Stress in life is inevitable.  Especially if you are involved in a vocation that centers around serving people.  For me, I’m a husband, father, pastor, and friend.  I love what I am called to do, but there is stress involved.  This is a given, even with life going relatively smooth.

Over the last year and some change, we have been through quite a lot.  We had an adoption fall through, my wife and baby almost died, we were blessed with a newborn, and recently my older daughter passed out and knocked out a tooth.  On top of all of this, there are some other difficult issues going on in my extended family.  All of these things produce stress, on top of the day-to-day of being a husband, father, and pastor of a new church. Continue reading →

NEVER!!!

I believe that the use of the highly manipulative nature of guilt in fundraising is one of the reasons that people HATE when the church/ministries talk about money. People have been abused emotionally (and sometimes verbally) for the sake of the dollar and this should not be so. As Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9:7:

Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

If God has called you to this work, God is able and more than willing to see to it that it is funded.

Here are a few tips to keep you from becoming the manipulative twerp that is harmful, rather than helpful:

1. Hope in Jesus: Jesus made a way for sinners to be reconciled to God. If you have been reconciled to the Father through the Son, then you are a child of God, whom has a great Father!
2. Serve More Than You Are Served: If your fundraising efforts aren’t postured from a desire to serve your donors in a way that strengthens their faith, then please, leave them alone!
3. Focus on the Mission: It is so tempting to focus on the funding at the expense of the mission. When a fundraiser is sold on the mission they are raising for, the funding will follow. There are times where we get ahead of the Lord and believe something is from Him that is not. That is still mercy. Be grateful, wise, and then in community refocus the mission.

Look, if you are fundraising there will be great moments of temptation where you are willing to use any means possible to fund your mission. Take it from me, don’t. Relationships are more meaningful in the long-run than the instant buck. Relationships should be stewarded just as much, if not more than money, but that’s a different post all together. Here are some of my other articles on fundraising:

• The 3 No-No’s of Fundraising
• The 7 Essentials of Fundraising
• Fundraising: Knowing When & How to Ask
• How George Mueller Jacked Up My Fundraising Efforts