Praying for Your Children

Praying Ephesians 1:15-23 for Our Children 

15 For this reason, I pray for my children’s faith in the Lord Jesus and their love for all the saints, 

16 I have not stopped giving thanks for my children, remembering them in my prayers. 

17 I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give my children the spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that they may know him better. 

18 I pray also that the eyes of my children’s heart may be enlightened in order that they may know the hope to which he has called them, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 

19 and that my children may know his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, 

20 which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 

21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 

22 And God placed all things under his feet and appointed him to be head over everything for the church, 

23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills everything in every way.

Penetrating a Gospel Resistant Culture

I recently consulted with a group in the Denver, CO area.  We were considering a creative church plant strategy in a church resistant area.

When our demographic study of the Lowry area indicated a strong resistance to traditional church planting methods, we asked Gospel Saturation Missionary Kenny Moore to help us understand the Celtic model of Evangelism.

Here are some vital principles:

A Few of the Essential Core Values For A Celtic Model

1. Must get to know and understand the context—the demographics; psychographics and ekklegraphics of an identifiable community like Lowry

2. Must be incarnational

• a. Planters must live, work, play, serve, worship, and educate children in the local (Lowry) community

• b. We need to learn: to move a team in; begin to engage opinion leaders

3. Must not compartmentalize the gospel

• a. We need to learn: to depend upon God; listen to the Spirit; trust the Spirit; receive the empowerment of the Spirit

4. Must not default from prayer to activity or default from simple to complicated

• a. We have made church plants like Lowry harder than they need to be

• b. We need to learn: to let God do the heavy lifting and that if what we are doing seems complicated, exhausting, stressful, family damaging, etc., it is not Sprit led

5. Must not be in a hurry to “be” the church gathered, but rather establish the DNA that the church scattered is more the body of Christ than the church gathered

• a. Do not make “church” the center of the Christian life, but rather Christ as center

• b. Need to learn: to move at the Spirit’s pace and receive the Spirit’s empowerment

6. Must reverse our strategy

• a. Conventional wisdom: to first gather a crowd, begin to disciple converts/build core group, and then engage in community transformation

• b. We need to learn: to first engage in community transformation, disciple converts/build a core group and then gather a crowd

7. Must approach target community in more of a post-modern way instead of a hyper-modern way

• a. Celts were more right brained than left brained

• b. We need to learn: to embrace a more random, intuitive, holistic, synthesizing, and subjective manner instead of a logical, sequential, rational, analytical and objective mode of church planting

8. Must jettison western evangelical ethos for a Celtic ethos

• a. Western evangelical ethos: “A place to BELIEVE, BELONG, BECOME”

• b. Celtic ethos: “Belonging comes before believing”

Personal Donor Touches

Get personal

Our research at BBS & Associates [servantheart.com] indicated that any personal connection strengthens the relationship with the donor. Ministries involving personal sponsorship of a child, a missionary, a staff member, or some other human being have a distinct advantage here. Without the personal connection, donors are likelier to express a sense of “distance” from the organization, perhaps even the feeling that it’s “purely a money relationship.” So a handwritten note, a heartfelt thank-you letter, a phone call expressing appreciation — particularly a warm “welcome call” to a first-time donor or (perhaps even better) a second-time donor — can make a significant difference. You might also call a donor when she gives her largest single gift, just to say thanks. Or arrange to place an annual call to every donor, or as many calls as are feasible, expressing gratitude and perhaps sharing a brief testimony reflecting the impact of the donor’s giving — but without any hint of a request for another contribution.

(It’s always crucial, of course, for the individual making the phone call to talk to the donor as a human being, not from a mechanical-sounding script and not in a stiff reading-the-script tone of voice.)
We recommend that ministries send more handwritten appeal letters, even assuming they have to be mass-produced. Handwriting signals lower expense, yet a more personal touch.

What donors are saying…

“It’s important that you feel appreciated.”

“[A phone call] always adds a degree of sincerity that you aren’t just a number and you are appreciated for what you do.”

What are you doing with donors to “get personal”?

Fundraising Gala Drawbacks

As we plan our fall event, I am intrigued by these insights…

When told that it was a gala day for him, Groucho Marx responded, “At my age, a gal a day is about all I can handle.”

The gala — day, night, whatever — is a time-honored method of increasing awareness and raising money. But in his book “Fundraising Strategies for Community Colleges,” Steve Klingman recommended scrapping the gala event and replacing it with an annual fund campaign. For him, the gala day is more than many nonprofits can handle.

Klingman acknowledged the positives of gala events: fundraising, showing the flag, cultivation, recognition, volunteer involvement and people having a good time and feeling warm and fuzzy, but he maintains that they are overwhelmed by the negatives.

• A gala event has a low yield as a fundraising vehicle.
• A gala saps annual fund dollars. Rarely do event-driven programs co-exist with robust annual fund dollars.
• A gala pre-empts other fundraising efforts for a significant portion of the year.
• When staff time is added in, net revenue is too low.
• A gala focuses donor attention on the event rather than the mission.
• A gala distracts volunteers from more beneficial involvement. Using them to make annual fund calls is much better use of their time.
• Donors quickly forget a gala.
• A gala is expensive to produce. The cost of such items as dinner, facility and balloons can easily eat up 50 percent of each ticket.

But Is Envisioning Biblical?

But Is Envisioning Biblical? Great insights from my friend Bob...

Authentic Leadership

Leaders have faults like all of us.  As fellow-strugglers, leaders need to learn the value of authentic apologizing.  Honestly owning a problem will go a long way in earning the respect of those you lead - if done correctly.  It might be helpful to have an ‘apology primer.’  Here you go:

• I’m sorry: this is the core of a genuine apology.  “I’m sorry.” or “I apologize.”  It’s the stake in the ground to communicate that you truly regret your behavior and wish you had acted differently. No apology is complete without this.

• Stay in the first person:  Many, perhaps most, apologies run off the rails at this point, when the apologizer shifts into the second person, e.g., “I’m sorry….you didn’t understand me.” Or “I’m sorry….you feel that way.” Suddenly, you’re no longer apologizing for your actions; you’re telling the other person that you regret their actions or feelings.  A true apology sounds like, “I’m sorry I….” or “I’m sorry we…”

• Don’t equivocate:  Once you said what you regret about your actions or words, don’t water it down with excuses.  That can blow the whole thing.  The former manager of my apartment building once said to me, “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten back to you about your security deposit, but you have to understand we’ve got hundreds of tenants.”  I definitely didn’t feel apologized to – in fact, I felt he was telling me I was being inconsiderate to hold him accountable!  Just let the apology stand on its own. “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten back to you about your security deposit.”

• Say how you’ll fix it.  This seals the deal.  If you genuinely regret your words or actions, you’ll to commit to changing. This needs to be simple, feasible and specific. “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten back to you about your security deposit. We’ll have an answer to you by this Friday.”

• Do it. I know some people who don’t have a hard time apologizing, but seem to have a hard time following through on their apologies. If you apologize and say you’re going to behave differently, and then don’t – it’s actually worse than not having apologized in the first place. When you don’t follow through, people question not only your courage, but also your trustworthiness.

So there you have it.  Next time you’re clearly in the wrong, take deep breath, put aside your self-justification, your excuses, your blame, your defensiveness, and simply apologize. Being courageous in this way is generally scary in anticipation. But it feels great once you’ve done it….to you, and to those you lead.

Leaders should model Humility as a Fellow Struggler

Leaders have faults like all of us.  As fellow-strugglers, leaders need to learn the value of authentic apologizing.  Honestly owning a problem will go a long way in earning the respect of those you lead - if done correctly.  It might be helpful to have an ‘apology primer.’  Here you go:

• I’m sorry: this is the core of a genuine apology.  “I’m sorry.” or “I apologize.”  It’s the stake in the ground to communicate that you truly regret your behavior and wish you had acted differently. No apology is complete without this.

• Stay in the first person:  Many, perhaps most, apologies run off the rails at this point, when the apologizer shifts into the second person, e.g., “I’m sorry….you didn’t understand me.” Or “I’m sorry….you feel that way.” Suddenly, you’re no longer apologizing for your actions; you’re telling the other person that you regret their actions or feelings.  A true apology sounds like, “I’m sorry I….” or “I’m sorry we…”

• Don’t equivocate:  Once you said what you regret about your actions or words, don’t water it down with excuses.  That can blow the whole thing.  The former manager of my apartment building once said to me, “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten back to you about your security deposit, but you have to understand we’ve got hundreds of tenants.”  I definitely didn’t feel apologized to – in fact, I felt he was telling me I was being inconsiderate to hold him accountable!  Just let the apology stand on its own. “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten back to you about your security deposit.”

• Say how you’ll fix it.  This seals the deal.  If you genuinely regret your words or actions, you’ll to commit to changing. This needs to be simple, feasible and specific. “I’m sorry we haven’t gotten back to you about your security deposit. We’ll have an answer to you by this Friday.”

• Do it. I know some people who don’t have a hard time apologizing, but seem to have a hard time following through on their apologies. If you apologize and say you’re going to behave differently, and then don’t – it’s actually worse than not having apologized in the first place. When you don’t follow through, people question not only your courage, but also your trustworthiness.

So there you have it.  Next time you’re clearly in the wrong, take deep breath, put aside your self-justification, your excuses, your blame, your defensiveness, and simply apologize. Being courageous in this way is generally scary in anticipation. But it feels great once you’ve done it….to you, and to those you lead.