To find out how Christian fund raisers perceive their calling, the Christianity Today Institute spoke with four individuals with extensive experience in raising money for ministry. Gordon Loux is president of Prison Fellowship International, an organization founded by Charles Colson that ministers to convicted criminals and their families. David Clark is vice-president of marketing at the Christian Broadcasting Network, the highly successful television ministry of evangelist Pat Robertson. Ed Hales pastors the First Baptist Church of Portland, Maine, and served his denomination as director of stewardship. And as president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, Arthur Borden monitors 341 member organizations who have agreed to abide by the ECFA’S 12 standards for fund raising.
CT Institute: Many pastors and church leaders say they don’t enjoy asking people for money. Why?
Ed Hales : It appears to be self-serving. That’s unfortunate, because it’s unbiblical not to preach good stewardship. Besides, there are a lot of things we do in the ministry that we enjoy as a matter of conviction and commitment. So as a minister of the gospel and a man who attempts to be faithful to the Word of God, I see no option but to preach on stewardship and encourage my congregation to give generously.
Art Borden : Last year I received an appeal from a Christian organization. I thought it was a very creative appeal letter except for one thing. It began with the director apologizing for writing the letter. Christian organizations that sponsor worthy causes should never apologize when they ask for money. The Bible just doesn’t support that approach.
David Clark : If we think of fund raising and money only as a means, it reflects our lack of understanding of what the Bible teaches about stewardship. Stewardship is not just a means, it is an end. It involves not just giving of money, it involves giving everything we have.
CT Institute: What is responsible for this lack of understanding among pastors and church leaders and congregations?
Gordon Loux : All of us sitting around this table have been to seminary to train for the ministry. Yet in my four years of seminary, never once did I have a class on stewardship or managing church finances. The closest thing to any formal instruction on money was a class in Christian education administration.
Hales : That was true for me, too. I never read anything substantive until I was a pastor and had to come up with a biblical basis for motivating people to give. Our seminaries reflect the church’s response to stewardship, and I believe in this area Satan has blinded our eyes.
It’s been a hobby of mine to collect books on stewardship, and I have quite a collection. So whenever I’m on the road, I stop at seminaries to see what they have in their libraries. Not only do I find few books, but many are ancient and outdated. We are just not providing the training. No wonder, then, when the pastors come along they’re nervous about it. They can’t preach or teach in an area they know little about.
CT Institute: As you know, religious fund raising has received a great deal of negative attention lately. What effect does that have on your efforts to raise money for ministry?
Loux : Naturally, it complicates our task. Thoughtful people read these reports and are really offended by what they learn. If these are new donors or ones that are not familiar with our ministry, they may leave us. On the other hand, the people who really believe in our ministry—the ones with whom we have been able to establish credibility—these donors generally aren’t affected by reports of abuses in other organizations.
CT Institute: Since the lion’s share of criticism has been aimed at television ministries, has CBN suffered?
Clark : Not really. But a more important factor is the way we have let the secular media define what is appropriate or inappropriate stewardship. In recent incidents related to Oral Roberts, I’m afraid even Christians have bought into a nontheistic view of stewardship. Either a man hears from God or he doesn’t hear from God. Are we prepared to say that as a man seeks God for leadership and direction in a ministry he cannot expect to hear from God? If so, that’s a nontheistic view. Now, I may not like the style, but substance and style are two different things.
Hales : However, we must remember that God does not speak to us in ways that are not in character with his written revelation.
CT Institute: Both CBN and Prison Fellowship use direct-mail techniques to solicit donations, removing the person-to-person stigma of asking for money. Does this make it any easier for you to talk confidently about stewardship?
Loux : Direct mail is only part of our approach. We’ve attempted to cultivate a personalized relationship with our donors and supporters. Our goal is to bring them into the family, and sometimes that’s done by direct mail, sometimes that’s done by telephone, sometimes that’s done by retreats. V. Raymond Edman, the former president of Wheaton College, said he was in the friend-raising business, not the fund-raising business. Certainly direct mail is not as personal as speaking with an individual, but it helps us establish a relationship.
Clark : Both the church and parachurch groups must move into what secular marketers are calling relational marketing. By 1990, half of all advertising and marketing dollars will be spent on direct marketing. Advertisers don’t keep sending you catalogs because they don’t work. For those who respond, a relationship is begun. And if ministry is to assume a servant role to its donors, the key is this relational thing. That’s where ultimate accountability lies. Whether fund raising be done through television, direct mail, the telephone, or one to one, the donor must see himself as someone who is participating rather than being manipulated.
CT Institute: But doesn’t the technology of direct mail make it easy to manipulate? For example, segmenting your mailing list enables you to approach those with higher incomes differently than those with lower incomes.
Clark : True, but that isn’t manipulation. In fact, segmentation of a donor base is really good stewardship. Why make an appeal to someone who doesn’t have the resources to give? That doesn’t make any sense at all. You’re much better off if you can find within your donor base a group that will be more responsive to an appeal. I view that as almost akin to when Jesus told the fishermen to cast their nets to the other side of the boat where the fish were.
Hales : I’m getting very uncomfortable with what I think I’m hearing you say. For example, what if your demographic research tells you that a certain segment of your audience will always respond to a crisis. Are you saying you would make sure appeals to that segment would somehow present a crisis? If so, I think you’re manipulating people.
Clark : No, we’re not saying that at all, Ed. What we are saying is that not to segment is bad management. In your church, you know there are some people who want their money to go to youth ministry and some who want to support world missions. And as their pastor, you try to find opportunities for them to give.
We have to be careful that we don’t buy into technological determinism. By that I mean, let’s not let the technology drive us—let’s drive the technology. The computer is merely an instrument, and the issue is how to use it most effectively. It makes sense to offer your donors opportunities for giving that match their interests.
Borden : The problem with any of these techniques is the motivation behind them. The technology isn’t good or bad, but our reasons for using one or the other determine whether the technology is being used ethically. It’s easy to look at another organization and criticize, but what we need is for all Christian organizations to constantly examine their motives for every fund-raising effort. One of my concerns is that we focus on a few, highly visible television ministries and overlook our own organizations.
CT Institute: Let’s look at some of the specific criticisms leveled at Christian fund raisers. For starters, what about the flood of appeals? Do you ask too frequently?
Clark : We work very hard at “The 700 Club” to confine our fund raising to three periods during the year. There are times, frankly, when we’ve thought we should break out of those boundaries and go at it pretty much all the time. But we are committed to this agreement with our viewers.
Loux : The first thing an organization must do is learn how to listen to God. Now, God speaks through the Scriptures, but he also speaks to us through people. We need, therefore, to be sensitive to the responses of our constituencies. One of the things we have learned by listening to our donors is that we’ve been making too many appeals to a certain segment of our list. So we’ve been making some changes.
CT Institute: Another criticism is that Christian organizations always seem to be involved in some kind of financial crisis.
Loux : When there is an earthquake in Colombia, that’s a legitimate crisis that we ought to respond to. I think what you’re refering to is the manufactured crisis, a practice that I find reprehensible.
Clark : There’s another aspect on crises, though. When regular crises occur, the organization is in a management crisis. It may actually be a financial crisis, but it’s a management problem that has to be dealt with. Somehow, we need to distinguish the appeals for legitimate needs from those requests to bail an organization out of bad management.
Borden : It really concerns me to see so many crises portrayed by Christian organizations, especially crises of physical hunger and suffering. True, the crisis may exist, but we seem too eager to play it up. Eventually, it inoculates donors against compassion. To protect themselves, people will start tuning out all this bad news.
Hales : When I was with our denomination’s fund-raising program we had this little phrase, “You can raise millions for missions but not a nickel for administration.” It was always easy to get money for missions because we could show pictures of our work with extremely poor citizens from other countries. The problem with this, though, is that the missionary programs aren’t going to go very far if we haven’t cared for the basic administrative needs as well.
Clark : I think what we have done is built our concept of stewardship on the basis of need. We’ve developed a whole generation of Christians that needs to be titillated in the right way before it will respond. But the biblical concept of stewardship focuses more on the need within our own hearts rather than the needs of the world. This raises an issue of accountability. If you raise money for missions, you’d better spend it for missions.
Hales : Of course; but what is missions? To get that missionary on the field there’s got to be someone to take care of the visa problem and coordinate the home base of support. We have become so enamored with developing and packaging these attractive appeals that our people miss the big picture. Instead of stewardship, we’ll soon be making specific appeals to pay for missions, Christian education, and resurfacing the parking lot.
CT Institute: What about the lifestyle issue? Are Christian leaders spending too much money on themselves rather than their ministries?
Hales : We need to be very careful about the images we project. When I was on the road representing my denomination, I flew into the mining region of upper Minnesota to call on some churches. I had to rent a car, and for some strange reason, the only car available was a fancy Chrysler New Yorker. There’s no way I could pull up in front of one of our churches driving that vehicle, so I asked the agent to do whatever he could to find me a smaller car. He finally located an old civilian Checker, and I had to pay the same for that as for the Chrysler. But it was more important for me not to show up at one of our churches driving a fancy car. Christian leadership must be sensitive to the tastes and lifestyles of their constituencies.
Borden : We’ve discussed this in the ECFA as it relates to members, but we haven’t been able to find a suitable criterion for deciding what’s extravagant. It’s so subjective. Though many on our standards committee have spoken against luxurious lifestyles in general, we have found it difficult to come up with specific standards.
Clark : There’s been some abuse here, but there’s also been a tremendous amount of hypocrisy in the press. Secular journalists make a big deal about some evangelist’s income—yet look what they make. They’re some of the highest-paid people in our society.
Borden : In defense of the press, however, a minister who appeals for funds probably has a bit more at stake in his lifestyle than a secular journalist. That minister is supported by the donations he solicits, while the journalist negotiates with the network for his or her salary.
Clark : In a sense, though, the journalist is accountable to the public, too, and it seems hypocritical for them to start talking about extravagant lifestyles.
CT Institute: What about the health-and-wealth promises made by some ministries? Is there any biblical basis for telling a donor his or her life will improve with the giving of a donation?
Loux : I think the whole health-and-welfare gospel is anathema, because you don’t see it in the Scriptures. It’s the twentieth century’s version of the sale of indulgences.
Clark : Yet there’s a lot of evidence that serving God results in a kind of redemptive lift. Just look at the Wesley revival in England and how it changed people’s lives for the better—even financially. That’s a little different, though, from saying, “Give me $500 and the Lord is going to give you $5,000 back.”
CT Institute: Regarding the relationship between the local church and those parachurch ministries, aren’t you competing with each other for valuable dollars?
Hales : No organization that seeks to minister in the name of Jesus Christ has any right to exist apart from what it may be able to do for the local church. If I understand the New Testament, the local church is the prime instrument of God’s ministry. Now, there are some things we’re not going to do very well. For example, we really are not very competent in the area of prison ministry. So an organization like Prison Fellowship is God’s gift to the church.
Loux : We need each other. But as in marriage, if one partner starts to exploit the other you have a breakdown in that relationship. I’m not embarrassed by the term parachurch because it means we are alongside of the church as a partner in ministry.
Clark : Of course we hear this a lot, but television ministries must justify their activities on the basis of (1) performing ministries whose complexity and resource needs are beyond the local church, or (2) by seeking the strength of the local church with their activities. We work with about 11,000 local churches, and last year we received more than 4 million calls from viewers requesting counseling. We sent hundreds of thousands of follow-ups to the local church. And on the air we say repeatedly, “Find a church where God’s Word is taught, and get into fellowship with believers.”
CT Institute: Is there need for more accountability among Christian organizations?
Loux : Certainly, and that’s one of the major reasons for having an organization like the ECFA. Its greatest contribution has been to help organizations come to a fuller understanding of what it means to be accountable to the constituents. It is in the best interest of all of us to show the world we are accountable to those who have entrusted their money to us.
Clark : I think we need to keep this matter of integrity in perspective. I really feel that most organizations are trying to be circumspect in their efforts to raise money for ministry. They are run by honest, well-intentioned people. If there are problems, it’s usually due to ignorance or incompetence. But there are very few people out there trying to mislead donors.
