A Message to Spokespeople for Christian Ministries
It annoys me when Christian charity organizations use guilt tactics to get you to donate. I think people get discouraged when they don't get a lot of turnout. It might even be easy to get offended. "How could anyone with a heart say no to what we're doing?"
There's a lot of hurt and a lot of horrible things happening out there in the world. No one person can fix all wrongs. A single person hardly has any power to fix one wrong. As Christians, we believe that it's the grace and power of God's Spirit that uses people to bring some semblance of order out of the chaos. But when you resort to telling people, "Join this cause and do some real good." You're not relying on God's power to move people's hearts and work through them. You're trying to manipulate the work of the Spirit. And when you do that, you confuse people about what God's calling them to do, for one thing.
What did the early Christians do when they weren't certain what God wanted them to do? Nothing. They waited on God's Spirit before they did anything, despite how noble an idea they would've had may have seemed to them.
And what's more, you may or may not realize it, but when you say, "Do some real good," you're implying that if they don't support your cause, they're not any good to God. Jesus doesn't need people to be useful to him, he wants people, first and foremost, to know and to be present with him. And actions will naturally come out of that relationship of course. Otherwise, one would be a hypocrite for professing what they don't practice, but there's no use in forcing someone to care. That just doesn't work. We're all continually growing and maturing little by little each day. We need to be patient with ourselves and with others.
Sure, you might get bigger numbers by playing into people's consciences, and that will make you more confident and will help your organization grow, but I'm willing to bet that you get a lot of people whose hearts aren't totally into it that way. Instead, they'll just make a commitment on a whim of guilt, not out of genuine love and concern. And at the end of the day, it will be the recipients of your ministry who will be the most disadvantaged because of that.
I'm tired of people on my Christian college campus trying to play into how easily provoked a religious person's conscience might be. I've experienced this a couple times so far. Please....I don't know.. just stop, I guess. Rant over.
There's a lot of hurt and a lot of horrible things happening out there in the world. No one person can fix all wrongs. A single person hardly has any power to fix one wrong. As Christians, we believe that it's the grace and power of God's Spirit that uses people to bring some semblance of order out of the chaos. But when you resort to telling people, "Join this cause and do some real good." You're not relying on God's power to move people's hearts and work through them. You're trying to manipulate the work of the Spirit. And when you do that, you confuse people about what God's calling them to do, for one thing.
What did the early Christians do when they weren't certain what God wanted them to do? Nothing. They waited on God's Spirit before they did anything, despite how noble an idea they would've had may have seemed to them.
And what's more, you may or may not realize it, but when you say, "Do some real good," you're implying that if they don't support your cause, they're not any good to God. Jesus doesn't need people to be useful to him, he wants people, first and foremost, to know and to be present with him. And actions will naturally come out of that relationship of course. Otherwise, one would be a hypocrite for professing what they don't practice, but there's no use in forcing someone to care. That just doesn't work. We're all continually growing and maturing little by little each day. We need to be patient with ourselves and with others.
Sure, you might get bigger numbers by playing into people's consciences, and that will make you more confident and will help your organization grow, but I'm willing to bet that you get a lot of people whose hearts aren't totally into it that way. Instead, they'll just make a commitment on a whim of guilt, not out of genuine love and concern. And at the end of the day, it will be the recipients of your ministry who will be the most disadvantaged because of that.
I'm tired of people on my Christian college campus trying to play into how easily provoked a religious person's conscience might be. I've experienced this a couple times so far. Please....I don't know.. just stop, I guess. Rant over.
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