By Tim Johnson, CFRE, CFRM
I came into my office on Monday, sat down at my desk, and started working through emails. It was August, and the end-of-year push was already looming large. Quick panic set in. How do I raise the money? Who do I call? I pulled up my donor list and started sorting by capacity, recency, and ask amount.
And then a thunderbolt of realization hit me. These are not my donors. They are God’s people. He is the one transforming them. He has a purpose for their generosity.
I sat there a minute, cursor blinking on a spreadsheet full of names I’d been about to sort by capacity. I don’t think that moment came out of nowhere. Years of Nouwen, James, and Panas had been rattling around in me, waiting for a Monday in August to finally land. (If any of those names are new to you, I’ll drop some links at the bottom.) Paul’s words came back to me, too: don’t be conformed to this world, but be transformed. However it arrived, it didn’t feel like an idea. It felt like a correction.
What is a Biblical Approach to Fundraising?
I closed the spreadsheet. Not because the need wasn’t real. It was as real as it had been five minutes earlier. But because I’d been asking the wrong question. I’d been asking who has the money. I needed to be asking what God is already doing in this person’s life, and how I get to be part of that.
That Monday changed me. Where I would have once clicked a column to sort a list of names by capacity, I now looked at the names, wondering who God was shaping them to be, and how I could help them become that person. It didn’t stay a private realization. I brought it to our leadership, and it’s shaping how WorldVenture approaches fundraising today.
How Does Generosity Become a Partnership in Ministry?
Paul didn’t just tell Timothy to instruct the wealthy toward generosity. He pointed to people already living it. Take Phoebe. Paul calls her a benefactor, a woman of means and standing, trusted enough that he placed his letter to the Romans in her hands to carry and deliver. She wasn’t a line item in someone’s giving records. She was a partner in the work, someone whose resources and her calling had become one and the same.
That’s transformation. Not a program. Not a giving level. A person becoming who God is shaping them to be, with generosity simply being what that looks like from the outside.
What is the Difference Between Donor Capacity and Calling?
Here’s what I had to admit to myself that Monday: I’m not standing on the other side of that process, watching it happen to donors. I’m in it too. I’ve spent years being shaped, sometimes willingly, sometimes kicking against it, toward seeing my work, my time, and my own resources the way God sees them rather than the way a spreadsheet does. I’m not finished. Neither is anyone whose name I’d been sorting that morning. We’re all somewhere in the same process. Some of us just have the job title that tempts us to forget it.
Capacity asks where someone is right now. Calling asks where God is taking them. That’s why capacity was never the right question.
I still open that donor list some mornings. The columns are still there: capacity, recency, and last gift. I haven’t deleted the software. But before I ever touch a filter, I ask a different question: what is God doing in this person’s life, and how do I get to be part of it?
Why is Generosity More Than a Financial Transaction?
That’s the question behind WorldVenture’s approach to development. Not because budgets don’t matter. The work in front of us is real, and so is the need. But because we believe something no spreadsheet can measure: generosity is evidence of a transformed heart, not a transaction to be managed.
We know our donors are not ATMs. They’re not accounts to be optimized. They’re people God is at work in, the same as me, the same as you, wherever you are in that process.
Further Reading:
- Henri Nouwen, A Spirituality of Fundraising;
- Russell James, EncourageGenerosity.Com
- Jerold Panas, Mega Gifts and Asking
Discussion Questions:
On your social media or in a comment on the related Facebook or Instagram post, reflect on this question:
- Where might God be inviting you to align your generosity more deeply with His calling?
- How is God growing you through generosity?