Funding Your Ministry

A Field Guide for Raising Personal Support

Scott Morton

An In-Depth, Biblical Guide for Successfully Raising Personal Support
Break through the fundraising fears and financial barriers keeping you from full-time ministry. Funding Your Ministry will answer your questions and put you on the biblical path for recruiting and maintaining donor support. Updated, Third Edition
International funding coach Scott Morton has expanded his popular resource with new sections on:

• social media,
• email best practices,
• proven principles for gospel-workers around the globe,
• stewardship and budget management, and
• a leader's guide for encouraging fundraisers.

Funding Your Ministry will help you become a joyful and courageous fundraiser, develop a Biblical view of requesting support, build long-term donor relationships, overcome fundraising blind spots, strengthen your stewardship, and reach over 100% of your goal.

SECTION SIX

Biblical Financial Management for Gospel-Workers

I have yet to meet a gospel-worker who does not have strong opinions about money. The challenge is to let the Bible —rather than common sense or our cultural or family traditions, good as they may be —guide our strong opinions. But changing our views about money becomes an emotional roadblock fast.

If anyone needs to understand money, it is gospel-workers like you and me. We are inviting people to give their hard-earned money to the Kingdom! They trust us with “their” money. Our commonsense cultural views of money are not adequate.

We cannot assume that those to whom we appeal for funding understand the biblical view of money or giving. They have strong opinions too. As gospel-workers, we are in a good position to teach them. We ought to be good models of biblical financial management and able to teach —but are we?

You might not like everything you read in chapters 23 and 24! But it is crucial not only to your fundraising but also to your discipleship as a believer in Christ. Fasten your seat belt!

23

MONEY: KINGDOM VIEW OR CULTURAL VIEW?

Six Benchmarks Reveal Your Financial Values

YOUR STRUGGLE WITH FUNDRAISING may have less to do with fundraising and more to do with your view of money. If fundraising feels like drudgery, you have a serious problem. Author Henri Nouwen said it this way:

If we come back from asking someone for money and we feel exhausted and somehow tainted by unspiritual activity, there is something wrong. We must not let ourselves be tricked into thinking that fundraising is only a secular activity. As a form of ministry, fundraising is as spiritual as giving a sermon, entering a time of prayer, visiting the sick, or feeding the hungry.[30]

The place to begin is with our personal view of money. Martin Luther is often quoted as saying: “There are three conversions: the conversion of the head, the heart, and the wallet.” I do not intend to come across as accusatory, but we gospel-workers must pay closer heed to developing a biblical view of money.

Biblical fundraising sits atop a biblical view of money. From interactions with gospel-workers of many cultures, I find that most have strong opinions about fundraising and about money. But many of their opinions originate from their parents, unquestioned evangelical traditions, or their own common sense. They do not bring a biblical view of money to their opinions. Here are a few symptoms displayed by mission-workers who have a cultural or commonsense view of money rather than a biblical view:

• Downplaying the fact that they need money. Rather than grappling with the difficulties of fundraising, they postpone or abdicate their fundraising responsibilities to passively “trust God.”
• Allowing the lack of money to dictate their ministry planning. Their ministry vision is never larger than last year’s budget.
• Clinging to a scarcity mentality bordering on miserliness. They must make do with less because they think God’s pie has only eight slices.
• Worrying continually about finances. They are not sure God will provide tomorrow or in the future.
• Perpetually in debt and having no savings. They have not learned the basics of managing money.

Where to start? With the Bible, of course. Here are six benchmarks for determining if you have a biblical view of money. If you find yourself reacting negatively, don’t ignore your feelings. Change might be in process.

1. Do I live as if God owns it all or just 10 percent?

I was teaching in Asia about biblical stewardship and asked, “How much should Christians give?” Immediately a hand shot up from an older Asian, who proudly reminded the group, “The tithe (10 percent) is the Lord’s!”

Everyone nodded in agreement. But I countered, “And 90 percent belongs to you?”

Silence. The audience was stunned.

We are so shot through with the teaching of tithing that we act as if God cares only for His 10 percent; the rest is ours to do with as we please. But Haggai 2:8 says, “‘The silver is Mine and the gold is Mine,’ declares the LORD of hosts.’”

The 90/10 doctrine that comes from assumptions about tithing opens the door to unbiblical thinking on a grand scale. If a Christian couple together earn $120,000 per year and give 10 percent, they are free to spend $108,000 (120,000 minus 12,000 = 108,000). God has already been paid; they “eke out a living” on the balance.

This worldview gives you permission to be greedy. If you can afford to buy the latest computer tablet year by year (after you have given God His 10 percent), does that mean it is okay? More practically, should you buy a complicated Starbucks European coffee blend every morning just because you can?

If God owns it all, then all financial decisions are spiritual decisions. The 90 percent is just as much God’s as the 10 percent. He deserves a voice in all our financial decisions. Just as we pray about how we should give, so we must pray about what we should save and spend. If God owns it all, as Haggai 2:8 reminds us, then “secular money decisions” must also be brought to the Lord, for they, too, are holy.

Kingdom people are caretakers —not owners. In one of Jesus’ parables, a landowner instructs his servants (you and me) to care for His land and make it profitable. When He (Jesus) returns, He will review with us how faithfully we managed His property (Matthew 25:14-30). In 1 Corinthians 4:7 Paul asks, “What do you have that you did not receive?” Do you bring all your financial decisions before the Lord, or only your giving decisions? There’s nothing necessarily wrong with going to Starbucks, but even a small decision like that can be brought before the Lord. You are spending His money, not yours. (More on money management in chapter 24.)

2. Am I a deeply thankful person?

If everything we have is ultimately a gift from God —entrusted to us as His stewards —then gratitude should ooze out of our character. But popular culture says differently. On the television show The Simpsons, Bart Simpson is asked to say a prayer before mealtime with his family. Bart bows his head and prays, “Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.”

True, Bart’s parents earned the money to buy the food, but Bart verbalized the narcissistic worldview that God need not be thanked.

Unfortunately, gospel-workers can be thankless too —though in more subtle ways. As The Navigators US development director for thirteen years, I received complaints from donors who said they rarely received thanks from missionaries they supported. In my seminars I ask, “How many newsletters do you send each year?” Many mission-workers hang their heads and admit they mail only one or two per year. Why so few? “Lack of time. I am so busy!” But is that the real problem? If you are too busy to thank those who undergird your mission, then busyness is not your problem. An ungrateful heart is your problem!

Hebrews ...