Temptations will come if your ministry or church is doing good work.  Opportunities will show up – projects, partnerships, or prosperity.  The naïve see them as potential to increase impact.  The ambitious see them as a chance for growth.  The insecure see them as the ticket to cement legacy.  The aging see them as the plan for succession.  The wise see them as a cause for caution or a trap to avoid.  The seasoned see them as another attempt to derail the mission.  The resilient see them as a reason to play the long game.  The faithful see them as a lack of trust in God’s provision.

Those moments came early and often at Meet The Need.  Start charging.  Turn it into a business.  Sign an exclusive agreement.  Market for internal church volunteering.  Advertise on the website.  Build software churches want, not what they need.  Never criticize your customer base.  Let others do the writing.  Apply for government grants.  Acquire facilities.  Hire flashy non-Christians.  Partner with the high profile.  Validate via association with a revered secular institution.  Solve the “problem” without the Gospel.  Run the big event without forming relationships.  The list could go on…

Meet The Need said no to all of those and is still here – not just surviving, but thriving, 25 years later.  Yes, it’s the worst business model ever but the Lord kept opening doors and supplied whatever we needed.  There were moments in the early years that looked bleak, but when something had to happen that day, week, or month – God intervened every time.  I had lost the taste for money from a career around it – on Wall Street, University of Chicago MBA, and Management Consulting to CFOs.  Yet Jesus brought us people still living in that world who caught His vision for our ministry.

What is Bad (and Good) Charity?

Good charity is united, Christ-centered, relational, dignifying, empowering, compassionate, and life-changing.  Bad charity is solo, hopeless, transactional, impersonal, demotivating, seasonal, and brand-building.  Good is on level footing because we’re all in some form of poverty.  Bad positions the rich to help the poor achieve the American dream.  Good emphasizes capabilities and produces hope.  Bad accentuates weaknesses and produces shame.  Good tracks biblical flourishing.  Bad tracks volume-based metrics.

Why does bad tend to crowd out good?  There’s not much money in the arduous, anonymous work of serving quietly, personally behind the scenes.  Decentralizing and empowering never made anyone wealthy except in spiritual terms.  Notoriety comes from buildings, branding, and broadcasting.  Adding names of the side of facilities or onto lists works every time.  Big vision gets big dollars.  Large numbers attract high-capacity givers.  Staying small risks not being noticed.  Collaboration risks dipping into donor pools.  Unity risks compromising theological self-righteousness.

Yet the Lord always provides for good charity.  The world always provides for bad charity.  Government funding is the most obvious temptation: requirements not to bring up Jesus, volume metrics to maintain grants, causes appealing to political powers, positioning to represent minority leadership, and administrative control to lock in future awards.  However, private charitable giving encourages similar behaviors.  Corporate and high-net worth giving flows primarily to the same local charities that attract the most attention because executives are connected, signage is visible, facilities are impressive, messaging is non-religious, events are publicized – and authentic life transformation is negligible.  Church and corporate volunteers flock to those organizations as well, checking the compassion box at the holiday season.  Donor management systems recognized those dynamics and added volunteer management capabilities to convert volunteers into donors as they walk out the door.

Most Churches Choose Bad Charity over Good

Churches don’t accept government funding or leverage corporate volunteers, but typically opt for bad charity, like:

• seasonal “compassion” events that make members feel good about having done something
• “outreach” with church branding that doubles as advertising
• control over local missions initiatives, even those recommended by members
• not providing many opportunities for community service to open doors to evangelism, so not equipping churchgoers to share (and defend) their faith
• on-site drop-offs or meal packing that insulate members from contact with beneficiaries
• monetary collections to fund charity, replacing hands-on ministry to families in need of help and hope

Those options involve less effort, inconvenience, and exposure to alternatives for deploying charitable capital.  Erecting barriers keeps the focus on the church when all eyes should be on those served.  Jesus’ mission statement was to reach the lost, ill, poor, and persecuted outside the “4 walls”.  Those were His intended “customer”.  He associated and identified with them.  Good charity views churchgoers like Kingdom employees to equip and deploy to pursue those “customers”.  Bad charity treats churchgoers like consumers to attract and retain.

Church plants typically begin by doing good charity.  They need to build relationships, invest in the community, make disciples, and gain traction by getting involved in initiatives that bless their neighbors.  Good charity grows the church until the temptations mount to transition to bad charity.  Size means obligations and expectations.  Performance, “customer” service, and accommodations drive up expenses and debt.  Focus shifts internally to managing operations, measuring nickels and noses, and transactional “compassion”.  It’s a rare church that remains as externally-focused, discipleship-driven, and empowerment-oriented after it reaches “critical mass”.

Dependence and entitlement, bad charity hallmarks, have different meanings in a church (versus non-profit) context.  For churches, those terms encompass:

• entrusting responsibilities belonging to all Christ-followers to church leaders
• making pastors focal points, drawing attention to themselves
• churches failing when pastors fall
• catering to member needs more than challenging them to personify “church”
• encouraging church invitations as a convenient alternative to personal witness
• less emphasis on the congregation’s actions (obedience, repentance) for God than their desires (relief from suffering) from God

Bad charity will continue to crowd out good charity within churches as long as the definition of “church” revolves around a place, a pastor, or a weekly event.

How to Start (or Keep) Doing Good Charity

As churches, ministries, and initiatives gain momentum, followings, and “success”, leaders should resist natural urges to welcome “exciting” new opportunities, new people, new resources, new approaches, and new partnerships without:

• remembering the vision God entrusted to them and protect it at all costs
• praying for discernment to understand intentions and resist temptation
• detecting competing interests and agendas before they destroy unity
• turning the relational and transformational into transactional and eventful
• exchanging divinely eternal hope for worldly temporal help
• empowering the capable rather than rescuing the dependent
• measuring impact in terms of life-changing depth versus activity-based scale
• choosing hard, slow collaboration over exclusivity with big promises
• training Christians to share and defend their faith, not abdicating to pastors
• delaying external compassion until completing internal priorities
• compromising to promote virtue of organizations over value of causes

Good charity will always maintain a Christ-centered, dignity-building, relationship-activated, and mission-driven focus in the face of self-interested or secular headwinds.

It’s Your Turn…

Based on our definitions here, is your church and ministry involved primarily in good or bad charity?