Adapted from Helping Without Hurting in Generosity

The Chalmers Center’s Faith & Finances curriculum helps churches and nonprofits around North America walk alongside thousands of individuals living material poverty grow in their financial stewardship each year. In each class, participants remember two key themes: 1) Jesus is making all things new, including our money and relationships; and 2) God has chosen to use our money to accomplish His work in the world.

Think about that: God desires His people to fuel ministry in His kingdom through the resources He has entrusted to us. As image-bearers of our abundantly generous God, our generosity is key to this. Faithful stewardship of God’s resources includes giving generously from all that God has blessed us with. But this stewardship also involves giving God’s money away well—giving generously to ministries and causes that are aligned with God’s mission. As we do so, we participate with the Triune God in His work in the world. What an incredible blessing and responsibility!

This is easier said than done, though. How do we know where we should give the Lord’s money? What criteria should we use to guide us in our decision making? There are no easy answers to these questions or simple formulas to follow, but wisdom is available to us as we seek to steward God’s resources to advance His mission. 

Giving into God’s Story of Change

Hearts that are deeply shaped by God’s love for His world are concerned with the impact of our giving. Is our generosity consistent with God’s mission? Is it actually making the world a better place? Is it drawing us closer to the heart of God?

Faithful stewardship means not merely being generous, but supporting initiatives that are consistent with God’s story of change—the way He has designed His creation to flourish—because His story is the only one that ultimately works in His world.

But giving in this way is far from easy. Think about what questions you might ask to do your due diligence in giving to a ministry organization—How much money gets spent on overhead? What is the track record of the organization? Is the ministry Christ-centered? How are program participants included in the ministry? These are certainly helpful and necessary, but may not help us see the most important aspects of their work. We should also be asking, “What is the organization’s theory (or story) of change?”

A theory or a story of change, answers two fundamental questions: What is the goal? (What does success look like?) How can the goal be achieved?

Each one of us and the ministries we give time and resources are living into a story of change, but often we are not even aware of our story of change. We tend to automatically think, say, and do things without even being conscious of why we do so. 

Stop and think: What is your story of change? Look at your behaviors, what do they suggest is the goal in your life and how you believe you can achieve that goal? Our story of change deeply impacts us, shaping everything we do, including the ways and places we choose to give our money.

Mutual Transformation for Flourishing 

Because people are created in the image of our triune God, we are made to be relational. The Goal of a Biblical Story of Change is to restore people to flourishing through enabling them to enjoy loving relationships with God, self, others, and the rest of creation. This is what true human flourishing looks like. And this understanding should shape every aspect of our lives and our poverty alleviation efforts, impacting our program designs, implementation, metrics, funding sources, and marketing.

Sadly, many of the most common ways of helping those experiencing material poverty don’t reflect God’s design, leaving people trapped in cycles of poverty and creating unhealthy dependency on others. This lack of transformation leaves ministry leaders feeling stuck, frustrated, and exhausted.

As followers of Jesus, we want to give to ministries that are leaning into God’s story, unleashing them to pursue the long-term, highly-relational work that leads to lasting transformation.

And this transformation isn’t just for those experiencing material poverty—all of us engaged in this work should experience transformation. Near the end of his first letter to Timothy, the Apostle Paul writes: “Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life” (1 Tim. 6:17-19, NIV).

Regardless of our relative wealth or poverty, what every human being is looking for is “life that is truly life.” And Paul says that Christ invites us to enter into this flourishing life through participating in God’s gracious generosity, through sharing. Generosity is directly linked to transformation! This is what God calls us all to, whether we are blessed with wealth or struggle in material poverty, we are all created for deep communion, to mutual generosity with God, self, others, and creation.

Over the next month, we’ll share more on this theme, including ways that we can look for and measure flourishing in the ministries we love and support. 

For more on this, check out Helping Without Hurting in Generosity—a FREE video-based resource from Chalmers that digs into effective generosity for the sake of kingdom ministry.