How much am I worth to you? Let's put a number on it.

Alright, so it’s been really cold and I took a day off. It’s not like anyone reads this thing anyway….

                In the weeks and months after Hannah’s brush with every life threatening disease the world has ever known that turned out to be a simple kidney infection we were smack in the middle of the interview process with a parachurch organization in Eastern Tennessee. It seemed like the position and ministry were tailor made for me and my gifts. The ministry was designed to supplement resources and administration for the local church in order to facilitate more effective and farther reaching ministry within the church as a whole. The position I was interested in was to plan and oversee all of the concerts, conferences and other events that came through the area.  In other words I was going to do a lot of work in order to spend a little time meeting famous people so that the famous people could minister to the local churches. The only catch was that each staff member had to raise their own support. I really had no idea what that meant, so I was in. What could a small thing like money mean?

                After many phone calls and emails we were ready to go visit the ministry for the final interview. We were required to bring a prayer/accountability partner to the interview so given the fact that I had no other friends I chose to take my youngest brother-in-law (who also happens to be an awesome dude). We made the drive down with what we thought were expectations, but were really more like hopes and wishes. After more meetings and greetings and explanations and paperwork and presentations than I can possibly remember, I sat down with the president and HR manager and they offered me the job. We accepted without outward hesitation, but I do remember feeling very inadequate. I wondered if they truly believed I was qualified or if they just had so few people express any real interest after they discovered that you had to raise your own support. Realistically I had no experience in the field. I had hosted lots of youth group events, but I had only organized one large scale concert which turned out to be a total flop in attendance. Regardless, we were still extremely excited. What could a small thing like experience mean?

                We headed back home on a high and ready to talk to everyone we knew about giving us money to see the Kingdom of God expanded. The next stage of the job was a support raising training session that lasted almost a week and consisted of more meetings, greeting, explanations, paperwork and presentations. We were given all the tools necessary to raise enough support to provide for a family except the guts and gumption to see it through. We were completely committed though, so once again we drove back home actually prepared to talk to everyone we knew about support our ministry. That’s really hard.

                I was raised in an area where the people pride themselves on their rugged individualism and self-sufficiency. When that defines your formative years, it makes the transition I needed to undergo in order to be successful at support raising almost impossible. I was committed to seeing it through though since I believed wholeheartedly that God had called us. I constantly fell on the words of Gamaliel from the books of Acts, “If this plan or this undertaking is of man, it will fail; but if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow them.” I beat my pride to the side with a big ugly stick and sat down in front of people who knew me well, took them through the presentation like I had been trained and then bit the bullet and asked for the money. In case you’ve never done anything similar, sitting down with a friend or acquaintance and saying, “I know this will not benefit you directly, but would you be willing to give monthly so that I can get paid for doing my job? It’s all tax deductible by the way.” is an unbelievably humbling experience. It’s even more humbling when you’re told no.

                I was actually pretty amazed at the creativity that people exhibited when it came to saying ‘no’. “We believe that missions start at home” (go read Acts chapter 2). “I work for our denomination’s cooperative program so I can’t be seen supporting another organization” (no comment). “We’ll think about it” (like I didn’t know what that meant). “We already give more than we should” (is that an option?). “We can do $25 a month” (your cell phone bill is 5 times that). Most of the time people were at least polite. Most of those who would have been rude didn’t even give us the chance to sit down and talk about it, so in truth we were pretty fortunate that we didn’t have to face that much more rejection.

                After we had exhausted our immediate circle of influence in the area, we started to branch out and talk to complete strangers, which I hoped would be easier. It really wasn’t. I’ve always interviewed well so I could ‘sell’ the idea of the ministry really well and people were always on board. What I discovered was that no matter how well I presented the ministry or how passionate I was about it, that couldn’t change someone’s heart. When it came to the big question, we received very few commitments; lots and lots and lots of prayer, but very little money. The thing is, we were more than grateful for those who were praying with us, but we all know that most of the time we offer prayer as a substitute for a real sacrifice since we have little or no intention of following through on the promised prayers. Promising prayer is the Christian’s easy way out making any real commitment. Prayer is powerful and makes all the difference, but not if it’s an empty promise. I can’t look back and even begin to judge who was genuine and who wasn’t so I don’t try, but I can tell that what I know of people tells me that more often than not we look after ourselves before others.

                Tomorrow: You meet some weird people when you start looking outside of your own little world.