The Mind of a Fund Raiser

The comment we most frequently get while discussing fund development with people is, "I could never do that."

I belong to a really great small group through MountainBrook Church here in SLO. We are reading If You Want to Walk on Water, You've Got to Get Out of the Boat, by John Ortberg. Hello long title. This book has been really great for me to be reading during this time of focused fund development. It exposits the passage of Peter walking on water as it discusses taking risks, discovering our calling and trusting God. Last week we read a chapter on calling and how to find yours. We discussed how, often, a calling involves things like downward mobility and pain. Yikes. Ortberg also quoted Frederich Buechner who wrote that calling is "the place where you deep gladness meets the world's deep need."

Fund development is one area of our ministry where I feel that the difficulty and joy of pursuing our calling are held in a delicate tension. Yes, it is difficult, nerve wracking, and identity threatening to ask people to invest their resources in what you are doing. But every month when we receive our donor transaction report (DTR - another acronym for ya), I look at every name and thank God for their presence in my life and on campus. I consider it a joy to connect people with a ministry that I believe has lasting effects on the world and in people's lives (not to mention eternal effects). So while fund development can cast me into dark places in my soul, it drives me to a deeper dependency on Jesus and gives me a deep gladness.