BOOK REVIEW - "THE GOD ASK: A FRESH, BIBLICAL APPROACH TO PERSONAL SUPPORT RAISING" BY STEVE SHADRACH

 A lot of the Christian ministries I'm familiar with fall in the category of faith-supported missions, where the missionaries are responsible for raising (or, as the Conservative Baptist movement puts it, discovering) their support. This can become a joyful training for the missionaries to trust in God even when they are stuck at a percentage of their support. But then, it can be discouraging and the missionaries may give up. 

One resource for those who need to raise support is "The God Ask: A Fresh, Biblical, Approach to Personal Support Raising" by Steve Shadrach. This book has a lot of great ideas. One is seeing support-raising as a triangle, with God at the top, the ministry-worker looking to God for support on one corner, and the supporter seeking God's supply and blessing in the other. 

The strongest point is to see this as a partnership. Shadrach encourages those who receive support to pray for the donors, have regular communication with them, learn their birthdays and anniversaries, and develop your relationship with them. This is what I despise about multi-level direct sales: That approach makes it seem like that getting you to buy into their business is more important than cultivating a friendship.

However, there were many things in this book that made me cringe. It took me three months to get through "The God Ask," because Shadrach's aggressive "The Wrong Way or My Way" approach consistently made me uncomfortable. Early on, he gives the impression that it's possible to raise 100% of your support in 100 days, but by the time I ended, he made it sound like the reality is it's a never-ending process. 

Two impressions he gave is his approach is 1) Biblical and 2) not high pressure sales. Unfortunately, he didn't convince me on either point.

1. I will admit - I do not consider his views unbiblical (condemned by Scripture), but I don't see a strong in-context and consistent mandate. There are two points where his theory is at odds with Scripture. First, 3 John 7 applauds workers who take nothing from the Gentiles (unbelievers), while Shadrach says there's times to ask non-Christians to support a Christian ministry. Second, Shadrach discourages working to help provide for your support (like the tent-maker model, following the example of Paul) but to put all your time in fundraising.
2. As far as resembling the high pressure direct sales impression, he suggests asking for specific amounts. With a professional double income family, he strongly suggests the monthly amount asked for should be at least $100, and Shadrach stated he felt insulted when a person seeking support  asked for only $35 a month. It sounds like he's promoting asking everybody you know to be a supporter, and if you have a person who has been giving a large amount regularly, ask him to give more.

I'm giving this book a 3 star review. I would without hesitation recommend this book for anyone who needs to raise financial support for their ministry, but I also would emphasize it's one person's theory, and encourage them to modify their application to their personal convictions. 

BOOK REVIEW AND CRITIQUE - "THE THIRD CONVERSION" (A NOVELETTE) BY R. SCOTT RODIN

 

Were Fundraiser Walter  Rodgers' apprehensions about the new employee he was training relevant? Was the completely different approach Rodgers and the ministry Hands Of Love International promoted something Carl Burns could comprehend, let alone accept?

R. Scott Rodin poured out his heart and convictions in the  novella "The Third Conversion. He clearly had the aim to win the reader over to his conclusions, and he made a good case. Rodin wrote two other novelettes "The Million-Dollar Dime" and "The Seventh Key." He also has written and co-written non-fiction books dealing with the same subject.

The scenario is a worker nearing retirement is training a young man in the fund-rasing part of a Christian ministry, and is more concerned with the development of the lives of the donors to the ministry than on getting sizeable contributions.

This is a thought provoking book. It does have some preachy parts in this book: this novelette is clearly written for a Christian audience. The title "The Three Conversions" is from a quote by Martin Luther: "There are three conversions necessary for every man: the head, the heart, and the purse."

I recommend this book for those looking into fundraising and an overall one-kingdom theology (as opposed to a two kingdom view where an individual has one set of standards for Sunday and another for the rest of the week).

Allow me to also offer up a critique. When reviewing fiction, I usually award the author a five star review, because they have put in a lot of work developing characters, plot, and maybe going a little deeper. However, I struggled reading this book, and partly because there are certain practices usually done that Rodin didn't do. None of this takes away from his theme in this book, but it could be difficult for readers.

The first thing is point of view. I've learned through my studying in writing that the preferred approach is to have a single point of view character. It could be a first person or third person narration, but in the latter, the author would keep everything from the perspective of a character until either the end of a chapter or a line dividing up the chapter. Sometimes, we would see the perspective change from Walt's to Carl's without a dividing line.

A second thing are tagline when people are speaking. You may see tags like "said," "thought," "declared," "questioned," etc. Rodin used these and others. In writing classes, however, I've seen two basic views: 

1. The only acceptable tags are "said" or "asked." Anything else is an unnecessary elaboration.
2. The only acceptable tag is "said." If the sentence ends with a question mark, "asked" is redundant. 

With such a limited choice, writers often use non-verbal tags to help identify the speaker. So you have characters drinking coffee, rolling eyes, scratching their heads, and things like that to make things more interesting. 

One problem I see in Rodin's writing -  a common problem among authors - is telling instead of showing. For example, once Carl says something that suprised himself. What does that look like?

Again, none of these complaints take away from the value of the book. I highly recommend it.

POST PRIMARY '23 THOUGHTS

Christians United Church, Indianapolis.

 

 After looking at the ballot for Tuesday's Republican primary, Becky asked if I wanted to run for City Council. 😱

Let me give a little background, and then I'll share some thoughts. 

We are in the city of Lawrence (Indiana), which is in Marion County; Marion County and Indianapolis are one in the same. Thus, I live in two different cities, represented by two mayors and five councilers (Indianapolis 10th district, Lawrence's 3rd, and three at-large Lawrence representatives. At the moment, all except the Lawrence mayor are Democrats.

I'm typing this on the day of the primary election. There were five candidates for Indianapolis Mayor on the Democrat side (including the incumbent, Joe Hogsett, running for his 3rd term) and four Republicans. For Lawrence Mayor there was one Republican and two Democrats (the Republican candidate probably finished due to term limits?). 

The primaries are over and I will predict that in the Council races, the Dems will maintain their majority in both Indy and Lawrence. Why? Out of the 25 seats in Indianapolis, 12 have no Republican candidate. In Lawrence, same is true for half of the half dozen districts; true, there's three at large seats which are contested, but if the Dems win either those three seats or two of the contested seats, they've got the majority.

Okay, that's enough for the background. My thoughts?

• Have the Republicans given up on Indianapolis (and Lawrence)? Is it better to save money and work on races that aren't expected to be won, or to fight on the ballot even when the odds are against them?
• Related. Is the thought that partisan control of a city does not make a difference as much as it does with state and federal government? Thus, is the GOP saving up for the seemingly more important races?
• If the Libertarians got aggressive and ran for every seat the Republicans are ignoring, would the voters there realize that there is an alternative to the Democrats and encourage them? Or do Republicans (and Democrats) think it's better to let the "bad guys" have control than to let the revolutionaries (e.g. third parties) provide some needed choices other than the two bullies?
• Are we heading to a point where a single party has control? And is there anyway that this is good for freedom? 
• We have open primaries where you can vote in one party's primary, even if you are probably voting for the other party in the November elections. Is that good, or should the selection of the November candidates be done by those registered in a certain party?
  
• The Republican running for Indy mayor spent 1 mil of his own money to get the nomination. With the money involved, is running for office any different than gambling? And does that make money spent in campaigns money that could be used more effectively elsewhere? 
• By the way, except in the case mentioned in the above paragraph, who pays for the Bully... I mean two major Parties' primaries? Yep, us taxpayers. Should we put an end to that?
  
• Let's move from the unimportant to matters of faith. As Christians, do we either a) ignore battles we should be fighting (should the Republicans and Libertarians make sure no seat is unchallenged) or b) spending time and money for earthly things (even in the church) instead of heavenly things (should the Republicans not challenging a seat being wise)?

Yes, of course I'd love to hear your thoughts on these questions. And should I run for office? (Honestly, I think Becky would be a better candidate than me.)