For the last several years I have met with a group of friends who also work in Christian philanthropy to talk, share experiences and support each other. Every year the conversations are different because our issues change. As well, each time we convene the trust level goes up, and the barriers to discussing uncomfortable issues go down.
This year we discussed the ways both donors and ministries measure and evaluate results. While all of us have been around long enough to have seen the effect of the growing pressure on ministries to report (and sometimes inflate) their results for donors, it was a question from Peb Jackson that named the elephant in the room.
That seems to be Peb’s role each year. He sits quietly and then asks the obvious. There could not be a friendlier person in the world, but it is at times like this when you understand the difference between mere friendliness and someone being a genuine friend – one who tells the truth in love.
“Has anyone else noticed the eyes of major donors, especially the younger, beginning to glaze over when ministries describe the enormous numbers they are claiming? Is it just me or are others skeptical of the numerical ‘super-hype’ that has become standard and the sophisticated strategies that are producing and promising them with such confidence? Is everything finally measured by the standard of ‘how many’ and ‘how large’?”
There was, as you might guess, a pause in the conversation.
Peb went on, “I’ve been reading Eugene Peterson’s Run With The Horses and what he writes about successful ministry as defined by numbers and impact seems not to be the case with Jeremiah. Whatever results he had were far from impressive or encouraging. In fact, it would probably be seen as a failure. It would have been highly unlikely the ministry of Jeremiah would have attracted major funding given our current standards.”
Peb pulled out his iPad and read from the final chapter of Peterson’s book.
“Jeremiah chose to live by faith. Living by faith does not mean living with applause; living by faith does not mean playing on the winning team; living by faith demands readiness to live by what cannot be seen or controlled or predicted…We want to know that he was finally successful so that, if we live well and courageously, we also will be successful…In Egypt, the place he doesn’t want to be, with people who treat him badly, he continues determinedly faithful, magnificently courageous, heartlessly rejected – a towering life terrifically lived.”
Unfortunately, that was the last 30 minutes of our time, and we did not get to kick that one around the way it deserved. But, I’ve thought about what Peb said since returning home, and he is right. While there are those who have hidden their own lack of initiative under the guise of “faithfulness” there are so many others, like Jeremiah, who have lived without applause or influence. They have not been visionaries and entrepreneurs but they have been relentlessly faithful.
Oswald Chambers puts it this way for those of us who are tempted to gravitate toward the winning team or only invest in those ideas that are “changing the game.”
“Are you ready to be less than a mere drop in the bucket—to be so totally insignificant that no one remembers you even if they think of those you served?”
It’s worth asking not only about ministries but about ourselves as donors. Can we courageously give by faith although not knowing with certainty the results?