06/07/2024
At Great Plains Annual Conference. Watch online live if you can :)
For the last couple of devotionals, I’ve shared some thoughts from Kerry Alys Robinson’s book “Imagining Abundance: Fundraising, Philanthropy, and a Spiritual Call to Service.“ I will continue to do so with this month’s devotional.
Robinson comes from a Catholic background and has worked in fundraising for several Catholic missions and projects. Hence, she has worked with a number of priests and other Catholic clergy. In her experience, she has heard the following statements from faith leaders regarding development work -- or more bluntly, fundraising:
* Clergy feel “ill prepared” to engage in development work.
* Regarding fundraising: it “feels like begging.”
* Development work is associated with anxiety and dread; it’s deemed “a necessary evil.”
* “It’s not their job but the job of the development director or parishioners.”
* Fundraising is “a contradiction to real ministry.”
* According to Robinson, “Development directors often are made to feel outside of the pastoral team.”
* Is asking for money considered a personal favor?
* What if they are rejected? How will they deal with ‘failure’?
* Will the pastor treat wealthy people different? Manipulate them?
* Do any of these statements or questions apply to Methodists? To you?
If we approach money as a gift people are given to steward, perhaps conversations about giving money are less awkward. Money is a gift. Like all gifts, the receiver is a steward of the gift and should do as much good as they can with the gifts with which they’ve been blessed. And like any other gift, people have to be taught how to best utilize their gift and encouraged to share it with others.
Having money is a gift, and we are asked to be fruitful with our gifts. According to Robinson, “Being fruitful means recognizing that all that has been given to us is an expression of God’s love for us.”
Teaching people how to relate to their money as they relate to every other gift -- that is, teaching people how to properly steward their money -- is a high calling. For Robinson, “...the more seriously we live out our faith, the clearer the call to be generous and to live lives that inspire generosity. No one is excused from the responsibility and invitation to be generous and other-centered.”
Reread that last statement: No one is excused from the responsibility and invitation to be generous and other-centered. No one is excused. Generosity is both a responsibility and an invitation. Sharing our money is a key way we become less self-centered and more other-dentered. As Maya Angelou said, “I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.”
When it comes to encouraging people to give, perhaps Mother Theresa said it best: “Never take away the right of another person to be generous.”
Does that sound like begging? Can encouraging generosity really be deemed a “necessary evil?” Is any ministry or calling “higher” than the one of teaching people how to be good stewards of their gifts? Is it manipulative to ask people blessed with wealth to give of their wealth for the benefit of others? -- Tyler Curtis, chief development officer, Kansas Methodist Foundation
Join us in prayer today for Anny Kapundu and Kelly Karges (Grand Island Trinity), Dan Albers (Harvard-Inland) and Lance Clay (Hastings First).
