Raising Support in an Ugly Economy

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.

Got Training? September 26, 2007

Got Training?

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

The Missionary Was the Last to Know!

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

Embrace the Pain - September 25, 2007

 

Embrace the Pain

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