Brent gained insight into the worlds of donors and charities while holding senior leadership positions in the charitable sector for over twenty-five years, including more than a decade in the field of philanthropy. He has pioneered new granting models that increase the effectiveness and impact of charitable giving through the power of collaborating, implementing of best practices, and the sharing of intellectual resources.
Brent lives near Toronto with his wife of 30+ years, and together they raised two now-grown daughters who are off pursuing higher education with aspirations of changing the world. You can reach him at brent@cornerstonetrust.org
I grew up in a fairly ‘neat and tidy’ Christian home. There is a lot about this for which I am grateful. While our house and certainly my room were sometimes messy as a child, one thing that wasn’t messy was our religion. That was always kept tidy. Nice clothes were reserved – and required – for Sunday church. Even more so, my behaviour at church was to be more brilliant than my patent leather shoes.
In time, I came to see the orderliness of the universe as evidence of a God whose desire was for a similarly controlled orderliness in humanity. The chaos and dysfunction of the world was certain evidence of evil’s attack on the Kingdom of God.
These thoughts prevailed in me until I settled into university in the 1980s and a required reading book for my Political Science degree entered my knapsack: The Upside Down Kingdom, by Donald Kraybill (an unlikely book on politics at a secular university). I was almost 20 years old when I realized that living in the Kingdom of God meant leaving a life that was radically opposed to prevailing culture. And, more shocking to me than this, was the realization that the Kingdom of God, by its very nature, is messy. Jesus loves messy people and messy situations. He didn’t just welcome them, he went out of his way to find them. Smelly fisherman. Hated tax collectors. Prostitutes. Lepers. Truly demon-possessed people. Profiteers in the temple. Kingdom life and the messiness of life are to be more than coexisting together: they’re designed to be integrated. Whoa. This truly rocked my world. To prove my allegiance to this new Kingdom paradigm, I got rid of my patent leather shoes.
My life since university has been a journey of discovery about what it looks like to live faithfully in this upside-down Kingdom life. And it’s hard. It’s hard because, well… because it’s messy. Messy doesn’t look like a spreadsheet (which is my love-language by far!), where everything fits into its appropriate box and does what it’s told. Messy leans toward unpredictability. Messy sounds like the opposite of comfort. Messiness sounds more like angst than joy. Oh, trust me, I could go on and on…
Sixteen years ago I crossed over from fund raising to fund giving – when, according to my fundraising friends, I “crossed over to the dark side.” Here, too, I have wrestled with and thought a great deal about what it looks like to be a faithful giver in the messiness of Kingdom life. Make no mistake: Like any other aspect of life, we can choose to do things, including philanthropy, in a way that is neat and tidy and very comfortable and, at the end of the day, feel pretty darn good about it.
But I’ve probably thought about the topic of philanthropy in the messiness of Kingdom life more than any other aspect of my life. This is because of the obvious juxtaposition of these two realms. Think about it: If ever there was a place where one could live in an orderly, self structured, controlled environment where you set the rules and you direct the activities, it’s in philanthropy. Especially big foundation philanthropy.
Alas, my wrestling has led me to a conclusion: No matter how much we give or grant, for those of us who want to undertake Kingdom-minded giving that is consistent with how Jesus is inviting, it requires us to take deliberate steps into the messiness of giving. To make this more practical, here are three (of potentially many) ideas about what it can look like as we move in this direction. To be clear, this isn’t to say that all our grantmaking should look like this. However, we are likely missing out on God’s gift to us if we aren’t drawn into the messiness of Kingdom life as was Jesus. So, what might this philanthropy look like?
It’s not afraid to be uncomfortable
Looking back, our most impactful life-lessons have likely been learned and experienced when we’ve gone through challenging or uncomfortable times. The same can happen in our giving. Taking risks to support work that is ‘uncomfortable’ may lead us to seeing expressions of the Kingdom of God that we would not have otherwise known existed. About a particular project, we might be thinking: “This work looks strange, but there appears to be the genesis of the Spirit moving.” Staying in the ‘comfort zone’ can stop us from expanding our understanding of how big, and diverse, and unexpected, and messy the Kingdom of God really is. Taking deliberate steps to pursue uncomfortable but Kingdom-promising work can be where Jesus is calling us to go – and where we’ll find him in the end.
It’s not afraid to support servants over structure
In general, organizational structures and track records of impact are much more predictable than people. But where has God promised to be growing the Kingdom of God in our current age? In people. Look deeply at the people in whom you will be investing to see evidence of the Spirit’s presence. And don’t be put off by the messiness of their personalities, leadership style, size of their influence, cultural differences, etc. Be drawn to this when you sense a hint of the aroma of Christ in their life. Look for indicators of God’s calling on the lives of the grantees to do the work they are doing.
It leans on discernment as much as documents
Again, org charts and financial statements can be helpful documents in our assessments. But don’t stop here. Press through to follow paths of decision-making that lead toward discernment. Discernment is simply taking our decision-making to the next level by doing our best – through the work and help of the Holy Spirit – to see things as God sees them. Discernment is the tool that allows us to see through the messiness of a project, for instance, when impact is unclear. A discerning question to ask ourselves, for example, is: does the potential grantee talk about impact as their own accomplishments, or as accomplishments that are happening as they work in step with what God is doing?
I think we all desire our philanthropy to mirror Jesus’ commitment to seeing “Thy Kingdom come, on earth …” Are we equally committed to following his strategy of ensuring that the messy are included?
Thoughts?
Please Note: All links to external websites are for informational purposes only. The views or opinions represented in articles, blogs, videos, and other media do not necessarily represent those of PCP as an organization or of any individual member.