the missionaries you should actually support

There are two types of missionaries in this world: those that enjoy raising support, and those that absolutely hate it. I fall into the second group. In fact, even though I know hundreds of missionaries, I’ve only ever met a handful of people in the first group – those who can actually say, “YAY! FUNDRAISING!” without being completely cheeky.

I just spent two months in the States doing this thing called raising support – a really important task of connecting God’s people with the work He’s doing around the world. It’s a privilege. It’s humbling. It’s encouraging. And somehow very stressful.

It’s a reminder that everything belongs to God, and this work of ours is actually His.

I shared with a friend over lunch one day that I was not at all worried about reaching my goals because I know that the money is out there. Our father owns the cattle on a thousand hills, I said. My measly $210,000 to build a school and dig wells and run camps is pocket change for our God.

But, I added, I also realize that God has entrusted all His pennies to His children, and I confessed that as I traveled the country and interfaced with affluence, materialism, and keeping up with the Joneses, I was maybe a little bit concerned that the trustees of God’s account might not be so eager to hand it over.

Nevertheless, I persisted and wrapped up my time in the States with over half my goal reached. (And with plenty of faith that God would have a chat with the rest of His kids to bring in the remaining balance…)

Despite the challenges inherent in fundraising (I’m still nursing my introversion back to health), the main benefit is to be on the receiving end of affirmation again and again. Even from dirt-poor grad students I heard the words, “This ministry is amazing! I have no money, but this is amazing!” We praise God! What He’s doing is amazing. I did not talk to a single person who was not overwhelmingly supportive of God’s movement in Zambia. After all, the evidence is clear. People are being cared for, educated, fed. They are being set-free, blessed, changed. The school is an obvious success. Our camp has exploded and outpaced our facilities. We’ve seen a decrease in water-borne illness and a decrease in infant mortality. These are facts and they are compelling.

When people would say, “This is wonderful – we want to be a part of it!” I honestly wanted to blurt out, “Well of course you should!” Now, I’m classy so obviously I said something a bit more refined, like, “Thank you, that would be so helpful.” I did realize though that for the first time in our fundraising journey, we weren’t asking people to fund a what-could-be dream so much as an expansion of and improvement upon what already has proven to be successful; and this meant I could receive their affirmation with less relief and more concurrence.

I saw in the faces of each new member of our support team, a certain amount of discernment. They’ve seen a good thing and they’ve gotten on board, as they should. But in these personal encounters, I also took a few steps back and thought about the days when our presentation was quite different, like when Jeremy was in a tent and had nothing to show for himself. In those early years, there were ideas – hopes, possibilities, faith – but nothing material to offer as proof of future success. And predictably, precious few people enthusiastically got on board. A few did join us in the hope/possibility/faith boat, but the majority offered well wishes – some even coming right out with it: “we’ll support you after you’ve proved yourselves.”

Before Jeremy and I were married, he was subsisting off of $30 a month. It’s probably a good thing that he was under-funded, otherwise I might never have taken pity on him and offered him weekly suppers which never would have turned into nightly suppers which never would have turned into a marriage proposal or a family or a life. And so, we thank the good Lord for those $30 a month days.

When I first met Jeremy, he was more faithful and more faith-filled than any person I had ever known. (I suppose you have to be to live in a tent on a dollar a day.) And as he talked about Grandma Shirley, the one little old church lady who comprised his support “team,” it was obvious that she was  supporting this barefoot kid out in the bush for one reason: she was convinced he was being obedient.

I married that barefoot kid for his obedient faith, and have never regretted it. It was obedient faith that led us through our years as newlyweds, and through the various trials that come with pioneer missions. I remember our first fundraising trip back to the states, sitting down ahead of time and thinking about what we were going to say in the days of “we’re still trying to get things going,” – hoping to sound more impressive than we actually were, and then coming back to Zambia feeling a little deflated and praying that there were still Grandma Shirley’s out there who would sense the faithfulness and be generous for that reason alone.

And now fast-forward a decade. Our presentation sounds totally different. (You can actually watch me present here if you want!) We not only have a handle on what we are doing, but why we are doing it and why it’s important in the grand scheme of things. We love what we do and we believe in it fully, and this makes it pretty easy to talk about. It also makes me insanely thankful for the people who supported us before there was anything impressive at all.

Track with me for sixty seconds, because I think this is really important. I think given the modern, interconnected landscape, and an age of “asks,” where people have to sift through a few thousand good giving opportunities per year, we have fine-tuned our “worthy-cause-o-meter” so much so that we can pick out a sustainable, strategic, high-impact operation from a mile away. It has become a game of sorts, and missionaries have learned what it takes to win. These servants of the Lord have become part-time marketing professionals specializing in social media and Bono-esque jargon. Of course, the use of facebook get spun in a more “holy” light, but still, the landscape of missions is changing, and perhaps not for the better, as it’s the ones who play the game the best that get funded – not necessarily those who are being the most obedient.

We know a few hundred missionaries personally and, thanks to internet, can keep tabs on a few thousand more. The spectrum is impressive, ya’ll.

We know missionaries who accomplish little to nothing, but their instragram feed is so exotic that people throw cash at them.

We know others who secretly hate their life abroad, but out of fear, stay in it and raise thousands off of the pity of how much they are suffering for Christ. 

We know those who for their own business savvy have weaseled their way to something quite impressive, but in reality have just build their own kingdom.

We know those whose actual mission is an abomination, but whose public speaking style is so inspirational, they could convince a crowd to fund seafaring boats in the desert.

But then I think about that young man with ribs all sticking out, not complaining once about walking to town eighteen miles away because he had no gas for the vehicle, just happy – called that walk to town a “prayer walk”  – waiting on the Lord in all the literal senses… and now, in retrospect, all I can think is, “that kid had a clue.”

This I now know to be true: Obedience is absolutely the most undervalued indicator on the “who to support” rubric. Impressive work done disobediently is of no value, whereas even ordinary work carried out with obedience is of immeasurable worth.

The 21^st century fundraising game is depressing, and watching it from the inside, all the more so. What we see too often is that it’s the unassuming ones – the ones who spend their time in ministry and not marketing, who are better at doing stuff than photographing it, the ones who fear God more than man and therefore walk an unimpressive, but obedient path… they are the ones who take a hit financially.

God’s will, done God’s way will never lack God’s supply – needle point that on all the pillows, ye weary, faithful missionaries lacking funds tonight.

But, to be fair, looking at the other half of the equation, we must also reconcile this: As much as God blesses obedience in serving, He also blesses obedience in giving. While God will always provide eventually, disobedience in giving has its own earthly consequences. As resources get diverted to White Savior Barbie and the guy who probably should have just been on Shark Tank… the obedient ones plod along and wait for God to provide in other ways.

As frustrating as lost time and wheel-spinning are, the true pity however is what is forfeited when the flashy, smooth-talking, insta-everything folks get pushed to the forefront – namely, that the donors miss out on being a part of something truly of God – something that will last forever, something that matters beyond a short season of hustle.

We need to be smart about where our limited resources go. If you are introduced to someone or something that looks inherently unsustainable, disrespectful of the host country, un-integrated, too-much-too-soon – just run the other way.

But here is my simple plea. Add “obedience” to the check-list of requirements. And not only that, put it at the top. Make it a matter of honest prayer. And if you feel like the barefoot kid sleeping in a tent with nothing to show for himself is being obedient? Back him. Back him with everything you can afford because ten years from now, you’ll be a part of something really amazing and you’ll have the added blessing of having been there from the beginning.

Thank you, Grandma Shirley, for valuing the obedience. May a whole generation of givers follow your lead.

when good causes receive an ice bath

If your circle of friends is anything like mine, your news feed is probably being overrun with pictures and videos of people getting buckets of ice water dumped on their heads.

The Ice Bucket Challenge was created in support of the ALS Association that researches amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig’s disease. The idea for the frozen fundraiser went viral soon after that first bucket of ice water was dumped, and in one short month, the ALS Association has raised more 50 million dollars.

More than 50 million.

I still can’t really wrap my mind around that. In just a month - that is quite the chunk of change and I can’t resist doing the math and figuring out what that kind of money would fund in the area where we work. I’m fairly confident that we could eradicate child malnutrition, provide potable drinking water for all, send every highschool graduate to college, ensure a consistent medicine supply at every hospital, AND we could do this not only in our area but throughout the province, AND we could do it all NOW. Because, after all, 50 million dollars is Choshen Farm’s annual operating budget for the next 500 years.

Oh.My.Stars.

As the Marketing and Communications Director (I gave myself that title, do you like it?) for our small, but significant organization, I can’t help but pay attention to what I’m seeing all over the interwebs. As so many people around the country, including so many people that I know personally, have gotten on board with a fundraising initiative as big as the ice bucket challenge, you better believe I’m taking notes.

There are plenty who have lost family or friends to Lou Gehrig’s disease and their participation in the ice bucket challenge has taken on a personal and significant meaning. But the viral nature of the campaign tempts me to believe that love and concern are not the grand motivators amongst the majority. I think the ALS campaign has been so successful because of its ability to make fundraising cool.

All the cool kids, including Michael Jordan and Ben Affleck, are doing it, and the message traveling fast is that you can too! For only $10, you can secure your claim to fame, being the next in line to join the club. The desire to be “in with the in” clearly does not dissipate after sixth grade and “everybody’s doing it” is as motivational as ever. A dare is basically irresistible, especially when the clock starts ticking and you’re told you have exactly 24 hours. Group-think is real and the marketers know it.

There has been some fantastic press surrounding the ice bucket challenge and hearty discussion about medical research and the shortage in public funding. But there has also been some push-back, critics questioning the wisdom of the campaign, with others highlighting the financial stewardship history of ALS or the relatively small number of Lou Gehrig’s disease sufferers compared other diseases. The author of a recent Slate article called participation in this campaign a “particularly ineffective way of spending your philanthropic dollar.”

But I don’t think that pros and cons and financial oversight and organizational vetting has been at the forefront of most people’s decision to jump on the bandwagon. The fad has been set in motion, and millions have been won over… The ice bucket challenge is a good gauge of the current fundraising climate in America.

And it worries me.

We are preparing to go back to the states for three months, carrying with us a just cause and compelling information and fire in our bones. Yet still, in light of all the ice bucket fervor, I’m feeling a little fatalistic about it. We are going to be traveling around trying to raise about $50,000 for special projects in the Fimpulu community – a mere 0.1% of what AIS has raised in the last month. The need Zambia is great and the potential impact is even greater and I know this! … and yet… I still rushed frantic into our office (kitchen) yesterday and blurted out to Jeremy, “We’ve got nothing!!!” To which he replied, “Excuse me?” And I explained, “We have no ice water!”

not an ice bucket challenge, just a bucket bath, because that's how we roll

 Melodramatic though I am, I think I am carrying around in my gut a legitimate concern about the recent trend in American generosity. If the ice bucket challenge has taught me one thing, it is that the coolest campaign, and not the worthiest cause, that ultimately gets the dough.

ALS is certainly not the only successful organization to pull this off. Traditional support letters and verbal communication are fast approaching archaic in this new fundraising atmosphere characterized by concerts and 5k’s and jewelry-made-by-widows-theme-parties.

Calling these fundraising strategies what they are – gimmicks – sounds both crass and confrontational, but it is true nonetheless. Big organizations have a lot of good things to accomplish both at home and abroad and many, many dollars are needed to make it happen. But experience has taught us all that the organizations with the greatest cause had better have one heck of a marketing team specializing in stage production.

“Give the donors what they want” is rule number one in the fundraising world; and about five seconds on facebook clearly identifies that what the donors want is excitement and fanfare and something share-worthy. This is the millennial generation for you, and to a certain degree, the X and Y generations as well – deeply experiential and motivated primarily by emotion. Hardly won by mere propositional truth of here is the need and here is why you should give – the 20 and 30 somethings of today simultaneously engage their wallets and narcissistic world-view, sitting like Howard Stern as a judge on “America’s Got Cause,” buzzing through organizations not by their long-term, sustainable output but by the dazzle of their 30 second fundraising fanfare.

And here is where we, the little people of the fundraising world, feel the rub. Tons of worthy, urgent, compelling causes plod along underfunded because their marketing strategy does not optimally include the cool/fun/entertainment factor. Maybe we are too busy doing the hands-in-the-dirt kind of work to create the bejeweled marketing scheme. Maybe our consciences require that our limited funds meet the immediate needs around us instead of blowing them on light shows and set design.

my focus is here. 

 And maybe I need to crawl down from my high horse and just give people what they want. Maybe so. 

But our little bush-dwelling marketing team of two does not play this game well. We have spent too much time reading missionary biographies and histories of the church and we know that once upon a time, it was not like this. There was an era, before facebook, when donor bases consisted of people whose support stemmed more from conviction than entertainment and who asked one question only to determine a cause’s worth: Is God in it? And if the answer was yes, their hearts and wallets opened. And their eyes closed. Because Is God in it? is much less a question of intrigue and much more perception through prayer.

My fear in going back to the states and working to raise this money is the fear that America has lost this discipline of old, the discipline of asking the right question (Is God in it?) to determine the right answer (Yes, and I give; or No, and I don’t give.). I fear that our eyes have grown so accustomed to the bright lights of the stage and waiting for the show to begin, that our senses have dulled towards what is truly brilliant in character and not just facade. I fear that in conditioning our eyes to the light of our iphones we have become disused to the darkness of eyes in prayer, waiting for the still small voice.

I can’t dictate for everyone who to give to or how to decide and I’m not even swinging this piece to say that you should give to Choshen Farm and an not ALS - not at all. All I know is that we would rather raise $50,000 prayer-filled dollars than $50,000 fast and flashy ones knowing that the former is the kind of campaign that will echo into eternity. And I still believe that there are generous folks out there who want their dollars to echo too.

What do you think? What kind of marketing ethos do you want your charitable organizations to have? What kind of donor do you want to be?

b-day follow up

My birthday was back in July and ya’ll haven’t heard a peep from me about the 30 for bethany’s 30^th shebang since then. So I thought I’d get my act together and write a follow up.

We finally gathered the giving reports (do remember that all the financials are dealt with in America – the land of efficiency, and we live in Africa the land of… patience is virtue) and I just want to say one giant THANK YOU. Choshen Farm is not just the organization I work for, it’s the ministry that shapes the life of our family, it’s the thing we press into day in and day out, its why Bush Baby Colvin even exists – (otherwise I’d have to blog from Uber Normal American Baby Colvin… and who wants to read that?) And so your support of Choshen Farm is really a support of me personally and so again, THANK YOU.

I told everyone that we would have a drawing to see who would win a super awesome beaded keychain. I’ve run across such drawings on other blogs before and I gather that most people use cool techie apps to generate random numbers and have this elaborate scheme to ensure randomization and fairness. We, on the other hand, decided to employ the ultra sophisticated method of “Bronwyn draws names out of a hat.” 

And the winners are   …   !!! Well, she's not telling, but I have a list and your love-gifts are on their way.

And just because I love giving people stuff, even if your name was not one of the ones drawn, I decided to still name a chicken after you. No worries, you can thank me for that one later. (Besides, we just picked up 300 some odd birds the other week, and I figure they all deserve a good name.)

What you can thank me for now is standing in line at the Mansa post office to mail these key chains out. If ever there were a location of nightmare for those of us who still like to maintain our personal bubble despite having that personal bubble popped every day for the last seven years, the Mansa post office would be it. When the person in front of me moves up and I stay where I am to give myself three centimeters of breathing room, I’m quickly shoved forward by the twenty people behind me all of whom are muttering, “Geeze, don’t they have queues in America? Why is she messing with the flow?” Again, you’re welcome. 

If I don't come out, tell Jer & Winnie I love them

Keep in mind that mail from Zambia to America takes approximately 2-6 weeks depending on where it sits and for how long, so if you receive nothing – no key chain, no chicken christening photo – for a while, that’s why. And if after six weeks you still receive nothing, then perchance you forgot to mention on the check or paypal that this was for my birthday to which all I can say is, “know that I love you.” 

making friends

One of the funnest parts of our last two months of visiting under-five clinics is that Bronwyn has had the chance to meet a gazillian new people and make all kinds of friends. She has had the time of her life playing with big kids, little kids, babies, adults – the whole range of people and every game imaginable. I often look at her with great envy at how easily she adjusts to new situations and people and puts herself out there without reservation.

Though on the flip side, it has been sort of funny/tragic in some instances when the little tyke on the receiving end of Bronwyn’s super-friendly advances reels back in sheer terror of the pale toddler hurling herself towards him. The horrified “Mayo mayo mayo…” can roughly be translated,“MOM! The abominable snow lady has offspring!”

I’m super thankful that Bronwyn has not yet figured out that her would-be playmates are crying because of HER. When she is met with emotional melt-down on the part of the little people she was hoping to play with, she always looks back at me as if to say, “Ma, why she crying?” And I tell her the same thing every time: “Its ok baby girl, keep loving her, don’t give up.”

I feel sympathetic to the challenges of making friends when you don’t look like you belong. I’ve walked into a room with all women and hear them all start talking about the mizungu – it doesn’t exactly make me feel welcome. I’ve struck up conversations with people who think its funny to mock my clothes or my accent or my use of Bemba. At the ripe old age of 30, I still get my feelings hurt when someone communicates through word or action that they really don’t want to be my friend.

Right now, Bronwyn doesn’t seem to know that she’s different. She lifts up her little arms to be picked up by black people and white  people without reservation. I wonder how it will make her feel when one day she realizes that that lady is shoving her child towards us to purposefully scare him and get a laugh out of it. I pray she responds gently and is not easily offended. When she realizes that kids are stroking her hair because its so blond and fluffy, I pray that she is feels loved and honored and not like a baby goat in a petting zoo. I pray she learns to have a thick skin when dealing with insensitive actions or even rejection, but always keeps a soft heart when trying to initiate friendship and win over a pal who might be initially timid.

These are the thoughts on my mind and the prayers of my heart.

Baby girl, you have the bluest eyes ever and they absolutely sparkle with life. Anyone who catches your gaze for more than two seconds is enamored. I pray you always remember the power you have to win people over with that love. Love always wins.

After all, "if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another"... 1 Jn 4:11