Giving and Gaining

Dear Spam-Call Warriors:

The phone rings. You don’t recognize the number, but you’re waiting for a call, so you say, “Hello?” There’s a long pause and then that strange boip sound that you know connects you to an AI-controlled recorded voice. Yep, it happened again…Spam Call! Against all reason, you try to interrupt sometimes with insults or questions, but the bot hasn’t been trained in irony, so you get back a very disappointing, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Would you like to…” Sometimes you wait and eventually get connected to a live operator. Guess what—even though it’s a living breathing person, they cannot be insulted. There is no expression of annoyance they have not heard before. Of course, they hang up before you can explain your frustration. Their only hope is volume, scooting on past your indignation to the next voice, and the next, and the next, hoping eventually to find that one in a thousand who just might say, “Why yes, I would love to increase my church pledge for the coming year!”

Money is such a strange subject. Years ago, when I was working as a code manager for the National Opinion Research Center, I learned that personal finances were the number one item about which survey respondents would uniformly lie. You could inquire into any number of personal, emotional or political subjects, but when the data was tabulated against known controls like housing values or aggregate tax records, people consistently downgraded their income information. When asked, even anonymously, we tend to say we are much poorer than we really are. 

I don’t think we’re intentionally lying; I think a snap judgment about our personal finances leads us to conclude we’re not making as much as we really are. Income estimates may be fabricated upward, like during the mid-2000s when people were applying for mortgages they could not afford, or when trying to impress a group of strangers, but when the number is going to be written down for informational purposes, we tend to track poorer, especially when someone is asking for a donation.

I think part of the problem with fundraising is how we ask people to ‘give something up’ to donate more. I’ll save you the sad story of another Kia engine failure, but I’ve found myself in the market for a replacement vehicle and have noticed that auto salespeople seldom talk in terms of sacrifice. They never explain that buying a more expensive model would only cost three Venti Starbucks Caramel Macchiatos a week, but both churches and public radio regularly ask for money in terms of what you could give up. My pre-owned vehicle transaction specialist (i.e. used car salesperson) speaks in terms of greater reliability, comfort, peace of mind, style, acceleration, etc. It’s never about what I would be losing—it’s always about what I would gain.

Now, I would never suggest taking a 6.9% loan or refinancing your house in order to give more to the church. The car dealers, however, are more than comfortable suggesting such alternatives. Your annual church contributions should not create debt, partially because we’ll be asking again next year. But I am thinking about how heartfelt generosity is not a mild sacrifice, but a wonderful advantage. Unlike sales commissions and extended warranties, the gifts you share with your church make a difference in the lives of people you know and create mission opportunities in which you participate. Perhaps we should think of our giving in terms of what will make us proud, not in terms of sacrificed caffeine.

Believing we can afford a replacement car AND an increased pledge, I remain,

With Love,
Jonathan Krogh
Your Pastor