CHAPTER 1
The Generous Church
Building a Brand
When I was a kid, I lived next door to a friend who gave me a ride to school every morning in a Volkswagen Beetle. The Beetle, also known as the Bug, was a great car to drive. It was more than a car, having been given a fun and playful personality that was a part of the Herbie films that came out between 1968 and 2005. Herbie, a VW Bug, was an energetic and loyal friend in those films. My neighbor felt the same about her Bug. She gave it a name and would talk to it as she drove, encouraging and cajoling it. As odd as it may sound, she and that car had a relationship.
Over the years I knew other people who had relationships with their Volkswagens. A neighbor with free-range hair owned a VW Camper Van that had large flower stickers in the windows. It was the ultimate hippie van, a vehicle that held little communities of people who enjoyed nature and were at peace with the universe. Another friend owned a VW Rabbit. During the gas shortage of the 1980s, he would brag about how little gas his Rabbit used as he drove to school and work. Unlike the majority of drivers, who ambled around town in large gas-guzzlers before waiting in lines at the service station, his efficient and economical Rabbit was a part of the solution to the fuel shortage.
During those years, Volkswagen built a brand and attracted new generations of drivers not only in the United States but around the globe. In the 1990s, Volkswagen ads captured the essence of their brand with the word fahrvergnügen, which meant "driving pleasure." This German company became a leader in Europe and abroad, buying other car manufacturers and adding more brands until, by 2015, they were the number-two car company in the world.
Brands are hard to create. They take time and are built through a string of consistent decisions, when product after product delivers a promised experience in new and better ways as the decades unfold. Volkswagen's brand was built on the idea that you can have a relationship with your vehicle, that driving can be fun, and that cars do not have to despoil the environment. VW drivers had special feelings about their cars and a sense of community with each other. In an odd but powerful way, the VW brand reflected their personalities and values.
What's Your Brand?
Here is a question that church leaders would be wise to consider: What brand are you building in your church? Just as the VW brand has certain values that buyers identify with, your church has values that are communicated and put into practice every day. What are those values? Is generosity among them?
You may resist the idea of a church having a "brand." The word smacks of business and marketing and seems out of place in a conversation about the theology and values of a church. But the exercise is valuable as a way to think about what you are doing as a local congregation.
One way to identify a brand is to state the central values being expressed through its services or products. A church might consider verses from Jesus' teachings that sum up the life of their Christian community. It is helpful to identify verses that sum up what a particular congregation finds essential in their life together.
Imagine a group of church leaders on a retreat who decide to identify four key verses from the Gospels that will guide their ministry. The verses, once selected, will be placed across the top of the four sanctuary walls, to remind the congregation of its identity each time they gather for worship or congregational meetings. The leaders spend time reviewing the Gospels. Many verses are offered for consideration. After a great deal of discussion, the list is narrowed to the following five, and the group finds it almost impossible to delete one more:
"All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me and because of the good news will save them." (Mark 8:35)
"I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me."
(Matthew 25:35-36)
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me
because the Lord has anointed me.
He has sent me to preach good news to the poor,
to proclaim release to the prisoners
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to liberate the oppressed,
and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.
(Luke 4:18-19)
"I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, then you will produce much fruit." (John 15:5a)
"Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age." (Matthew 28:19-20)
Looking at these and other verses that were set aside, it occurs to one church member that the underlying quality that Jesus calls for in every aspect of Christian discipleship is generosity. God is initially generous to us, creating us. Then God shares love, forgiveness, and other forms of grace in our lives. Like branches grafted to a vine, we draw our strength and resources from God.
As the church leaders consider God's generous nature, it is hard for them to ignore another key verse that had not been listed.
"God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won't perish but will have eternal life." (John 3:16)
If you were to go through a similar process in your church, the results would be a bit different, but at some point it's likely you would identify generosity as an underlying principle of Christian faith.
Through faith in Christ, we find new life and salvation. God is generous with us from our inception to the moment we are offered the Resurrection. As a result, the calling of Christ upon our lives is not arduous but a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light. Christ followers are called to be generous in return, sharing the love of Christ that now resides in their lives. They share their resources with others, caring for the sick and poor. Jesus' disciples are generous with those who have no faith in God and are willing to talk about what they believe and how Christ has transformed them.
The teaching ministry of the church is a way that believers help each other go deeper, learn the meaning of the Bible, explore doctrine, and share stories about heroes of the faith. Church members care for one another through acts of kindness and compassion. They are a light to the world in the distinct fellowship they experience, as they celebrate each other's accomplishments and bear each other's burdens.
It does not take long to realize that the Christian life is a generous life. It is generous in love, forgiveness, compassion, kindness, hospitality, healing, faith, and so many other ways. In our story above, the group of church leaders realizes that if they can demonstrate the generosity of their church ministry in these ways, many people will want to join them. Who does not want to enjoy a generous life?
Let me go out on a limb here: If I had to choose one word to describe the totality of a life directed by the Lordship of Christ, my choice would be generous. This is the most important issue that the church has to confront in our time, because, though generous may describe the underlying theology and ministry of the New Testament church, most churches today struggle to live in a way that can be described by this important word.
To put this struggle in modern terms, we are not keeping the implied promises of our brand. We have a theoretical belief but not a realized theology. If you were to poll people in your community who were not church members, how many of them would describe your church as "generous"?
In churches that honor our brand and show generosity in all they do, a wonderful cycle is set in motion. The church is generous and blesses others. People want to attend a generous church, and they become a generous part of the congregation. Generosity begets generosity.
Brand Consequences
People love it when the brand delivers all that it says it will. Volkswagen hit a home run when it introduced its Type EA 189 "clean diesel" engines into several models in 2009. VW promised that the new technology would deliver almost zero emissions. Customers understood that by driving one of these cars, they would honor their desire to care for the environment. What amazed most drivers was that there seemed to be no tradeoffs. The cars were quick and responsive. Acceleration was outstanding. Customers were getting the best of both worlds. The quick, sporty car that VW owners had grown to love was still in place, only now with even better fuel economy and super-low emissions.
Then, in May 2014, scientists at the University of West Virginia discovered a problem with the clean diesel engines. The low-emission readings were not real. Later it was discovered that Volkswagen had installed a computer chip that produced a false reading during emission inspections. The actual emission output was from five to thirty-five times the allowed limit in the United States, depending on the model. Worldwide, eleven million cars were affected.
The impact to the Volkswagen brand was immediate. Outrage moved from country to country as the scope of the deception was discovered. VW owners were shocked that the company had sold them cars with high emissions. The impact would have been bad at any car company, but at VW the scandal was more severe because of the brand the company had built. The customers, having trusted the corporation and purchased the car for its advertised environmental benefits, were being forced to violate their ecological and sustainability values every time they got in the car and started the engine. Today, after years of building a brand, VW is in danger of losing an entire generation of customers who got burned by false advertising.
If the Christian "brand" is based on generosity, then perhaps something similar is taking place in our churches. When people attend churches that are not generous, they become frustrated. Churches demonstrate a lack of generosity when:
• friendly means "saying hello to old friends while ignoring first-time guests or new members"
• loving means "offering hospitality to those who look like the majority population while being inattentive to others or sending subtle cues that they are less welcome"
• stewardship means "spending money on a facility or pipe organ renovation, while ministry to the poor or money spent to reach and teach children is deemed unaffordable"
• compassion means "caring for the patriarchs and matriarchs of the church while the needs of less influential families escape notice"
There are many ways a church can come across as lacking generosity, and these affect the most committed church members as well as those outside the church. Church members want to live out the values of generosity they have found in Christ, but when they see little evidence of Jesus' teaching, or when they conclude the church is taking care of itself rather than giving for the sake of the world, they are like the owners of the VW models with the bad computer chip: by sitting in the pew, belonging to the church, and giving to church programs, they are violating their own values.
A variety of studies over the past several years has confirmed the decline of church attendance and membership in the United States. Mainline denominations, which have an older membership base, are the most dramatically affected by this shift in church participation. Many reasons have been given to explain the decline, ranging from lack of evangelism to poor leadership to changes in the larger culture, among others. But what if the real issue is something far more fundamental? What if the church is in decline because people have observed a gap between the teaching of Christ and the life of the congregation?
It's instructive to note that while many churches are in decline, some congregations remain as pockets of vitality. These churches seem to be performing a modern miracle. While they may not experience runaway growth, they are stable and enjoy modest gains in worship attendance. While giving has fallen precipitously in other churches, these congregations are growing in the donations entrusted to their care. They are addressing important needs in their communities and are taken seriously by local nonprofits. Other churches are noticeably aging, but these churches include a broad range of age groups, from children to millennials to older members. At the heart of the churches' vitality is their generosity, which makes them credible witnesses to individuals and families who are seeking a more generous life.
Jesus calls the church to be generous in everything it does and to give itself away so that it will find new life in Christ. But often our churches live in grudging and miserly ways, where love is a scarce commodity, forgiveness is rarely available, compassion is parsed out in trifling doses, and true community is in low supply.
When the church lacks generosity, the brand has been compromised. New people have no incentive to attend. Existing members become uncomfortable with the gap between their personal values and the church's allocation of congregational time, talent, and treasure, which seem to serve little of what Jesus said was important in life. Because of that gap, members stop giving or, worse, stop participating at all.
Generous Leadership
It is not enough for the church to hold forth a grand vision of what the world should look like while passively observing what the world actually is. People are looking for great and noble institutions, whose lives are based on what they do in the world, what they offer to others. People find meaning in being part of a congregation that helps transform the lives of those who are spiritually poor, physically or emotionally vulnerable, or socially downtrodden. What people seek, what they are willing to sacrifice time and money for, what they are willing to participate in generously themselves, are churches that live out the values and teaching of the New Testament in ways that challenge the status quo of both the society in which they live and the established church where they attend.
Churches that lack generosity are often led by individuals with a scarcity mind-set. The church leaders have a long list of reasons the church cannot do more for members or for the community. It is too hard to get volunteers. There is no money in the budget. Starting a new ministry would mean harming one that currently exists. People are not attending as they once did. These leaders give an endless list of reasons for holding on tightly when the church is called to bless others generously. As a result, such churches end up on the sidelines of life.
I am reminded of former President Theodore Roosevelt's speech "Citizenship in a Republic" given at the Sorbonne in Paris on April 23, 1910. Roosevelt called on the elite of Europe to engage in the duties of citizenship rather than living insular and selfish lives. Roosevelt could have been talking about churches when he stated,
There is but a small field of usefulness open for the men of cloistered life who shrink from contact with their fellows. Still less room is there for those who deride of slight what is done by those who actually bear the brunt of the day; nor yet for those others who always profess that they would like to take action, if only the conditions of life were not exactly what they actually are.
Roosevelt impatiently called his audience, which felt sheltered and secure in the years prior to World War I, to use their gifts and abilities for the public good. The call of the Holy Spirit to the church in our time is quite similar. I can only imagine that it is all the more urgent.
Mark Miller is the pastor of Ebenezer United Methodist Church in Stafford, Virginia. Mark has experience with the desire of his members to attend a generous church.
I had just returned from a mission exploration trip to Cuba. During that trip, I encountered numerous Pastors who were leading vibrant congregations full of people devoted to Jesus. I was deeply inspired by the ways the Holy Spirit was at work in and among the Cuban people.
In one particular town, a pastor was working with volunteers to build a church. The growth of Christianity in that particular area had been quite amazing over the past couple of years, and the church leaders were working hard to create a larger worship space, expanding from a room that might hold fifty people to a space that could hold up to 250. Resources were scarce, and yet through perseverance and prayer, the new worship space was almost completed. The Pastor shared with our team that it would probably still be several months before they could use the space, because they could not afford any kind of seating. They needed about $10,000 to purchase and install enough pews. I felt God call me to help and pledged to this Cuban pastor our church would supply the necessary funds. To this day, I am a bit surprised by my bold promise, since our church was going through its own set of financial challenges, and I had no real authority to make such a promise on behalf of our congregation.
