Chapter 4
What Actions Christian
Ministries
Should Emphasize
“Listen to Me, O Jacob,
And Israel,
My called:
I am He, I am the First,
I am also the Last.
Indeed My hand has laid the foundation of the earth,
And My right hand has stretched out the heavens;
When I call to them,
They stand up together.
All of you, assemble yourselves, and hear!
Who among them has declared these things?
The LORD loves him;
He shall do His pleasure on Babylon,
And His arm shall be
against the Chaldeans.
I, even I, have spoken;
Yes, I have called him,
I have brought him, and his way will prosper.”
— Isaiah 48:12-15
(NKJV)
Tasks for creating the 2,000 percent nation that require
support from a large number of believers can be better accomplished by
independent Christian ministries than by a single church. Here are some of the
typical reasons why having greater size and independence can sometimes permit
accomplishing more and better serving God’s will:
• Greater visibility of a
ministry and its task makes it easier to recruit volunteers and any needed
resources.
• Volunteers can be helped to
learn more about how to perform and gain joy from doing their activities.
• Tasks can be better studied and
simplified so that more people can succeed as helpful volunteers and increase
how much each person can accomplish.
• Scale effects offer
opportunities to lower the costs of performing an activity or delivering a
benefit so that financial resources can be stretched to serve more
beneficiaries.
• Recipient benefits can be
greatly increased by combining many more dimensions of exponential
breakthroughs.
• Larger projects can be
accomplished.
• Credibility from providing
excellent benefits at low cost helps attract more resources as well as greater
interest in obtaining the benefits.
Despite the value and importance
of improving as much as possible in performing activities that God wants us to
do, most Christian ministries are only achieving a small percentage of their
performance potential. Tutors skilled in developing exponential
performance-improvement methods and helping others learn how to use such
methods can assist ministries to close any gaps between their full potential
and the Godly fruit they currently provide.
Each Christian ministry’s
opportunities for accomplishing more are somewhat different, but I believe that
many have in common five important performance-improvement opportunities that
should be attended to in the following sequence:
1. Be sure that the ministry is
optimally focused on accomplishing the right results for God.
2. Determine the tasks required
for accomplishing the right results.
3. Design the tasks for providing
benefits to be irresistibly appealing to perform.
4. Serve needs in extraordinarily
low-cost, effective ways that require few physical resources.
5. Obtain enough resources to
provide for all needs.
By contrast, many Christian
ministries focus first on obtaining more resources, less often search for more
effective ways of serving needs, rarely look to improve the appeal of
performing any required tasks, haven’t considered what results should be
accomplished in decades, and don’t think about what tasks are required for achieving
the right results. Because few donors are excited about providing resources for
organizations that inefficiently deliver benefits and have trouble attracting
enough volunteers, focusing first on obtaining resources often works poorly. In
addition, the resources that are received don’t help much due to inefficiencies
in the ways that benefits are supplied. Volunteers see and are discouraged by
any waste, don’t enjoy the work very much, complain about their experiences to
potential volunteers and donors, and are reluctant to continue. When potential
donors learn about the volunteers’ reservations, they become less willing to
provide financial and physical resources.
Exponential improvements in
serving needs are developed faster and better by doing more to engage the
attention and enthusiastic support of as many dedicated people as possible.
When you design from the beginning any tasks for providing benefits to be the
ones God wants done and to make those tasks irresistibly appealing, you will
attract the kind and size of interest that can lead to rapid, substantial
improvements in a Christian ministry’s activities. How to accomplish such a
shift in focus is described in terms of how tutors can assist Christian
nonprofit organizations in Chapter Three of Help
Wanted, and those lessons also
apply to Christian ministries.
Some Christian ministries have a
fundamental opportunity that should precede identifying and making performance
improvements: evaluating how well they are focusing on accomplishing God’s purposes.
If the intended purposes for acting are incomplete or mistaken, then the
activity’s focus will be misdirected, as well. We look next at the purposes
Christian ministries should seek to fulfill in a helping to establish a 2,000
percent nation.
Choose Purposes That Help Build a 2,000
Percent Nation
He who sows sparingly will also reap
sparingly,
and he who sows bountifully will also
reap bountifully.
— 2 Corinthians 9:6 (NKJV)
In writing this section, I happily yield to any messages
that you receive from reading the Bible and listening to the Holy Spirit. These
sources are always superior to what I know and how well a general message like
mine here might apply to a given Christian ministry.
In thinking about determining a
ministry’s purposes, let’s first consider how a child’s top, the well-known
spinning toy that defies gravity while sitting so exquisitely on its point, can
provide more joy. As we consider spinning such a top together, please mentally
stretch your imagination to see how a child playing with the toy displays
similarities to a Christian ministry providing all the benefits God intended
its beneficiaries to receive.
A top at rest provides only part
of its potential fun. You have to spin it before a top can provide all of its
benefits. Children generally need someone to show them what is possible before
they begin focusing on making a top spin.
Such spinning cannot be done in
just any way. You generate higher speed and better balance by rapidly pulling
the end of a carefully wrapped, light string in the top’s upper groove than by
spinning it using only your hands.
Even with a well-placed string,
plenty can go wrong. If you pull too fast, the string will not unwrap smoothly
and the top may be thrown against a wall instead of being spun. If you pull too
slowly, the top won’t spin fast enough to stand on its point. If you pick a
place where there’s not much room, the spinning top may bump into an obstacle
or fall off a surface … stopping or slowing the correct spin.
By pulling a correctly wrapped
string at the right speed on a large-enough smooth surface, the top will spin
with uncanny balance and continue that way for a satisfying length of time.
Even the end of such perfect spinning is fascinating, as a slight wobble gently
increases … providing hypnotic entertainment prior to a slow slide into
motionlessness. The ensuing moment of peacefulness is hard to fully appreciate
without experiencing it.
Let me now look at this example
in terms of what it explains about having the right purposes for a Christian
ministry. If, for instance, a ministry pursues too few of its God-intended
purposes, it will lack one or more of the elements needed to be as fruitful as
its full potential. For example, if a ministry alleviated physical suffering
among unsaved people but did not provide information about the Gospel,
beneficiaries’ bodies would be in better shape, but these people would still be
headed for eternal suffering far greater than what had been experienced on
Earth. It would be as if Jesus had only healed people during His Earthly
ministry and not helped them to gain Salvation.
If, instead, a ministry has
purposes unrelated to its spiritual fruitfulness, resources and attention will
be diverted away from Godly activities. Imagine that Jesus had decided to
stretch finances for itinerant teaching by asking His followers to wear logos
advertising an inn that provided discount lodging to such witnesses. While some
money would have been saved, it would have been small compared to what Christ
could have supernaturally provided, and such commercialization would have
undoubtedly undermined the power of the witnessing with many unsaved people.
Prayer, Bible study, and fasting
are all useful activities for helping to identify the correct purposes for a
Christian ministry. Be sure engage in these activities while seeking your
ministry’s purposes.
Simply to make it easier to start
identifying God’s purposes for a Christian ministry, let me suggest some
possible starting points to study and to pray about:
• Review the lists of the ways
that God measures fruitfulness and that we can approximate His measures, which
are summarized in the final section of Chapter 1.
• Consider if at least one aspect
from each of the five fruitfulness categories (spiritual, moral, health,
emotional, and physical) should be included.
For instance, a
witnessing ministry could consider attracting unsaved people with activities
that encourage moral, health, emotional, and physical improvements (such as by
holding sports clinics for youngsters where witnessing and teaching occur).
• Investigate whether purposes
for more than one aspect from each fruitfulness category should be included.
For instance, a
witnessing ministry providing sports clinics might also make available free
health screenings and tutoring in basic school skills.
• Think about how accomplishments
in one aspect of a category might help create more fruitfulness in other
aspects of that category as well as in any of the aspects for other categories.
If a number of
the youngsters who come to the clinics lack good role models, the ministry
could potentially provide mentors who could help with getting to know the Lord,
discipleship, and solving any Earthly challenges the unsaved and newly saved
youngsters have. The mentoring activity could become a way to multiply benefits
for the youngsters and to prepare them to become Godly leaders in their
families and communities.
Returning to a child’s smoothly
spinning top as an analogy for being more fruitful for the Lord, it’s also
important to carefully balance the accomplishments in various aspects so that
more proportionate results are gained. Let me explain what I mean. A Christian
ministry could be so focused on helping people gain Salvation that other
important needs might not be met, including spiritual ones such as teaching new
believers about their faith and helping them learn how to apply it. A different
Christian ministry might be so intent on feeding starving people that few of
those fed ever learn about the Gospel. In both examples, it’s as if a top is
being held up by a hand rather than spun so that it can stand on its own by
relying on the physical forces that God has provided for us to use.
Like children learning to walk,
new and very narrowly focused Christian ministries can easily be overwhelmed at
first by trying to move forward too rapidly with an ultimately appropriate set
of broad purposes. As a result, it’s important in a ministry’s beginning or
when it’s about to expand its focus to select a reasonable schedule for adding
any appropriate purposes and tasks.
Let’s look next at choosing the
tasks needed for accomplishing a Christian ministry’s most appropriate
purposes.
Determine the Tasks Required for
Accomplishing
the Right Results for God
Then Isaac sowed in that land,
and reaped in the same year a
hundredfold;
and the LORD blessed him.
— Genesis 26:12 (NKJV)
Successful farmers know that they need to plant the right
kind of crop to expect any useful harvest. Try to grow lettuce in an area
subject to frequent frosts, and you’ll just have brown, rotting heads to show
for your time, money, and effort. After choosing the right crop, farmers know
that seeds vary a lot in the size and value of the harvests that they can
produce. What is a good type of seed for one growing area may be terrible for a
growing area not far away that, for example, receives much less or a lot more moisture and
warmth. Not only is seed selection important, but the optimal time for planting
also depends on local conditions. Not all the corn that’s going to be eaten on
the Fourth of July in the United
States is planted on the same date.
A seed contains all the needed
potential for growing into a plant, for producing whatever will be eventually
harvested from the resulting plant, and for creating still more seeds so that
future crops can be grown. In the same way, those selecting tasks for a
Christian ministry to accomplish should think in terms of planting seeds that
can fully flourish and multiply in all dimensions of Godly fruitfulness.
While it’s tempting to start by
endlessly discussing possibilities to figure out what such a starting task is,
I believe that such conversations are unnecessary. To me, the Bible is quite
clear: The first task is to plant the seed of the Gospel in the minds (and, hopefully,
the hearts) of unsaved people. Here is what Jesus had to say:
Another parable He put forth to
them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took
and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it
is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of
the air come and nest in its branches.” (Matthew 13:31-32, NKJV)
While considering how the great
potential residing in a mustard seed is like the kingdom of heaven, it’s
important to keep in mind what else Jesus had to say on the same occasion, as
is recorded earlier in Matthew 13. This chapter begins with the parable of the
sower (Matthew 13:1-9, NKJV), continues on to explain that parable (Matthew
13:18-23, NKJV), and then adds the parable of the wheat and the tares (Matthew
13:24-30, NKJV). Since the parable of the sower is about sharing the Gospel and
how It must be received, understood, and acted on for there to be exponential
fruit, the connection to fruitfulness among believers based on sharing the
Gospel appears to be carried over into the parable of the planted mustard seed.
The parable about the wheat and
the tares explains that God allows evil to continue so that the growth of the
good will not be uprooted while eliminating evil. All that changes when the
harvest, the forthcoming judgment, occurs. Some commentators interpret the
parable of the mustard seed as Jesus referring to evil workers in describing
the birds of the air nesting in the mustard plant’s branches, to show that
present evil can be easily overcome by good.
We also see practical evidence
that sharing the Gospel comes first in examining the works of the apostles.
Peter, for instance, doesn’t appear to have been an accomplished witness until
after being filled with Holy Spirit and preaching the Gospel of Christ
crucified to redeem sinners and risen to be our Lord in Acts 2 (NKJV), leading
to about 3,000 souls accepting Salvation. By contrast, Paul’s great disputation
in Athens
describing God Almighty as the Athenian’s unknown god (Acts 17, NKJV) convinced
few. When Paul instead just shared the Gospel of Christ crucified and risen to
redeem sinners in Corinth,
many were saved, including Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue.
In putting sharing the Gospel first
in priority, consider, too, that believers gain so much more understanding of
and ability to accomplish God’s tasks by being baptized with the Holy Spirit
than can be accomplished in any other way. We should think of individual
believers as being like the mustard seeds that turn into mighty plants
producing a great harvest while easily overcoming any evildoers. To me, Matthew
17:20 (NKJV) clearly demonstrates that witnessing is task one for a Christian
ministry:
So Jesus said to them, “Because
of your unbelief; for assuredly, I say to you, if you have faith as a mustard seed, you will say to this
mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be
impossible for you.”
Concluding that witnessing is the
first task in priority doesn’t mean that complementary tasks might not be mixed
in with witnessing, much as wise farmers often dust their seeds with herbicides
to avoid rot from fungus and add fertilizers to supply nutrients in short
supply within the soil. Jesus, for instance, appears to have used His
supernatural power to perform miracles, in part, to help attract interest in His
preaching of the Gospel message.
Based on my studies of
evangelism, I believe that there are many tasks required for providing the most
effective witnessing. Many ministries may be employing too few of the most
effective ways for sharing the Gospel. Much as a successful farmer will test
seeds in small plots before switching to a more fruitful variety, Christian
ministries should be continually praying for guidance about other promising
methods of witnessing that they should investigate and try. Although only the Holy
Spirit can bring Salvation, witnessing can certainly increase the opportunities
for hearts to be opened, sins to be repented, and Jesus to be accepted as Lord
and Savior.
Testing should also be a priority
task for finding ways of combining activities so that more kinds of
fruitfulness are expanded. Let me explain more about what I mean by examining a
hypothetical Christian ministry that provides food to low-income people. Let’s
imagine that this ministry dispenses food from a central warehouse where
recipients come to pick it up. Imagine that the warehouse displays on its side a
Christian name and a cross.
As Jesus found when He fed first
the 5,000 men and later the 4,000 men after starting with a few loaves and
fish, many people can be attracted by free food. Those who arrive will even
listen to a Gospel message, but many hearts will be more focused on the food
than on gaining Salvation.
Consider a different way for this
hypothetical ministry to attract attention to the Gospel. People are inclined
to reciprocate in measured ways for whatever has been provided or done for
them. If recipients have to travel and to wait in long lines for free food,
they may feel that relatively little has been done for them.
If, instead, the ministry
regularly delivers the food to homes and volunteers stay to help prepare a
meal, it will be a rare recipient who won’t welcome such volunteers. During
time spent together in the home, recipients and volunteers will gradually
become acquainted and develop relationships. During their time together, such
volunteers will have many chances to share their testimonies, to show the love
of God, and to explain the Gospel. Surely, more hearts will be opened in this
way than by just handing out food at a warehouse. Such service will also be a
wonderfully faith-affirming opportunity for the volunteers to grow in their
relationships with the Lord.
Having easily imagined that such
a changed approach to food distribution would lead to more souls being
dedicated to the Lord, you can see that similar thought experiments could be
beneficial in identifying ways of accomplishing ministry purposes by defining
additional tasks. Ideally, all the ministries involved in similar activities
would share their ideas and experiences with one another so that any
God-blessed methods might be adopted sooner by others.
If such cooperation doesn’t
already exist, establishing a way to record, gather, and usefully share such
test and practical experiences to similarly directed ministries is an important
task for some Christian ministry to perform. Fostering more useful
conversations among such ministries about how more fruitfulness purposes might
be combined is one benefit that could come from such information development.
Let me continue with the
food-distribution ministry example to explain what I mean. Let’s assume that the
spiritual fruit from bringing food to homes and helping to prepare it is
unusually good among single moms with lots of kids. Undoubtedly, those in such households
have many other needs that could be served to expand fruitfulness. While the
food-distribution ministry might not have the knowledge, resources, or
expertise to provide for all of those other needs, its volunteers could be
trained to elicit what such needs are, to find out if the family is interested
in having more help, and to introduce appropriate ministries to the family. In
addition, the in-home volunteers could also check to be sure everything is
going smoothly with whatever other ministries become involved and help troubleshoot
whenever there are problems. As a result, all ministries could become more
fruitful, and more people in the family could be leading the lives that God
intended for them.
In addition, as a Christian
ministry increases its effectiveness, unsaved people, new believers, and needy
believers will be open to requesting and receiving more assistance. Much of such
increased effectiveness will undoubtedly come from volunteers learning to
supply more love as they serve beneficiaries. If beneficiaries aren’t reaching
out for more help, any Christian ministry should be seriously concerned about the
adequacy of the love that’s being provided. As a result, I suggest that all Christian
ministries make it a top priority to understand how what is being done for
beneficiaries is seen, felt, and considered by the beneficiaries. Be sure to
add this task to whatever other tasks are being done.
Now, let’s look at designing the
tasks for providing benefits to be irresistibly appealing to perform.
Design the Tasks for Providing Benefits
to Be Irresistibly Appealing to Perform
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in
everything give thanks
for this is the will of God in Christ
Jesus for you.
— 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NKJV)
Many people either forget or don’t realize that relieving
suffering and helping others to be happier are two of the best ways to be
filled with joy. To design irresistibly appealing volunteer tasks, begin by
learning how to make receiving a ministry’s benefits as delightful as possible.
Always keep in mind that when the beneficiaries are happy, the volunteers are
more likely to be, as well.
To illustrate this point, let me
tell you a little more about my experiences during visits to homeless shelters.
In some shelters, many of the homeless people are smiling and optimistic, while
the rest appear to be relaxed and comfortable. In other shelters, the
beneficiaries almost all seem to be bored, afraid, upset, or uncomfortable. In
the shelters with many smiling, optimistic people, volunteers were having a
great time serving, while the volunteers in the other shelters looked uneasy
and defensive. I know which shelters I would prefer to spend my volunteer time
in, and I believe most people would choose the same ones.
It can be difficult to identify
delightful ways for beneficiaries of Christian ministries to receive the
benefits they desire. Many beneficiaries either won’t be able to or won’t want
to tell anyone what would make receiving help more appealing. Some
beneficiaries are discouraged or sad as a result of setbacks and cannot imagine
what might help them feel better. Clinically depressed people are especially
likely to be a limited source of ideas. Even when beneficiaries have good ideas
to share, they may withhold rather than share those thoughts, believing no one
will be interested.
Here are some possible ways to
make receiving benefits highly appealing to needy beneficiaries, methods that
are drawn from observing Christian ministries:
• Avoid long waits and red tape.
• Build self-respect.
• Treat beneficiaries as either
peers or superiors and in considerate ways.
• Ensure that beneficiaries
receive what they need to succeed in useful activities that will enable them to
take care of themselves.
• Provide loving support and
encouragement to overcome any especially harmful personal weaknesses (such as
using illegal drugs, drinking too much alcohol, being violent, or engaging in
any other secret sins). Tell them that God will forgive them when they repent
of their sins, seek a relationship with Jesus as their Savior and Lord, and
follow Him, and that they will receive Earthly support from fellow Christians.
• Explain the process for gaining
improvements and allow beneficiaries to regularly observe significant progress.
• Encourage beneficiaries to
develop warm friendships with the people who serve them.
• Ensure that beneficiaries have
opportunities to assist those with needs similar to what their own had been.
I also encourage you to think
about your experiences with receiving help from others as well as what people
have told you about their experiences to learn other helpful ways to make
receiving the aid more appealing. I would like to learn from your successful
experiences in applying any methods that I have not mentioned. Please e-mail me
at save_more_souls@yahoo.com to let me know what else worked for you.
Having improved the satisfactions
that beneficiaries receive, the most important way to make volunteer tasks more
appealing, let’s shift to looking at some other appealing personal rewards that
volunteers can obtain while serving others:
• spending time with volunteers
they like
• meeting people they would like
to know
• performing interesting tasks
• having fun
• helping to accomplish results
that are enjoyable to tell others about
• developing valuable personal
skills that can apply to other areas of life
• gaining sought-after
experiences in more pleasant ways
• visiting desirable places
• performing roles they like that
are not as available to them in ordinary life
• satisfying curiosity
• gaining satisfaction from
providing a service for someone else that they, too, had benefited from
• feeling release from having
experienced problems earlier in life through helping someone else
• feeling appreciated
• receiving recognition and
attention from people they respect
I’m sure you have even better
ideas for making volunteer tasks irresistibly appealing. I would be delighted
to learn the methods that work well for you, so please feel free to e-mail me
at save_more_souls@yahoo.com.
Serve Needs in Extraordinarily Low-Cost,
Effective Ways
And my God shall supply all your need
according to His riches in glory by
Christ Jesus.
— Philippians 4:19 (NKJV)
Ways to serve needs in extraordinarily low-cost, effective
ways are discussed by Carol Coles and me in Part Two of The 2,000 Percent Squared Solution (BookSurge, 2007). I encourage
you to read that information in addition to this book. Here are the topics that
are covered:
• Eliminate the unnecessary
• Employ an efficient business
model design
• Cancel delays
• Simplify, simplify, and
simplify some more
• Help the unskilled avoid
accidents
• Automate the important tasks that
remain
• Add do-it-yourself features
• Compare your solutions to what
outsourcing can do
• Replace any expensive
outsourcing
• Ask the world to compete to
find breakthrough methods
• Repeat the cost-reduction
investigations on a regular basis
In this section, I apply each of
the preceding improvement methods to a hypothetical example of how Christian
ministries might better serve the millions of poor children supported by
sponsors who help provide food, clothing, housing, education, and Bible-based
instruction.
While each of these organizations
supplies benefits somewhat differently, they usually partner with local
churches to locate children who need help, to distribute purchased items, and
to provide volunteers who serve many nonfinancial needs. Many of the
organizations encourage sponsors to develop relationships with the children by
writing letters that encourage Christian study and paying attention in school.
Because of the high rate of mortality among infants and young children in some
lesser-developed countries, sponsorships usually begin when a child is four
years old.
Let’s look at the economics of
such programs. While the size of requested donations varies from organization
to organization, many now require a minimum of $420 a year and request added
payments for birthday gifts and some Christmas presents.
To make the arithmetic easy,
let’s assume that a sponsor sends $500 a year for these purposes, starts
providing for a child when she or he is aged four, and continues to send money
until the youngster becomes eighteen. Before considering the effects of any tax
benefits (available in the United States, but not present in many other
countries) to the donor from such sponsorships and rising future costs due to
inflation, the total expense over fourteen years will be $7,000.
I’m sure you’ll agree that’s not
a lot of money to make a big difference in a youngster’s life, especially if
the eternal rewards of Salvation are gained. In looking at some alternatives to
help the youngsters, I don’t mean to make or to suggest any criticism of the
fine work done by these organizations, so please don’t write letters of
complaint to any of them. Meditate instead on what Jesus had to say in Matthew
25:44-46 (NKJV) and consider helping these organizations with your prayers,
your time, and your money:
“Then they also will answer Him,
saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or
sick or in prison, and did not minister to You?’ Then He will answer them,
saying, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did not do it to one
of the least of these, you did not do it to Me.’ And these will go away
into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Let’s start by eliminating the
unnecessary. Most needy youngsters have at least one parent living with them
and may also have a nearby grandmother who helps out with child care. The whole
family is probably short of income or the sponsorship benefits wouldn’t be
needed. What if we could permanently increase the family’s income instead of
paying for some of the child’s needs?
Increasing family income might
mean providing some education for a parent or grandparent; training for certain
jobs or operating small businesses; and tools, equipment, and working capital
to do a specialized job or to start a small business. In parts of the world
where the adult unemployment rate is high and incomes are low, you can often
establish a thriving local business employing several people at a cost of less
than $1,000 for education, training, and investment. Such a business might be a
wholesale provider of a basic commodity (such as charcoal for cooking) or an
equipment provider (such as a reseller and repairer of treadle water pumps).
What would happen if donors
provided $1,000 and succeeded in boosting the family’s income while
simultaneously supporting a youngster with another $1,000, with the combined
sum to be paid over two years? If that approach worked, the whole family could
be lifted out of poverty on a permanent basis for a total of $2,000. That’s not
only a lot less than spending $7,000 over fourteen years, but the money has
also assisted more people. In addition, the child and his or her siblings can
probably learn how to do that job or to run the business while growing up,
greatly reducing the risks of adult poverty for the child, her or his siblings,
and their descendants. If a business is started, needy employees and their
families are also helped. Average the $2,000 donation over the several
generations that will receive benefits, and it becomes clear that you might
alleviate poverty through such an alternative program for less than $100 a
person. When successful, the new program provides a 2,000 percent solution
(accomplishing at least twenty times as much with the same or less time, effort,
and resources — seventy or more people and descendants helped for the previous
cost of helping one child).
Notice that although the average
cost of helping to raise someone out of poverty is greatly reduced, the
near-term cost for a donor of serving each child and his or her family is
increased: The annual cost of the alternative program is $1,000 per year rather
than $500 per year for the child sponsorships. If the number of donors doesn’t
change, that increased cost means an initial 50 percent reduction in how many
children are served each year. The reduction in how many children are served
fortunately disappears over time: After four years, the donor can shift to
assisting a second family without spending any more than the total cost of the
original sponsorship program.
Let’s now examine other ways to
serve more children and their families. Rather than consider both the
opportunities to help with jobs and with small businesses in the rest of this
section, I will just look at starting small businesses.
How might the organization employ
a more efficient business-model design? Many small businesses in lesser
developed countries would be more successful if they could purchase what they
need at lower costs, store what they own more securely, and learn better ways
to serve customers. Rather than set up each beneficiary family as a potential
competitor with every other supported family, the Christian ministry could
instead set up cooperatives to pool buying power, to allocate franchised
territories that reduce harmful competition (where this practice is legal), to
build and to guard secure storehouses, and to develop and to teach owners
improved ways of serving customers.
Providing these forms of support
would probably reduce the amount of money needed to start a business, shorten
the time needed to prepare, enable each business to become more profitable, and
permit faster growth in hiring local people. As a result, the cost of helping a
family might drop from $2,000 to $1,300, mostly by eliminating one year of
support for the child. That change would increase by 54 percent the number of
families that could be assisted initially with the income-boosting program.
Next, let’s cancel any
unnecessary delays in the process of starting up a business. The cooperatives
could recruit their most successful business owners to spend volunteer time
training and mentoring people who are about to start up new businesses like
theirs in nearby villages, towns, and cities. Detailed written, video, and
audio resources could be developed and provided to demonstrate every aspect of
what needs to be done.
Done properly, this support might
further reduce by more than half the time needed to go from not having a
business to operating one profitably. Should that be the case, the cost of helping
a family might drop from $1,300 to $1,000, again mostly by reducing how long
the child’s needs are subsidized. In that case, 30 percent more families could
be helped initially to gain income permanently with the same funds.
Let’s simplify operating the
business so that what needs to be learned can be comprehended and done
perfectly after only eight hours of training. Such a simplification might
involve having the cooperative take over the task of acquiring customers so
that the local business owner only needs to deliver the orders and to collect
the money. The cooperatives might also discover that many individual business
owners aren’t able to figure out how to become more profitable. To simplify
that task, the cooperatives might provide volunteers who are trained in
business analysis with tools to evaluate and recommend improvements for
individual businesses in the cooperative. Let’s also assume that customers need
some greater value from what they are buying. The cooperative could develop
proprietary products that other suppliers could not provide so that its
business-owner members would be able to better serve customers and earn more
money.
From such changes, the cost of
helping a family might drop from $1,000 to $800. This change would permit 25 percent
more families to be initially assisted.
We now have reduced the program’s
costs of starting a business. Let’s
simplify operating the business again
by having the cooperatives put in good distribution networks so that business
inventories can be reduced by 80 percent. As a result of that change, the cost
of helping start a business might drop from $800 to $600, allowing 33 percent
more families to be initially assisted.
Let’s not stop there with rounds
of simplification. Now let’s design what is being sold so that less equipment
is needed by the business to handle it. From that improvement, the cost of
starting a business might drop from $600 to $400, allowing 50 percent more
families to be initially helped.
Notice that the hypothetical cost
of the program has now dropped below the original $500 annual donation to
subsidize one child. As a result of these improvements, more children are being
helped from the beginning than with the original sponsorship program. In
addition, a sponsor’s donation can be shifted toward the end of the first year
to a second family, permitting geometric increases in how many people are
helped.
Next, the cooperative should
regularly review the experiences of its new and veteran owners to locate any
patterns of mistakes that cause them to lose customers, not be paid, spoil what
is being provided, and waste resources in any other ways. The cooperative could
then use what it learns to retrain its members and to redesign its processes so
that the owners and their employees will make fewer and less expensive
mistakes. In this way, the profits of each business might increase by 25
percent.
With increased profits, the
businesses might be able to start smaller and be established with less
investment capital while still providing the same income to their family
owners. If this were the case, the funds needed could drop from $400 to $320,
allowing 25 percent more families to be initially helped.
At this point, the hypothetical
small business is pretty easy to start and to operate. The cooperative could
then explore how automation might help eliminate or reduce the costs of other
mistakes, reduce the number of employees needed, and enhance what is provided
for customers. Only the results of successful automation experiments would be
implemented. We’ll assume that the equipment needed will earn back its cost
within six months of being installed, a typical rate of return for such small,
fledgling businesses. In that case, the initial size of the operation could be
even smaller with less investment and still generate the same annual income for
the family. In this instance, the total donor funds needed could decline from
$320 to $270, permitting 18 percent more families to be initially assisted.
Some families are larger and more
energetic than others. The cooperatives could take those differences into
account so that businesses could be started in ways that substitute the
family’s do-it-yourself labor for some investment funds. In the same way that
Habitat for Humanity families supply some of the labor needed for building
their own homes, new cooperative members could provide services for existing
cooperative members to gain extra income that reduces the new members’ part of
the needed investments. Providing these opportunities could potentially cut the
donor funds needed from $270 to $200 for some families, allowing as many as 35
percent more families to gain opportunities from existing donor sources.
Let’s now compare this set of
improved solutions to what outsourcing could accomplish. In each case considered
so far, the only source of funds has been donor payments. If these new
enterprises are going to earn at least $500 a year, it becomes practical to
consider supplementing some or all of the donor funds with low-interest
borrowings from other Christian ministries specializing in that activity. Let’s
assume that $100 of the $200 needed could be borrowed in this way at a 15
percent annual interest rate. A new business owner could repay that loan out of
profits during the first year and still enjoy a much higher income.
Making this change would double
the number of families that could benefit initially from the available donor
funds. Notice that at this point, five times more families are hypothetically
being helped initially than with the child subsidy program.
Having found this outsourcing
solution for borrowing, it’s a good idea to check it against the alternatives.
In this case, the cooperatives could also serve as lenders to their members for
starting up such businesses. Let’s assume that the cooperatives could borrow
money at 3 percent annual interest through subsidized programs funded by
governments of countries with advanced economies. After allowing for the risk
of not being repaid, the cooperative might decide that it could cover its costs
of borrowing and administration by charging 8 percent annual interest. With
that drop in interest charges, new members could find it attractive to borrow
$150 of the $200 needed to start their enterprises by stretching the repayment
period to two years. This shift would drop the funds needed from donors to $50,
making it possible to expand the number of families served initially by another
100 percent.
In The Ultimate Competitive Advantage (Berrett-Koehler, 2003), Carol
Coles and I describe how for-profit companies sponsor global contests with
significant rewards to find breakthrough methods for accomplishing their most
important tasks. Since that book was published, hundreds of thousands of
organizations have made these contests a mainstream practice in the for-profit
community. The same approach can also be employed in the nonprofit world to
make breakthroughs in making donations more productive (as was demonstrated by
my 2006-2007 global witnessing contest and described in Adventures of an Optimist, Witnessing
Made Easy, and Ways You Can Witness).
Let’s assume that the
cooperatives regularly run global contests to improve the operating, financing,
and start-up processes for the businesses their members operate. If the
contests focus on areas the cooperatives haven’t considered, such as getting
start-up financing from suppliers for their members’ businesses, these contests
are especially likely to be productive. Let’s assume that these contests reduce
the amount of money needed from donors to start up a business by $50 a year.
With this change, no more donor funds will be needed except to subsidize the
living costs of needy orphans.
Many people would be delighted to
accomplish this much and with good reason. By heeding the Holy Spirit’s
direction, I believe that making major gains is a practical goal.
Despite this enormous success,
the most important opportunity remains untapped: repeating all the improvement
methods. Since the value of repetition is addressed in every book I have
written or coauthored for The 400 Year Project, I won’t say much about it here
other than to repeat the lesson: Costs can decline by another 96 percent each
time the improvement processes are repeated.
If that result were to occur from
the first repetition of the improvements methods, the new business owners would
be able to eliminate all borrowings and increase their initial incomes by more
than twenty times.
When costs become so low, a
little money and effort go a long way. The world would change in highly
desirable ways that God approves when that occurs.
If you doubt that such
substantial gains are possible from employing these methods, be sure to read
about Dr. Burra Ramulu’s tutoring experiment in India where even greater gains
were made in less time, as described in the Introduction to 2,000 Percent Solution Living.
I believe that your experiences
with creating cost breakthroughs will identify other excellent methods. Please
be so kind as to send me an e-mail at save_more_souls@yahoo.com describing the
lessons you learn about those methods.
Obtain Enough Resources to Provide for All
Needs
When the day was now far spent, His disciples
came to Him and said,
“This is a deserted place, and already
the hour is late.
Send them away, that they may go into the
surrounding country and villages
and buy themselves bread; for they have
nothing to eat.”
But He answered and said to them, “You
give them something to eat.”
And they said to Him, “Shall we go and
buy two hundred denarii worth of bread
and give them something to eat?”
But He said to them, “How many loaves do
you have? Go and see.”
And when they found out they said,
“Five, and two fish.”
Then He commanded them to make them all
sit down in groups on the green grass.
So they sat down in ranks, in hundreds
and in fifties.
And when He had taken the five loaves
and the two fish,
He looked up to heaven, blessed and
broke the loaves,
and gave them to His
disciples to set before them;
and the two fish He divided among them all.
So they all ate and were filled.
And they took up twelve baskets full of
fragments and of the fish.
Now those who had eaten the loaves were
about five thousand men.
— Mark 6:35-43 (NKJV)
Lack of sufficient faith may be one reason many Christian
ministries focus first on obtaining resources. As you appreciate from the example
in the preceding section, a small amount of resources can potentially be
stretched a long way to provide for needs before gaining added effectiveness
from any supernatural transformations. Add His unlimited power to accomplish
His purposes, and the results can be beyond awe inspiring. To me, Ephesians
3:20-21 (NKJV) captures the full dimension of the resources we should be
seeking:
Now to Him who is able to do
exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power
that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all
generations, forever and ever. Amen.
Obtaining enough resources is a
task we can approach with great confidence when we follow the specific
instructions in Malachi 3:8-12 (NKJV):
“Will a man rob God? Yet you have
robbed Me!
But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’
In tithes and offerings.
But you say, ‘In what way have we robbed You?’
In tithes and offerings.
You are cursed with a curse,
For you have robbed Me,
Even this whole nation.
Bring all the tithes into the
storehouse,
That there may be food in My
house,
And try Me now in this,”
Says the LORD of hosts,
“If I will not open for you the
windows of heaven
And pour out for you such
blessing
That there will not be
room enough to receive it.
And I will rebuke the devourer
for your sakes,
So that he will not destroy the
fruit of your ground,
Nor shall the vine fail to bear
fruit for you in the field,”
Says the LORD of hosts;
“And all nations will call you
blessed,
For you will be a delightful
land,”
Says the LORD of hosts.
God says to pay your tithes (the
first 10 percent of your income) and your offerings (gifts above the tenth that
represents the tithe) to your local church. After that, you should generously
provide alms for the poor. When you do these things, He promises to increase
what you have so much that the tithes, offerings, and alms you paid will seem
almost like pocket change by comparison.
Compare these directions to the
approach some Christian ministries use. These Christian ministries typically
don’t mention to potential donors that tithes and offerings should be provided
before alms, from the first fruits of our income. Instead, these ministries
make the strongest emotional appeal they can for alleviating suffering and
doing God’s will. In the process, some Christians may take money that should be
used for their tithes and offerings and wrongly direct the funds for alms. We
shouldn’t be surprised if such ministries find themselves with donors whose
incomes are shrinking so that the donors cannot sustain the giving that they
have committed to do.
Instead, the Christian ministry
should begin by being so faithful in making volunteer work rewarding and in
reducing costs that there may be little or no need for donations. If a need
remains (such as the need for supporting orphans in the example), the ministry
should be vigilant in encouraging potential donors to follow God’s financial
prescriptions for tithes and offerings before providing any funds to the
ministry.
It costs money to solicit
donations, funds that could be used to support those who need help. Christian
ministries should do as much of their fund-raising as possible through praying
for the Lord’s help. Some ministries have a long history of receiving all they
need without spending money on making solicitations.
With a stout dedication to making
good use of funds and not diverting funds from God’s purposes, such a Christian
ministry should find itself with more resources than it can use to accomplish
His purposes.
Now, keep the lessons of chapters
1 through 4 in mind as you read Chapter 5 where the subject is what Christian
nonprofit organizations should accomplish in establishing a 2,000 percent
nation.
Copyright
© 2007, 2010, 2011, 2012 by Donald W. Mitchell.
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Scripture
quotations marked (NKJV)
are taken
from the New King James Version.
Copyright
© 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc.
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