How Should a Christian Business Give? by Dave Kahle

Does this describe your situation?

You are a committed Christian and own or run a business.  You’d like to move the business to a place where it is a Kingdom business, fully embracing its Christian foundation and being active and effective for the Kingdom, as well as successful in the world.

One of the Christian business practices that you’d like to build into your organization revolves around the concept of stewardship in general  and giving specifically.  You have decided that the business should have a formal giving project.

You’ve decided to pursue that and are asking the Lord to show you what and how to give.

Criteria

With that as the scenario, let’s think about some criteria to apply to the decision as to what and how a Kingdom business could give. Here are four criteria:

            1.  Your business giving should deliver goods and services as close to the individual as possible. 

For example, let’s say you have decided to be active in feeding those who need food.  You could donate money to a national fund that makes grants to local food banks.  Or, you could give food or money directly to a local food bank.  Or, you could deliver food directly to the individuals who needed it.

The third option, delivering directly to the individuals in need more perfectly aligns with these criteria.

There is Biblical basis for this.  If you review the New Testament with a view to answer the question “To whom are gifts made?”  You’ll see that the pattern is from one person to another individual.  There are no examples of New Testament giving to an institution.  No one gave to the “church.”  They gave to individuals in need.

When your gift comes from you directly to an individual it has more power to impact that person’s life than if the gift came from a more impersonal organization.  Imagine two scenarios:  In one the needy person applies to a food bank and is invited to fill up a few grocery bags with free food. The transaction has the feeling of bureaucracy, similar to a welfare check arriving in the mail.  The connection to any individuals who made it possible is lost in the institutionalization of the project.

In the other, an individual delivers the same groceries to the same person. There is some interaction between the two people, and the recipient understands that another human being made this possible, in the name of Jesus.

Which of those two scenarios is more likely to impact the recipient for Christ?

Putting the institution between you and the recipient makes the transaction impersonal from both the giver’s as well as the receiver’s perspective and robs it of its potential to impact both.

            2.  Your giving project should reflect the greater assemblage of resources available in your business. 

You should strive to do something that an individual or a group of individuals working on their own cannot do. Something bigger, that requires greater assets.

For example, an individual can work at a soup kitchen.  The business, on the other hand,  by virtue of its greater resources, can create and manage the soup kitchen. Your business, since it assembles people and money, has the potential to give more and do more than any one individual.

            3.  Your giving project should have the potential to involve as many people from your organization as possible. 

Short term mission trips often have a greater impact on those who minister than on those who are ministered to. There is something about personally helping others that makes you a better person.

Similarly, one of the reasons why you want to create a business giving project is to impact the people who take part in it.  It follows then that your project should engage as many people as possible.  There should be room for as many employees as possible.  If your project had room for the participation by your employee’s spouses and families, so much the better.

            4. Your project should give God the glory and be given in Jesus’ name.

Giving credit to God points to him as the source and provider.  It also reflects on you and your business, indicating to all the divine connection.

While perfectly building these four criteria into your project may be outside your current capabilities, they provide an ideal for which to strive.

Dave Kahle
The Kahle Way 
sell better, manage better, lead better
(616) 451-9377