Tag Archives: generosity

Getting caught up in the big Story, even if it gets weird.

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Our story isn’t that remarkable.

His is.

When World Vision contacted us about sharing our story in their magazine, about coming up to Seattle to be in the DVD curriculum filming for Unfinished, of course we were thrilled. What an honor to share our story as a little part of His! And through the last few years, whenever we share our simple story of downsizing, moving, starting a church, endeavoring to live differently, we often receive two responses:

  1. Why would you do that?
  2. Are you telling me I have to do that?

Kari tells the rest … »

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They asked us to remember the poor, the very thing we were eager to do.
—Galatians 2:10

 

What if our churches were generous?

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On this morning’s run I ran past a dozen plus church buildings and many more dozen empty commercial spaces looking for a renter.

Our church is walking through the facilities game, praying and researching what possible spaces we can rent for the future. (Haven’t been entirely received with open arms by other churches, and that is expected.) As Jared Wilson wrote this week, there are three levels of generosity for churches, giving reasons why each one is more challenging than the previous one.
MoneyChurches shall be:

  1. Generous with Facilities
  2. Generous with Money
  3. Generous with People

The simplest and easiest way for an established church is to share their biggest brick and mortar resource: their building. Lots of churches do this, and I am grateful to work with two churches in the last seven years who are immensely generous with their buildings. When Willamette built a new building it was meant to be a blessing for the whole community, and it has. Scores of groups use it freely or for a nominal fee. It’s a regular meeting place for all kinds of good organizations. The city is better for the presence of generous, courageous and wise Christians, and their gathering place.

I recently taught that an implication of “getting” the Gospel is embracing whole-life hospitality. Without it we won’t become who we are. Part of being hospitable is opening our homes and using our stuff to bless others. That’s a first step to opening our actual lives. Yet it’s necessary to resist the first-world urge to splurge on ourselves and skimp towards others. Consider these statistics, shared in Kari‘s newest ebook Faithfully Frugal 1 (to be released next week):

It’s a very sobering statistic indeed that only 4% of Christians tithe to their local churches. That Christians give, on average, only 2% of their income. 2 That of that 2%, only 2% then goes to funding international work—the world. It’s sobering that the total annual income of American churchgoers is $5.2 trillion, that the amount available if each of them gave 10% of their salary is $520 billion. That the estimated annual cost to eliminate extreme poverty in the world is only $65 billion. That the annual cost for universal primary education for ALL children in the world is $6 billion. That the annual cost to bring clean water to most of the world is $9 billion. That the annual cost to bring basic health and nutrition for the world is $13 billion. That, therefore, the total amount needed to eradicate the world’s greatest problems: $93 billion (just 1.8% of American Christian’s income). Quite simply, the world God loves in dying and we are … doing what?

Yep. I might want to ask Jesus why He let all these atrocities happen in the world. Then He might flip the question and ask me the same. We are responsible to steward and provoke ourselves to radical generosity. An explosion of joy can overwhelm your heart when you give your life away for bigger things. Our core emphases with RENEW aim at embracing and embodying these truths.

When a church leadership is courageous and generous, increasing financial gifts to groups and causes beyond their walls, it can become contagious, even leading to a new culture of generosity. This is the second level of generosity, as Wilson continues:

“A church’s budget will tell you what is most important to them, just like our bank statements reveal what is most important to us. It can be difficult for a church to be generous with its money because the drift to inward focus and enhancing the internal experience of the church is automatic.”

While a building is a valuable asset, and cash money is king, there’s something even more valuable in our churches that needs to be given away. And since this level holds more valuable resources, it’s the hardest to open up freely. Wilson concludes on this third and hardest level of giving:

This is the hardest generosity, especially as it pertains to our “best and brightest.” Churches tend to be stingy with their leaders and leadership prospects.
Many churches will not endeavor to plant churches because they cannot trust God enough to send quality missionaries away — or, more bluntly, to drop in attendance.

Many churches will not cooperate with other local churches for fear of losing people to the other church. This stinginess with people is an idolatry very difficult to kill.

But a gospel-centered church will grow into a kingdom-mindedness that is a constant reminder that no local church owns anybody and that what is best for every local church is whatever is best for the expansion of the gospel and worship of Christ.

On this level we become not only generous. More than that, we are becoming courageous in a way that will lead others to taste and see the Lord is good. Grateful for the churches and leaders who have been generous with Kari and I.

  1. Faithfully Frugal: Spend Less, Give More, Live More, releases the first week of March on Amazon Kindle (ebook only at this time). ↩
  2. Research by the Barna Group: “Americans Donate Billions to Charity, But Giving to Churches Has Declined.” ↩
 

Courage: providing for us what we cannot.

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We often think of giving and provision as an element of generosity. Giving says something about the recipient (“you’re valued”), and when this giving costs us something it also says something about the giver (“I trust God”). When one gives up what they need in order to provide for others, that person demonstrates their faith (really courage) that God will then provide in the future, satisfying all needs.

Consider the ultimate sacrifice, where love motivated the deepest kindness, most costly generosity, embodied by the most courageous One:

“God takes action in Christ against sin, death, and the devil. The doctrine of justification is not about the workings of impersonal law in the universe, or about manipulating its outcomes, but it is about God. The moral law is simply the reflection of the character of God, and when God acts to address the outcomes of the broken moral law, he addresses these himself, himself taking the burden of his own wrath, himself absorbing in the person of Christ the judgment his righteous character cannot but demand, himself providing what no sinner can give, himself absorbing the punishment no sinner can bear and live.”1

How does God provide for us? Through His relentless courage.

Why does God provide for us? Because He loves us.

Why are we moved to provide for others? Because we love them and trust God. Generosity and courage are relational. They’re easy to show in any language.

  1. David F. Wells, The Courage to Be Protestant (Grand Rapids, Mi.: Eerdmans, 2008), 201. ↩
 

Relationally generous.

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Ever felt too empty to give more to those who ask or need, or forgive one more time that person who doesn’t really deserve it?

Consider the limitations of your own soul, and then move from that tiresome place to consider the infinite grace of God found in Jesus — the One who gave far more than He received, and continues to give to us who don’t deserve one ounce of His compassion.

“Generosity is not contingent on what you receive, but on what you are willing to give… If we only give what we have received, we are nothing more than relational and emotional barterers.”

—Erwin Raphael McManus, Uprising: A Revolution of the Soul, 136.

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”

——Paul speaking to the Ephesian Elders, applying the words of Jesus, Acts 20:35

In a world stocked full of self-style self-help gurus and manuals, the whole “God helps those who help themselves” mottoes fall far short. God helps those who plead on His Mercy. And He gives them more grace than they can manage to give away.

It’s hard to count on one hand how many times I hear as a pastor each week, “I just need to learn how to love and forgive myself more.” That’s an incomplete load of nonsense. (It’s partly true, as are all lies.) Find your dignity and worth in Christ, who has become your identity in all the ways He impressed the Father for you, and quit focusing all your energies on loving yourself — that’s code here in the West for normalizing our innate self-centeredness.

Why is it more blessed to give than to receive? Because that’s what God is like. He’s a Giver, not a Taker. Be like Him and quite taking so much and start giving yourself away. I’ll be seeking the same.

 

Tomorrow: go without shoes.

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Because millions of kids go everyday without shoes, as I mentioned last week.

Why all the fuss? Who needs shoes?

TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie says that not having shoes puts kids at a heightened risk of injury, disease and infection. Among the soil-transmitted risks that most can’t afford to prevent and treat are:

  • Hookworm: Causes anemia, stunted physical and mental development and, on occasion, congestive heart failure. Affects up to one-fifth of the world’s population.
  • Podoconiosis or “mossy foot disease”: Causes swelling of the feet and legs due to prolonged exposure to certain types of irritant soil.
  • Chiggers: Bites on the feet and ankles from these mites can cause severe itching and hives.
  • Tetanus: Potentially fatal infectious disease caused by bacteria entering the body through cuts or other open wounds. Causes painful muscle spasms and locked jaw.

Want to give?

Our family supports the intentional Gospel-driven work of great organizations such as World Vision, Compassion, Africa New Life (Rwanda), and Open Arms (Kenya). We intentionally focus on the needs in Africa, but there are opportunities all over the globe for us to curb our consumerism and give joyfully to a cause greater than ourselves.

Maybe your Tuesday without shoes will go something like this:

 

One sign it will be a good day.

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How does your day begin? Why on some days are we happy and free, and other days we wake up on the proverbial wrong-side-of the-bed? Perhaps there are many reasons, but consider a broader question first.

Where does generosity come from? We might tend to think we will be more generous with our time, talents, and treasure if only we had more. Or, if there were easier ways to ‘plug in’ and invest our time, use our talents, and give our treasure to others.

All of those opportunities are already before us. Everyday, and (just about) each moment. Being generous begins with being thankful. Gratitude is the key to changing our hearts to want to want to give our lives away for a cause much greater than our little lives.

Here’s a simple exercise we started doing a couple years back: on garbage day, watch the garbage truck pick up your trash. Seriously. Let’s pause our breakneck speed and consider the beauty of how someone drives by and picks up our trash. Better yet, when we hear the truck around the corner, say to our children, ‘Let’s watch the garbage truck!’ and rush to the window together to be awed.

Wait for the questions … this is a routine for us every Wednesday morning as my son considers important questions like “what do they do with all that garbage?” It has sparked many conversations on how the world works, our chores and responsibilities, why the recycling container is 4x the size as that garbage can, and how we can today choose to be thankful (aka “have a happy heart”).

Since the garbage truck circles around the back of our house, then up the other side of the street, back around on our side, and exits our neighborhood to the one behind us, there are four opportunities to say “there’s the garbage truck.” Of course, this may be a boy thing, and I’m doubtful our daughter will one day be as enthused. (We do the same thing with the street sweeper.)

Can you believe we are able to roll our garbage out to the curb? For about $20 a month? Are you kidding me? (Remember those old tin cans with the round lids that tended to blow off? Just remembered they didn’t have wheels, AND we had to purchase the cans ourselves.

I remember being jealous once as a kid that the neighbors had a fancy set of cans; they were colored plastic with special lids and built-in bungee cords that would latch them shut. They never had to be late to school because their cans tipped over with trash littering the street. We did.

There are people in developing nations walking trash across the city, barefoot, in the heat of the day, parched and yet not complaining about their lot in life. And I get to witness someone come by my house weekly and take our garbage out of sight and out of mind. In fact, there are two, as the recycling truck comes along later.

Sure there are opportunities for us to complain, worry, and get anxious. But if today the garbage truck stopped by to take your stinky heap of waste — that’s a good sign today will be a good day.