with your presentation.
Appointments get cancelled mainly because the prospective ministry partner hasn’t been treated with enough value and respect. You treat them with respect when you know what is unique and important about them and why they are worthy of the special privilege of hearing your story. People keep appointments when they know they are meeting with a busy ministry professional with a passion for their work, someone who is eager to share the challenge, the costs and the rewards of an exciting outreach.
This sin is especially deadly. If you wish to maximize the time it takes to be fully funded, just fill your presentation with boring generalities, endless facts and figures and throw in a long, impersonal media presentation. A successful face to face appointment is primarily about building a personal relationship with a potentially long-term ministry partner. Rather than using a canned media presentation, take the time to learn about your prospective ministry partners, their home, family, work, activities, and what they value most in terms of ministry outreach. Then tell your story with the assumption that you will make a great extension of their personal ministry to a place they probably can’t go themselves. Tell brief action stories that portray the successes, the miracles, the hardships and the heartbreaks of your ministry.
A friend recently shared a conversation he had an acquaintance in his church. The man spoke with pride about his brother who was a missionary in a tough area in Eastern Europe. My friend asked if he supported his brother financially. He said, “No”.
A little surprised and asked, “Oh really? How come?”
“He never asked.”
Here is a very simple question that somehow becomes the most difficult for missionaries to ask: “Is there any reason we can’t begin a partnership in this ministry today?”
If you are afraid to ask that question, take a moment in your imagination to reverse roles. You are one who believes in world outreach but you are not personally called. You invite a missionary couple in who has a sincere desire to know you, your family, and your values and goals in ministry. They share stories that portray their calling, their unique equipping, and their passionate desire to serve on your behalf in a kind of ministry that you value. Now think honestly, regardless of whether you are in a position to support them right now or not, will you be offended or will you be honored when they give you a clear, businesslike, explicit opportunity to invest?
A missionary who was raising support called recently and sadly announced, “We’ve run out of contacts!”
“Of course you have,” I said, “Doesn’t everybody?”
Actually, not everybody runs out of contacts. Many today are walking away from every presentation they make with an average of three new contacts. It is done by using an astonishingly simple process.
Picture yourself in this situation: You have just finished a delightful time sharing your story and your vision with a new couple who are prospective ministry partners. They’ve loved your stories and they are inspired and challenged. They may or may not be able to support you financially, but they definitely want to be on your newsletter list and pray for you.
And so you say something like, “Listen, it is going to be a privilege for us to serve on your behalf. There is actually one other way that you could be of enormous help. What if the Lord were calling you into this ministry? I can imagine there would be a core group of people you would go to first and give them the opportunity to partner with you. Since the Lord apparently isn’t calling you to do that, would you mind putting us in touch with a few of those key people? Of course there would be no pressure and no obligation for them to support us, but our job right now is simply to share our story with as many people as possible.”
That simple request effectively guarantees that you won’t run out of contacts.
I once told a leader in a major mission agency that he could expect about half of his face-to-face presentations to result in some kind of support. After a support raising trip to his home area he reported that only one in six resulted in support. Among the questions I asked him was, “How did you handle the follow-up when people said they wanted time to pray about it and discuss it with their spouses?
He said, “I expected them to call me back and a few days, but they never did.”
Bingo!
Again, reverse roles. You are the one who has heard a great presentation and has been touched with the opportunity to support a great ministry. The response card is right there on top of other papers on the coffee table in the living room. It will remind you to pray, talk to your spouse and give it your best consideration, right?
Well, maybe. More likely someone is going to toss a magazine on top of the card and it will disappear for about a week. You occasionally think, “I’ve got to make a decision and get back to these people.” But, unfortunately, you only think of it while you are driving someplace, eating lunch or laying in bed about to go to sleep, but never at a time when it is convenient to find the card, find the phone number and make the call. A month later you are thinking, “Interesting I haven’t heard back from them. They’re probably fully supported by now.”
You will do your prospective partners a huge favor, saving them embarrassment and guilt by offering a simple, courteous gesture. Just say, “I’m really pleased you are willing to give this some serious thought and prayer. Do you mind if I give you a call in a day or so you can let me know then how the Lord is leading you?”
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.
Do you ever wonder why raising support looks like an impossible task, even after the two days of “training” you got in mission candidate school? Maybe you have spent hundreds of dollars on fees and travel to a weekend workshop, but you still freeze up at the point of picking up the phone and making an appointment.
The reason could be that you were given inspiration, information and strategy, but you were not trained.
The KCT definition of training is the same definition that applies to learning to swim, playing a musical instrument or to flying an airplane. This kind of training can’t be accomplished through lectures, reading books or listening to inspirational speakers. You learn to swim by getting in the pool; music by picking up the instrument, flying by belting into the flight simulator and committing to practice, practice, practice until the skill becomes second nature. Quick and successful partnership development only happens as a result of practicing the ministry skills that Jesus modeled for us until they become second nature.
You are trained when partnership development is no longer about your need for money, but about the need of the church and of individual believers to be connected with the blessing, the joy and the rewards of a primary purpose for their redemption: being the expression of Christ to the nations.
You are trained when you have complete confidence that your story and your vision will inspire others to enthusiastically join you in prayer and financial partnership.
You are trained when you have no fear of picking up the phone and making an appointment.
Training at that level cannot be accomplished in a few hours or a couple of days. We are told it takes 21 days to establish a habit. KCT could easily compress the 18 hours of online training into three days or a week, but that could not produce a joy-filled performance of the partnership development ministry.
Instead, we do the online training for an hour and a half a day, four days a week for three weeks. All you will learn in the way of “content” happens in the first week, and accounts for only about 15% of your ultimate success. What assures success is what you do in the final two weeks and between sessions. You will be given assignments and required to practice the relational and communication skills that Jesus modeled until you fully achieve the confidence that this is true spiritual ministry and not mercenary manipulation.
– Jerry Long, September, 2007
Recently I conducted a training course for a group of missionaries to help them build confidence and develop strategy to raise their support. Wayne, a veteran missionary, read a couple chapters of required reading* and came back saying, “I’ve discovered that everything I’ve been doing is wrong!”
Wayne had been doing all the normal things missionaries do to raise their support: he wrote newsletters, spoke in churches, and prayed faithfully that God would raise up people to support him and his family. After about ten years he had less than $50 in regular monthly support. In order to sustain his calling he maintained a job ten months out of every year in order to save enough money to make annual short-term mission trips. This wasn’t the way he wanted to carry out his ministry.
It was a credit to Wayne’s faith that he kept going so long. Most missionaries who fail to raise their support within a couple of years end up declaring, “I guess God hasn’t called me after all.”
Here are the three main things Wayne learned he was doing wrong, and was amazed that he was among the last to know about them.
Focused on the Wrong Need
Wayne discovered that his whole focus was on his need for support. He looked to churches and individual believers as the source of his support. He had forgotten that God had obligated Himself to meet his need. Wayne learned that God was calling him to focus on the church’s need to be reconnected with its primary purpose for existence, to be the expression of Christ to the nations. He came to believe that once he became successful at sharing the benefits and rewards people would receive from doing what God has called them to do, they would want to invest in his ministry.
Writing Letters rather than Ministering Face to Face
Wayne, like nearly all missionaries, feared asking for support. He feared being perceived as a beggar. He feared rejection. Fear caused him to default to sending impersonal form letters to people. To him, this was the least intrusive means of making his need known.
When Wayne realized he wasn’t representing his own need, but rather the need of believers to be connected with God’s purpose for their lives, he was set free from all mercenary guilt. Now he is free to minister to them like a friend and a brother. He has the privilege of connecting them with their due reward for obedience.
Neglecting the Power of Discovery
Wayne’s third revolutionary insight was the power of the parable. Jesus told stories because when people discover truth in a story they don’t argue with it; it is their discovery. Wayne, like many missionaries doing partnership development, was trying to preach, trying to explain and trying to admonish people to support him. He found it was much more powerful to simply share his stories and the experiences through which he had discovered the joys, blessings and benefits of obedience to the great commission.
How could a missionary like Wayne suddenly realize he is among the last to know fundamental principals about raising support? The fact is that most missionaries are in the same boat. They are conditioned by the attitudes that portray missionaries as beggars who are a drag on church budgets.
The only way I know to break the cycle of wrong attitudes is to challenge them one missionary at a time and one believer at a time. That requires Bible-based training that builds knowledge, skills and attitudes that will result in the ability to share the vision freely and confidently.
– Jerry Long, September, 2007
* Required reading for the KCT course: Funding Your Ministry Whether Your’re Gifted or Not! By Scott Morton
Raising support for faith ministry is terrifying. If you are thinking about doing it and you are scared, you are normal. If you aren’t scared you may be a little strange.
Once you have confronted the issue of the biblical basis for raising support and found it is sound, once you have determined it is indeed God’s calling on your life personally, and once you have decided you are going to stick with it as long as it takes, there is one final hurdle that will make or break you. It is the issue of pain. Pain is the big one. It is the overwhelming, the brain paralyzing, the universal missionary-devouring enemy of all time.
The pain happens because raising support, like many Kingdom concepts, runs radically counter to our culture. In fact, it is downright repulsive. It calls for dependence on others and we are brainwashed to be independent. It calls for patience but we want it all now. It calls for courage; we are cowards. If you doubt or flatly deny that you fear the pain raising support, you aren’t being rational or truthful and that will hurt you in the long run.
Think about the little medieval monk who paid his keep in the monastery by begging from house to house. Can you imagine anything more degrading? That is the picture the average church member has of you raising your support. To live out that image you must thrive on pain.
A good analogy of thriving on pain is the way a sailboat gets where it is going. There are three forces at work when a sailboat moves through the water: There is the force of the wind, the resistance of the water and the attitude of the sail. Let’s apply them one at a time:
The Force of the Wind
Let’s say the wind represents the power of your calling and the drive behind your dream to serve in ministry, God told the apostle Paul, “. . . be my witness to all men of the things (you) have seen and heard” (Acts 22:15). That calling was the wind in Paul’s sails. It is very likely the same kind of wind that drives you in your ministry dream.
The Resistance of the Water
The resistance of the water represents the pressure and the pain of uncertainty, the humility and outright rejection you face, not only in raising your support but in your whole lifetime of confronting fallen culture.
I find it fascinating how Jesus faced pain. He had to know the blows, the welts, the lacerations, the spikes and the humiliation of hanging naked between two criminals was going to hurt. During those last days, however, he did nothing to escape it. In fact, everything he did was calculated to guarantee it. When witness hurled false charges he clammed up and didn’t deny them. When they accused him of saying he was the Son of God and King of the Jews he readily admitted it. He mustered and engaged all the physical strength he had in order to endure the beatings and then haul his own cross up that hill.
The Attitude of the Sail
The Attitude of the sail represents your mindset. Jesus set his mind to embrace pain as a key element in redeeming his church. Now, in fact, he is calling on you to the very same mindset. You get to suffer with him in the process of redeeming his church.
Would you agree the Great Commission could and should have been done centuries ago? It hasn’t been done because church has been in non-compliance with Jesus’ final instructions. Individual believers are in non-compliance. The western church is rich, fat, lazy, self indulgent and can’t be bothered. We have God’s promise that if the church were to comply it would be enormously blessed. Individuals would be enormously blessed. As it is, they suffer for their non-compliance and probably don’t even know it. They rarely think about it.
The one mindset that will put you squarely into your designated role in the scheme of redemption is this: In order to connect the church with the promised blessing you will not only suffer pain, you will be a pain. Jesus’ death and resurrection was a huge intrusion on the world’s comfort zone. The gospel is an intrusion. Evangelism is an intrusion. The Great Commission is an intrusion. Raising support is an intrusion.
I have a friend who lives in Hawaii. One day I asked if he liked to surf. He said, “Me? No, I get in water and I can’t breathe! Besides, there are things there that want to eat me.” I thought he had a couple of good points.
In order to raise support for faith ministry you go against forces that at best want to hurt you if not kill and eat you. Pastors and mission leaders don’t return your calls and don’t respond to your e-mails. Relatives avoid you. You have friends who graduate with marketable degrees, get real jobs and pity you for your silly idealism. People not only don’t support you, they think you are nuts for planning to go where people might kill you for preaching Christianity. That is serious resistance and real pain, and ultimately you could leak real blood.
But here is the good news: The pain doesn’t last. From the outset it looks like it will dog you forever, but it will not. It is like the pain of childbirth. When the little bundle of joy is birthed, the pain is quickly forgotten.
Hebrews 12:2 gives up Jesus’ secret to embracing pain:
“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” NIV
- -Jerry Long
May, 2006
Effective Support Raising and Partnership Development
Since Greek and Roman times skilled communicators have known that people resist change. They have also know that people go through five distinct stages of resistance before they make a change. Jesus, the Apostle Paul and others in the Bible understood these stages. They organized their preaching and teaching so their listener and readers could come to a decision in a natural way. (For examples, see Jesus’ discourse with the Samaritan woman in John 4:7-24; Paul on Mars Hill, Acts 17.)
In my training you will gain practice in anticipating the five stages of resistance every audience member goes through, and the five effective responses to these stages.
| Five Stages of Resistance* | Five Effective Responses* |
| 1. Rejection | Gain attention through affirmation |
| 2. Indifference | Gain interest based on need |
| 3. Skepticism | Gain conviction based on evidence |
| 4. Procrastination | Gain desire through visualization |
| 5. Fear | Give reassurance and an opportunity to respond |
Not everyone in an audience will manifest each of these attitudes but we can best assume the majority of people will. Therefore, it serves you well to anticipate all of them in every presentation in which you want people to stop doing, start doing or do something differently.
The five responses can become a structural framework for all your spoken and written communication to persuade. They apply to preaching, evangelizing, fundraising, recruiting volunteers, personal witnessing or motivating people in any way. You can use them in writing memos, reports, work papers and newsletters. They are worth writing down, memorizing, keeping on a card in your wallet, posting above your desk, and storing in your computer.
In my training you will gain skill in organizing the elements of your presentation is such a way that it naturally responds to the five stages of resistance. It will allow people to discover truth and respond to it in logical sequence. Once they discover truth, they own it and they unconsciously begin to adjust their thinking and behavior accordingly.
* I am indebted to Mr. Claude Bowen for this specific wording of the five attitudes and responses.
Four crucial steps to preparing a story:
1. Make notes of the key elements of your story
I recommend that you do not write out stories that you plan to tell. The problem is that we write in a different style of language than we speak. If you write it out completely it will not come across naturally when you tell it. Just think through the story and make notes of the critical action and key scenes.
2. Craft a power line
The power line is the one line in the story, often the final line, which draws the whole story together and portrays its meaning. It is similar to the punch line of a joke.
Samples of power lines:
“I never took another drink after that.”
“That is when I realized I could never stop loving her.”
“So my advice is never to walk away from a crying spouse.”
3. Cut the fluff
As you practice your story, practice cutting anything that doesn’t enhance or support the power line. Don’t cut any visual aspects of the scene because those are important. Get brutal; however, get violent and merciless in cutting out generalities. A generality is anything that doesn’t connect with specific time, specific people and specific places. Cut everything that doesn’t add power to the power line. Regardless of how funny it is, how smart it makes you look or how short it makes the story, cut it. Your audience will love you for it.
4. Practice telling it with visual and emotional power.
Get alone, stand up, and practice the story. Get your voice, your face and your whole body into the scene. Feel it in your heart. Visualize your audience reacting in just the way you want them to.
I can train you to engage the seven rules for telling stories
1. Keep your stories short.
There is no such thing as a long story and a short story. There are only long and short versions of stories. For our training purposes and to develop the discipline of tight stories, we keep the maximum length down to two minutes.
2. Begin where the story begins.
This takes training and discipline. We are naturally inclined to introduce a story or explain what it is about before we tell it. The story is much more powerful when your audience discovers what it is about as you tell it.
3. Get to the Action.
The “Action” is where specific people are in a specific place at a specific time where specific things are happening. Action is visually oriented and emotionally engaging.
Generalities, where people “sometimes used to go here or there and do this or that” are boring, useless and pointless.
4. Stop where the story ends.
Something in our culture drives us to explain or state the moral of stories we tell. You know what happens to a joke that needs to be explained. It is the same with any story. If it needs to be explained it means was either the wrong story or it was poorly told. When you have to explain it, your listener is forced to make a judgment about whether it is true or not. When they discover truth from your story, they bypass judgment and they own it.
5. Know the opening and closing lines.
The two most critical points in a story are getting in and getting out. Getting in is easy. Just make it a habit of putting three important pieces of information in the first sentence: Answer the questions: who? when? where? Example: “In the fall of 1971 my wife and I drove a Chevrolet van from California to Quito, Ecuador…”
Getting out takes a little more thought. Think of how the punch line of a joke has to be exactly right. The “power line” of a story should be thought through and memorized. I don’t recommend that you write it out, just think it through and memorize it. It is the power line that ties the whole story together and portrays its full meaning
6. Don’t just say it; portray it.
According to research, words alone account for only seven percent of the total impact of a talk. The rest of the impact comes from your voice and non-verbals like face, gestures and body language. You can engage the other 93 percent of the impact by putting your whole person in the scene. You see the action; feel the emotions and re-live every aspect of the story.
7. Use visual images.
We all think and remember in pictures. Every story needs a scene that people can picture in their minds. Let your eyes move to see the scene; let your hands help shape it in their imaginations. React physically with your whole body to the action taking place in the story. Create imaginary props in your hands. Where there is dialogue, practice playing the role of each speaker and simulate their voices.
Avoid adjectives that don’t create mental pictures. Adjectives like “wonderful, awesome, beautiful, interesting,” are next to useless in stories. Use visual imagery like, “struck like a cannonball, “gorgeous like a fresh rose”, “more annoying than a hangnail”, “angry black storm clouds”.
