Nothing in my childhood foreshadowed the calling awaiting me. An ominous beginning beset with divorces, alcoholism, neglect, and a speech impediment portended a perilous future. I grew up in several households, combinations of mom, dad, stepmom, and stepdad, with only hints of spirituality and cultural Christianity. It wasn’t until 8th grade that I met my heavenly Father, ending my search for a loving parent. The boy who had acted out his insecurities by vandalizing, starting fights, breaking into buildings, running away from home, skipping school, and nearly failing out – was transformed by finding someone, a Savior, who cared about him.
Finding Christ…
The Lord introduced Himself to me the same way He orchestrated the other significant events that led me where I am today – by turning selfish intent into selfless service to achieve His purposes. In this instance, as a blended family in Atlanta with seven kids in the late 70s, private high school was unaffordable and public school inadvisable. The only option was a small, inexpensive Christian academy a couple miles down the road. Faithless necessity led me to faith in Jesus. With a newfound sense of worth and value, I discovered God-given gifts for academics, athletics, writing, and even public speaking.
However, those successes didn’t eliminate the insecurities of a loveless youth. I became a classic overachiever overcompensating to earn what my family hadn’t given. High school valedictorian opened doors to renowned Washington & Lee University, where I started Bible studies as a Freshman but by Senior year regressed to social chairman of the Sigma Chi fraternity. Upon graduation, I was offered a coveted position on Wall Street in investment banking with Merrill Lynch and then a legislative aid role with a U.S. Congressman on the House Banking Committee. The nation’s top graduate school for business, the University of Chicago, liked that story of viewing financial services from both sides – Wall Street and Capitol Hill. With that MBA, I worked for the next seven years in management consulting with Ernst & Young and PwC, specializing in Customer Relationship Management in the banking industry.
Finding a Ministry…
My self-centered ambitions led me to the top, but also to my knees, realizing I had done little to serve the Lord or His children who were enduring an upbringing like mine. Disillusioned, I began praying for a greater purpose than gaining wealth and notoriety. Meanwhile, I was recruited away from the Big-5 to lead the Financial Services practice for a Dot-com consulting firm. It was there, developing strategies for eBusiness CEOs, that my prayers were answered. I had been attending a large church in Atlanta and asked them what I could do on the weekends more impactful than playing golf with friends. I shared about my interests and skills, hoping they’d be involved in local poverty alleviation efforts that could leverage my background. However, they had no answers or opportunities, instead referring me to the Atlanta Union Mission to inquire about serving the homeless.
As a student of scripture, I knew my church’s disconnect from the community and poor wasn’t biblical. As a consultant, I researched and discovered churches began abdicating their historical role as America’s food bank and homeless shelter in the early 1900s (after the New Deal and failed Social Gospel movement). As an eCommerce strategist, I realized the same web-based solutions our firm was building for business partners could reconnect and mobilize a fragmented body of Christ. That revelation occurred during a drive from Jacksonville back to Atlanta in 1999. I pulled off the next exit and spent the next few hours handwriting the business plan for Meet The Need.
Once again, selfish intent had led to selfless service. The Lord knew all the capabilities I’d acquired throughout my career would be needed to launch a ministry with such audacious goals. Rather than volunteering at a shelter, God wanted me to help millions of Christians find opportunities to live out His plans for them to impact others.
Finding a Mission…
Little did I know at the time, but there was much more to the story of how God had perfectly arranged my life to address a larger, critical need – church reform. Pastors had told us, “Build it and we will come”, claiming that connection was the only impediment to year-round, relational compassion. So in the early 2000s Meet The Need built the first collaborative Volunteer Management, Event Management, and Case Management tools. We removed all impediments to church adoption – no fees, white labeled to integrate seamlessly, and controllable to only show designated needs. Yet when they implemented Meet The Need, most circumvented our intent and objectives, using the platforms seasonally and not in unity with other churches.
After watching activity levels in our apps skyrocket each Thanksgiving and Christmas, we began investigating the root causes behind the precipitous drop off after the holidays. Our work with thousands of churches across the country for over a decade provided a statistically significant sample to evaluate trends and tendencies. When we completed that analysis, it became clear why the Lord had led me to Customer Relationship Management consulting years earlier. For me, the decision to transition from Business Intelligence to CRM consulting had been opportunistic. Yet God once again turned selfish intent into selfless service when our research found that it was a CRM problem keeping churches from uniting in continual community transformation. They were violating the most fundamental CRM principles – and Biblical mandates:
- Allowing “church” to be seen as a place, pastor, and event – not people
- Since members ARE the church, they can’t be its “customer”
- Yet most treated those intended to be Kingdom “employees” like “customers”
- Thereby ignoring the real “customers” (those who don’t know Jesus) by not training “employees” (churchgoers) to pursue and serve them
Any organization focused on the wrong customers and neglecting its target customers will decline in growth, impact, influence, and reputation. Discipleship, evangelism, and compassion have been diminishing in American churches for decades. Resources were reallocated from equipping and deploying disciples to attracting and retaining churchgoers. Pastors are no longer in a position to ask more of their members than a car manufacturer can ask of its customers. Toyota can’t demand buyers read the owner’s manual, recommend its cars, or service its vehicles as conditions of purchase. Nor do churches feel at liberty to hold members accountable for studying scripture, sharing the Gospel, or serving the poor. Instead, they exchange those biblical imperatives for easier, institution-building requests like Invite (friends), Involve (in church activities), and Invest (in giving). If invited guests show up next Sunday, pastors assume responsibility for leading them to Christ. Rather than disciple multiplication, the Lord’s math, churches practice member addition. As a result, the pews of holy worship services across the U.S. are filled with many who don’t worship Jesus.
Jesus knew that His church had crossed the line. I believe He sent me into CRM consulting because only someone with substantial CRM and biblical depth would have the insight and qualifications to determine who churches were treating as their “customer” and identify who the “customer” should be. Ten years ago when this blog began, I was a “voice crying out in the wilderness” but now many others understand that hesitancy to challenge and eagerness to cater defines who a church considers its “customer”. Meet The Need’s mission became church reform at a critical inflection point in the history of the Church in America. Until we realign our definition of “church” and its “customer” with God’s Word, the Church’s decline will continue.
Finding a Career…
How part-time ministry became a career is another remarkable story of God turning selfish intent into selfless service. After seven years working on Meet The Need while still in consulting, I felt the Lord calling me to go full-time with the ministry. However, it was 2008 – Meet The Need had no funds, the Great Recession raged, we were heavily invested in real estate, and had a one year old child. Leaving a secure, lucrative job at that time seemed irrational, if not certifiable. Yet given all the miracles Jesus had performed to lead me from hopeless child to useful servant, walking away from security and wealth felt like the safest, wisest path.
Only the Lord knew what would happen next. Six months later a builder broke its promise not to lower prices on its twelve unsold units until our investment group had unloaded ours. That promise had been a condition for our decision to close on the nearly million dollar condo rather than forfeit our preconstruction investment. Now we were holding a unit worth hundreds of thousands less than we’d paid. On top of that, my investment partners experienced a health crisis, a job loss, and mounting debt – leaving me to cover the deficit and massive mortgage. If I still had my high consulting income when the builder slashed its prices, the bank never would have accepted a buyer’s lower offer to purchase our condo. I avoided possible bankruptcy only because I made the illogical decision to take that leap of faith. When I chose selflessness, the Lord transformed my self-centered plans into a powerful demonstration of His glory.
It’s Your Turn…
How has our Father taken what you meant for your own good and used it to bless others and advance His Kingdom?
