What Your Biggest Givers Wish You Knew

What Your Biggest Givers Wish You Knew

Jim: Hello friends, Jim Shepard here with my colleague and great friend Frank Bealer, the current CEO of Generis, I might add.

Frank: Hey, former CEO of Generis. So, he's the current CEO.

Jim: Hey, good to see you, man. It's been a minute.

Frank: Good to see you, too. I've missed you. Been a minute.

Jim: Yeah. Well, we've been. Are you sure you miss me?

Frank: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We just haven't got much time to hang.

Jim: We've both been working, but even our travel schedules have been off pace a little bit. And so, I'm glad we're getting to hang out today. So, absence makes the heart grow fonder. Is that what you're saying?

Frank: That's what some have said. Some have said, "Well, let's see what happens when you have me around for a little while." If you're still saying the same thing, "Wait, do you have a trip?"

Seeing me highlighting your sabbatical on the calendar. Hey, when's that sabbatical again, Jim? You know, that's when you know, baby, there's some issues. I need a little space.

Jim: Hey, by the way, that's not contrary to everything we've said about our transition. We're kidding. Truly kidding.

Oh, we're having so much fun. The transition is still going great as we have told you I think on a couple of episodes. But it is kind of funny, Frank, that people are still asking the questions. We're on record, you know, we're past the honeymoon phase, so now they want to know how things are really going. I thought we cleared that up at the last episode, but I mean just in the last few weeks it's this great concern for me. "How are you doing? Tell me the tea, what's really happening?" Which is really another way of saying, is there another narrative?

No, there's not another narrative, you know. And so I said, hey, well, let me give you two data points. Here's the two data points. And then you tell me how you think I'm doing. So Frank is crushing it and I get a front row seat to watch that.

Frank: So he looks at me and he says, "It's going pretty good for you, isn't it?" I said, I would say it's going pretty good for me.

Jim: Well, I'm having a blast. I know you are so grateful that the days are full. We have tremendous opportunities to serve our clients and we've had some really fun projects we've got to work on lately. And yeah, it's a fun season. Fun season. Working hard. Working hard.

My voice is even a little weak. I've been working hard. I've been talking a lot. Be careful.

Frank: So, heyo, maybe you'll get to experience the incredible miracle I got to witness when I got to see you literally lose your voice.

Jim: The podcast audience would love to hear about this, Frank.

Frank: It was a glorious moment for you, wasn't it? I think it was an answer to many years of prayer by your wife and possibly your children and other people, many friends.

We were literally with a client together serving a large church. And while we're sitting there, I watch him in the middle of a couple minute period, he goes from talking fine to slowly losing his voice, ultimately discovering he had laryngitis. I had to pick up and carry the rest of the meeting.

Jim: Frank, can you carry this the rest of the way for me?

Frank: It was so awesome. I loved it. First of all, I loved being put on the spot that way. Second of all, I loved it because we did get to see a miracle and so and now you're back and you're talking about everything.

Jim: Well, I was glad that you were there to witness it because I was just afraid that some of my friends and family wouldn't witness it. That's it.

Frank: Hey, so today we got a great episode today, which is kind of a followup to our last episode when I talked about this idea that all givers are the same, but not all gifts are the same. And we've gotten a lot of feedback about that because segmentation of givers in the church can be a controversial topic.

My view is it doesn't have to be and I think the key is your heart posture toward you once you know about those segments whether you see the individual information or not but once you know those segments what are you going to do with that right? And so many things in the church heart posture is really the key. Are you going to leverage that to your advantage or are you going to nurture these people spiritually and make them better, help them become that great?

And so we use this idea that all givers are the same, not all gifts are the same and I use two primary givers from the Bible. I used David, King David, and his gift in 1st Chronicles 29 when he's building the temple.

Jim: Yeah.

Frank: And you know that I'm a nerd enough about numbers that I keep track of what the current value of that is. Gold is $5,000 an ounce. Now, silver is in the '9s an ounce, 5,000 pounds of gold, 4,000, excuse me, 5,000 talents of gold, 4,000 talents of silver, 20.5 billion dollars in today's money.

Jim: Right? And then we have the widow on her two coins. So from my perspective based on the information that we've been given, those would be the two largest individual gifts in the Bible.

There are others that we could speculate are larger gifts, but we don't have enough information. I mean, when Abraham tithed, you know, we don't know what that was. We don't know what that was. Could have been a large one, but this one is described and we know.

So the givers are the same, but the gifts are not. Her two coins could not possibly accomplish what David's 20 billion. And by the way, his 20 billion couldn't accomplish what her two coins did because she gave everything and he didn't.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: Right. And so we talked about that a lot. So this is kind of an extension of that today.

Frank: Absolutely. And a big part of it today is practically if we're aware of this information. If we found out who's giving in a high capacity way and really leaning in, what do they want from us? What do they need as pastors and leaders? How do we care for them well? How do we steward this information?

You talk about that heart posture. How does that actually show up? So that's the conversation today. And I think it starts by just generally asking the question, what did they want? How do you begin that interaction when you become aware of this information?

Maybe you don't have a strong relational connection. Where do you begin? Where do you begin in the relationship? How do you navigate those first few steps so that your heart posture is right?

Jim: Yeah. So the thing with high-capacity givers, Frank, that I think is so important for a pastor is many of them, many of them, and the more you have, the more this is true, the people that come into their life want to start with the money conversation. There's something they want from them. And as a pastor, you've got to be completely different than that.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: You know, you can't bring up the money conversation because if you do, then that's a revelation about your heart posture. You're just viewing this as target practice, right? You're just looking for a target so you can go hit the bullseye and maybe get a million dollars or five or 10 or whatever you're looking for. Right?

That's what I'm talking about. Your heart posture goes in the wrong direction. The heart posture I'd want you to have as a pastor is to think in terms of they have been given this stewardship assignment that is massive and there's a really good chance, 98% I think I'm pulling that out of the air just to say it's high, that they don't know how to do that to steward that toward God's glory right?

Many of them, I'll tell you this, here's what I see. I see a lot of these families in my church and in other churches that are the first in their family in generations to have extreme wealth.

I mean, think about, I'm thinking about a young guy who scaled a business and he doesn't even come from middle class means. He would say the middle class people were better off than he was.

And so, his family didn't have any, they weren't poor, but they didn't have much. He scaled his company at age 32 and sold it. He personally owned 100% of it, $150 million in cash.

Frank: 150.

Jim: Okay. So, he's first time. He's also a relatively new Christ follower. He's been a Christ follower for about three years.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: So, you take the combination of extreme prosperity and relative immaturity in the faith.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: And that person now has a kingdom assignment that they are completely unprepared to execute without your assistance. And as a pastor, that's where I'd want you to start.

Frank: Yes.

Jim: How do I help this person find their way to good and faithful servant? Because despite the fact, and I'm not throwing shade at anyone, that we use good and faithful in a lot of other contexts, it only appears in one in the Bible.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: And it's in a stewardship story. And I want you to have a great chance at hearing good and faithful and not the other side because one of the most extreme rebukes in the Bible is in that same passage. Wicked and lazy.

Yeah, bro. You don't want to be wicked and lazy. You want to be good and faithful, right? And as their pastor, you have the distinct honor and privilege of helping them with their stewardship assignment.

Frank: That's so good, Jim. There's a study that just came out yesterday before this podcast being recorded that families in America that make an average income of half a million dollars, a majority of them say they live paycheck to paycheck.

Jim: It just came out, brand new study, half a million dollar a year income. Frank, that segment says a majority of them said they live paycheck to paycheck.

Frank: This is a secular study, very interesting, right, for us to talk about and just go, okay, we think sometimes that when we're talking giving or talking budgeting or some of the practicalities of this, when we're talking from the stage or sharing messages around money, we oftentimes go to those that are struggling or they really just need to cut out their Starbucks runs and they'll get their life in order and that's all it's going to take.

I think that's a real reality check for us to go, "Oh, no, no, no. If you're saying that people of lesser means are saying that they're living paycheck to paycheck and now we're saying people that are bringing in an income of about half a million dollars a year are living paycheck to paycheck, then that tells you that for most congregations in America a vast majority of the people in your congregation are feeling that tension when it comes to money and how they live and the lifestyle they've chosen and that lifestyle creep and all these tensions.

And so it's on us to help people navigate it. And yet for some reason, I think pastors can get weird that when they know people in their congregation that make more money than they do, then they don't have issues or the same complexities or trying to figure this out. And yet many of them have the same issues or maybe sometimes even more complicated issues when it comes to money and God.

Jim: That is, I'm still processing that stat. That is a fascinating statistic. $10,000 a week, Frank, is what you're talking about. Wow.

And somehow or another. And so, this is what one of my mentors said to me many years ago when I was having a hard time. I was getting pay increases, but I wasn't finding a margin. He said, "Well, yeah, every time you get a pay increase, if you engage in a lifestyle increase, you're never going to get ahead."

You're never going to get ahead, right? And so, yeah, I think that does speak to the weight of this conversation that it's probably a more important conversation than even you and I thought.

Frank: When somebody is a key giver and they either draw back from giving or draw back from the church altogether. How do you feel it's appropriate for a pastor to reach out and kind of circle back when they know that they are a significant giver in the church, and yet that may not be the reason they're leaving at all?

How do you help a pastor navigate that conversation when they feel they need to reach out pastorally? It goes back to that heart issue, but how would you recommend they enter in that conversation very practically when they know that they're a significant giver and there's that unique tension, but at the end of the day, you're really truly just worried about them. How do you even start that conversation?

Jim: Well, I think this is going to go back to that question of what's your heart posture in the midst of all that, Frank? And it's are you looking at that as a resource or a person?

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: And if you're looking at it as a resource and lamenting the amount of money that goes out the door if that person doesn't continue giving at that pace, then that's a problem. Your heart posture is off.

Frank: Wow.

Jim: But if you look at him as a person who needs to be shepherded, then that's a different issue.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: Right. Now, by the way, they're probably going to say, "Oh, pastor, I get that you're here because I'm a significant giver in the life of your church." No. Actually, I do this with other people, right, who don't give at your level.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: And so, this is not about that. In fact, you know, I'm not here for that. I hope that you continue to be a member of our church and a part of our church. But I'm here to help you figure this out as a spiritual matter, not as a financial issue.

Frank: What do you say to the pastor that is so concerned that that won't be received, that they actually won't pastor or have those conversations? They'll have conversations with other people in the congregation all day, but they actually avoid having those pastoral conversations or leaning in on that because they're so afraid it'll be perceived that way, even if they say that's not the reason.

Jim: See, that's not a hypothetical question because that actually happened to you last week, isn't it?

Frank: That's exactly right. That's exactly right.

Jim: And I said to you, I'm going to say the same thing. I'm glad you brought that up because I think that needs to be on this podcast.

Frank: I do too.

Jim: Is that it is symptomatic of the fact because what I would do is I would stop the conversation. I said, "Pastor, let's stop talking about him and let's talk about you."

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: I smell a transactional mindset here. And all you know how to do is think transactionally. And because all you know how to do is think transactionally, you've got his reaction already programmed transactionally.

Frank: Wow.

Jim: When the whole conversation is about transformation and you're not even thinking about that. So here's the thing. Until and unless we can get that out of your heart, you should not even go have that conversation.

Frank: Whoa. Oh, that's so good. That's so good.

Jim: Is that similar to what I said to you last week?

Frank: Absolutely. But it hits hard because...

Jim: Hey, for the podcast audience, Frank was in a real conversation trying to help somebody have the conversation with a giver and he kept pushing back on, well, what if they say this and what if they say this and what if they say that?

And I said, Frank, you got to stop that conversation and say, this is not about them. It's about you, pastor. You're the transactional problem right here.

Frank: So good. And call it out. Oh, it's so good. I think our audience needed to hear that. I think that's a good reminder for us to go, it's our responsibility to lean in.

Jim: Because when he was having that conversation with you, Frank, what I said to you last week is he just gave you an X-ray into his own heart.

And once you read the X-ray, it's like, hold on, wait a minute. This is not about the bro over here that's not giving to your church. This is about you, and then we'll talk about him.

Frank: Yeah, that's so good. That's so good. As I think about navigating these conversations, trying to really help pastors and leaders, I've shared recently with a couple of clients, one just yesterday that, hey guys, we can run a generosity initiative and hit our goal and fail our people.

And it hit him differently. It got his attention. He was like, whoa, wait, what? And I said, 'We can hit our financial goal and fail our people. What we need to make sure we do is invite the people of God to get on their knees before the Lord and say, God, what is the gift that's honoring and pleasing to you?

Are we inviting our people to learn how to work those muscles and grow those muscles and discipline our people in the area of generosity? The money stuff will sort itself out. And yeah, we have goals and we have vision and all the things, but we need to feel the weight that this is an incredible pastoral opportunity that we have in generosity initiatives and an end of year giving to just lead our people to working some spiritual muscles that can be really strong.

And we don't need to apologize for that. We don't need to apologize for inviting them to lean in on that. But if we're not settled in our heart, if we're struggling in our heart, we're going to have some real challenges with a generosity initiative. We're asking other people to give.

Jim: Yeah. And I've said this many times. You know that I've said this many times. Let's get it on this podcast as well, pastors. A lot of these issues live inside of you, not them. And we've got to get you straightened out before we can get them straightened out.

Frank: Wow.

Jim: Right. And it's like, you know, when we make the conversation awkward, your lay people don't think this is an awkward conversation generally. So why would you make it that?

Frank: That's right.

Jim: Don't make it that way. You're just revealing that the awkwardness actually lives inside of you. Whether it is that your giving story is not as good as it needs to be and you don't feel the moral authority or the spiritual authority to speak into it or whether you're intimidated by people that seem to have a lot more than you do or whatever the issue is.

We've got to get that straightened out in you before you can have a great conversation with them. Because for them, this is really just a simple issue. It's complex, but it's simple. It's about progressive sanctification in an area of their life that they're not accustomed to dealing with.

Progressive sanctification, building that muscle group you and I talk about, right? The only way you're ever going to be able to bench 250 is if you got to be able to bench 100 first or 50.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: Or do a 5 lb dumbbell, I don't know, something. But we're not going to strap you up to a 250 and say, "Give me 10."

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: When you've never done anything in your life. And so many churches try to do that rather than giving something they can start with and work toward that. Right? It's progressive sanctification.

Frank, I don't think that I've known, I'm trying to remember, but over three decades working with churches and in my circle of friends and my church and other people. I don't think I know anyone who's figured it all out about generosity and giving at one time.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: I know lots of people that are figuring it out a little bit at a time. And that's the issue, pastor, is you're doing that in so many other areas of discipleship. Let's do it here.

And that conversation with higher capacity givers is the same. Don't bring up the money thing with them. Everybody else is already doing that in their lives. You know, their alma mater, their local museum, their local causes. How much can you give? How much can you give? How much can you give?

I want you to think, how much can I help you grow as a pastor? How much can I help you grow in regard to this stewardship assignment? The stewardship of these resources, this large amount of resources that God has put into your hands. How can I help you be better at that? You do that. They'll bring up the money conversation.

Frank: Yeah, that's so good. I love the language of this stewardship assignment. Lean in on that. Let them know that for whatever reason, God has entrusted a lot to their care. And so now we have an opportunity for them to grow and learn what to do with that.

Each of us have our different areas of expertise and opportunity and some are parents and some are husbands and wives and we all have these different roles. You're in the seat for a reason. So if you've been blessed with a lot, how do you help them navigate it through those conversations?

One thing I was going to say is that Jim, when I meet pastors and they give me their worst case scenario of how the conversation's going to go, it's always so irrational. I've never had whatever they present is going to happen as extreme. So, I say, you can play it out in your mind. What if this went bad? If you need to get your mind around that, that's fine.

But don't create a scenario that's absolutely impossible or improbable and simply not going to happen and prepare for that because I don't even know how to prepare for that. Irrational prepare for how somebody might respond.

And I was talking to a church literally earlier this morning and I said, you'll be surprised by the number of people that you sit down with them and you thank them for their generosity and the significant giving that they give in the church and they look at you and they say, "We give 30 grand a year. Is that significant? I didn't even realize that."

They're surprised that they have a weight to carry and that their amount of giving is deemed significant or in the top 20 or whatever it may be. You'll have some that it's breaking news to them that their giving is significant and helping. It never occurred to them.

They're being faithful and now suddenly they feel that weight. They carry it differently. They understand that they're stewarding something and hopefully stewarding it well. And so it can be a great opportunity for us.

So, what else, Jim, do you want to say on this idea of all givers are the same, not all gifts are the same? We unpacked it last time on the theology side. Practically speaking, how do we avoid favoritism? How do we keep this thing from being awkward?

Obviously, heart posture is a lot of it. Are there any other tips and tricks along the way that you coach pastors that are nervous about getting sideways, recognizing what you're saying is true, but not sure how to work this muscle, where to practically implement it.

Jim: Yeah. Well, you know, the favoritism word is one that I hear a lot when we bring out segmentation. We mentioned it a little bit in the last podcast, but let's talk about it again.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: Favoritism is going to be directly related to your heart posture.

Frank: That's right.

Jim: I mean what I tell pastors is look at 8% of your people that are giving 61% of the annual income, you didn't do that, they did right? They put themselves in that category. You didn't do anything to influence that.

And for you to think that somehow or another you're going to advance the ministry and mission of your church in this next season with a major giving increase and not have those people on board, you might but it's unlikely.

Frank: That's right.

Jim: And so, when you get those people, those stakeholders, those pace setters, as we call them, I call them pace setters because I want you to set the pace because you're already setting the pace. I just want you to keep doing what you've been doing. Set the pace in this giving initiative because you're already setting the pace.

So many of them come into that room and they say, "Oh, I didn't know."

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: I had no idea. Right. And so, your heart posture is what you do with it. Now the other thing and I don't want to spend a lot of time on this but so much of the time we actually misinterpret James 2 because we don't properly understand the context of when it was being said in the context of the day.

They were still perpetuating a teaching that was prevalent in the Old Testament. We actually see it in the book of Job. In the book of Job, when he loses everything, what is the posture of his three friends?

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: What's this great sin that you've done? Who sinned?

Frank: Who sinned? Who sinned here? Somebody sinned big cuz this would never have happened to you.

Jim: So that is the predominant way that they thought in the New Testament. It's why Jesus keeps talking about your wealth can't get you into heaven.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: He didn't say a wealthy person can't get in. He never said that. Right? He said, "Your wealth can't get you into heaven."

And so in James, what would happen is those who had wealth would automatically be seated down front because the posture of the scribes and the Pharisees and the teachers of the day was that those are the saved people. Those are the saved. God obviously has his hand on them. And that was not true.

And the teaching of James was you're presuming things about these people in their hearts that may not actually be true. They might and probably do. Many of them belong on the back row or maybe even out in the courts.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: By the way, a small thing here that I just thought of or they might go out in the narthex.

Frank: Okay.

Jim: In the narthex. The narthex. When I was at Cenchreae, the port at Corinth from which Paul sailed to Ephesus, I was there about a year ago.

Frank: Okay.

Jim: There's the ruins of a church right there at the port. And so this modern word that we use in a lot of churches for Narthex to mean lobby. It was a lobby, but you know who the lobby was for? People who weren't believers yet.

Frank: Really?

Jim: The narthex was reserved for the unsaved.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: Hey, Frank, you're going to need to sit out in the narthex. In the narthex, right? So in favoritism, you would say some of these people didn't belong on the front row. They belonged out in the narthex.

Frank: Narthex. Well, those of you in the mainline church tradition that still use the word narthex, you might want to look up the Greek context of that and be careful how you use that. You might want to call that a lobby. You might want to change that. That was a revelation to me because I thought, that's interesting. I didn't know that.

Jim: Wow. Ain't that cool?

Frank: Yeah, it's very cool. Extra information. What else do you say?

Jim: Y'all don't have to pay anything extra on this podcast to get that information. So, the point being that we have misinterpreted favoritism and then we just throw it over there as a protection mechanism for something we don't want to deal with.

Frank: Convenient, right?

Jim: It's convenient, but it's not scripturally. The integrity of scripture is not represented in the way that most people use it. So, here's what I would say. Let's not call favoritism things that are not favoritism.

Frank: Yeah.

Jim: Because just putting those people in a segment is not favoritism. What you do with it, your heart posture with it now, that could be favoritism in the way that you do that.

So guard against that. And just know for many of these people, their humility about their giving is such that they don't even realize. But when you bring them into that context and you help them to see that, they now understand we're carrying some weight to this ministry that we didn't realize. And now we have a better understanding of how to do that.

Frank: Jim, that's so good. This has been a good combo of sessions. I'm excited about the next episode. I want to give a quick preview of the next episode we're talking about.

Just think about a couple lines. I'm putting you on the spot. A couple lines for a teaser for this next episode on why staff giving is not optional.

Jim: It is a big problem in the church in America and nobody talks about it.

Frank: All right, we will in the next episode apparently. So, heyo. And we'll see you there the next time we convene for the next Sunday podcast. Hey.

Jim: Hey.