6 Keys to Growing Personal Generosity

Is it really possible to just stop being poor? Not always.

There are places in this world where there are no opportunities to pursue, no jobs to work, and no resources to multiply. Generational poverty is sometimes caused by a lack of natural resources, corrupt governments, oppression, and injustice.

So this isn’t a post designed to shame people who have lacked the chance to climb. In fact, I need to be clear about something right up front:

Life is not about you.

If you wind up wealthy, healthy, and happy, that’s great. But why? Hint: It’s for others.

It’s so that you can grow from being a consumer to being a contributor in a variety of ways – giving, serving, employing people, paying taxes, supporting nonprofits, etc.

Let me also say that it’s sometimes the most honorable and purposeful thing you can do to bypass wealth and opportunity to choose a higher calling.

Take William Borden, for example. He entered Yale as heir to the Borden family fortune (think Borden milk and dairy). While at Yale, he surrendered his life to a missionary calling and began traveling the world to help, to serve, and to teach people in other parts of the world. At age 25, he contracted spinal meningitis and died.

Some called his death a premature event or even a “waste.” But William Borden chose to become poor in this life so that he could enjoy a kind of wealth most people will never know.

So, wealth is not a virtue. It’s never the goal. Financial wealth is not always God’s will and sometimes a financial safety net is a distraction from living a life of risk-taking faith.

Having established that wealth isn’t everything, let me get to the real point of this post.

Sometimes, we do dumb things that cause us to stay poor. For example…

10 Common Mistakes That Keep Us Poor

  1. Quitting jobs before we have a plan for what’s next.
  2. Not understanding where our income will be generated.
  3. Not tracking where our money is being spent.
  4. Failing to plan and be intentional with our spending.
  5. Using credit with little guarantee of being able to pay it back.
  6. Never saving anything for a rainy day.
  7. Forgetting to pay things on time and racking up late fees.
  8. Paying easily avoidable interest and penalties on debt.
  9. Assuming our circumstances (job, expenses, health, economy) will never change.
  10. Paying premium prices for everything we buy.

And the list could go on, of course.

Angie and I have learned a lot about personal finances – some of it the hard way – and we’re still learning daily. Somewhere along the way,

  • We committed to living within our means.
  • We stopped using credit for minor purchases.
  • We started to live on a budget.
  • We started taking debt seriously and paying it off.
  • We kept giving a tenth of our income away.
  • We began to prepare for the future.

How to live on a budget.When we went through Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University, it was a game changer. Ramsey is well-known for teaching some pretty simple truth in some pretty profound ways. Such as…

  • Snowballing debt to get rid of it faster.
  • What kind of insurance is really needed.
  • Talking about finances with your spouse.
  • How credit really works.
  • How to negotiate pricing.
  • Getting ready for retirement.

And more. If you’ve never gone through FPU, do it as soon as possible! Ramsey isn’t always right about everything, but you can’t possibly get any worse off by following his advice until you actually have financial peace. Then, you can do your own research and disagree with him.

A great place to start is his Total Money Makeover book (get it here).

Get a Grip on Your Financial Reality

Start a spreadsheet and put everything in it. Every account. Every balance. Every interest rate. Every bill and due date. Every income source. Put it all on one single page so that you can see a complete but panoramic view of where you are financially.

If you’ve lost track of where all of your debt is and what bills you’re paying, you’re already behind. Check your credit and monitor it regularly.

 

Set Some Reasonable Financial Goals

Assuming you can go all gangbusters and spend zero dollars for the next six months on food and fuel is not aggressive action. It’s just unrealistic. And being unrealistic leads to frustration and to quitting early.

At the same time, this should hurt. It should be uncomfortable. It requires sacrificing some of what you’ve enjoyed until now so that you can enjoy peace a little later.

Stop Borrowing Money for Small Purchases

Dave Ramsey would disagree with the last three words of that. But not all debt is created equal. Nonetheless, if you’re not currently paying all of your credit cards off every single month, stop using them. Completely. Cold turkey.

Once you’ve done some research, you’ll start to understand why making small purchases with a credit card and it’s revolving debt interest can ultimately mean paying $5 for a $1 candy bar. Multiply that by thousands.

Generate Some Extra Income

Cutting your expenses might be enough, but often, it’s not. Sometimes a second job fits into your picture and sometimes it doesn’t. At the very least, I would highly recommend turning your hobbies and interests into a means of making money online.

When you jump into it, bootstrap it. In other words, don’t spend thousands of dollars hoping to make millions. Spend as little as possible on your extra income idea so that it at least pays for itself until it starts returning even more income.

Have Some Hard, Honest Conversations

This is the toughest part of all. Why? Because it isn’t about the money. It’s about the heart. Money is an extremely emotional thing to talk about.

We feel shame over our financial mistakes. We feel anger when someone takes more of our money than we think they should. We feel sad when something goes wrong and we don’t know what to do next. Let’s face it, we get downright depressed about our money woes!

But when it comes to money, most of the people we interact with on a daily basis are also making the same mistakes. We’re all so quiet about it that we all stay trapped in the secrecy.

Talking to an advisor, getting direction from a mentor, and especially being honest with our spouse is all part of the healing and recovery process.

Do Some Thorough Research on Personal Finances

I’m not an expert. I’m nowhere close to being an expert. But I’ve learned a lot by reading, listening, and taking courses here and there. And we’re way better off than we used to be because of that newly acquired knowledge. So,

There’s nothing wrong at all with being poor. But chances are, if you’re reading this, you’re probably one of the millions of people on the planet who makes mistakes that keep you unnecessarily poor.

My favorite thing about Dave Ramsey is the way he casts a vision for financial peace. He says to people who take his course, “we’re going to get out of debt so we can save more money so we can give a bunch of it away!”

Let’s do it.


Talk with an Auxano Navigator about developing a generosity culture at your church.


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brandon Cox

Brandon Cox has been a Pastor for fifteen years and is currently planting a church in northwest Arkansas, a Saddleback-sponsored church. He also serves as Editor of Pastors.com and Rick Warren's Pastors' Toolbox, and authors a top 100 blog for church leaders (brandonacox.com). He's also the author of Rewired: Using Technology to Share God's Love.

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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
— Dave
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
— Argaw Alemu
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Amen!!
 
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4 Ways to Grow in Your Personal Generosity

Generosity is not an event or an emphasis. There’s no secret sauce or hidden tricks. Generosity is the cultivation of a simple lifestyle and I am not referring to limiting spending, having a family budget, or curtailing an enjoyable life. No coupon clipping here. So how do you cultivate a spiritually generous life that is second nature?

  1. Learn to talk to God in prayer. You may be thinking that you already do this. However, I want to encourage you to talk to God in a specific way. Speak back to Him about His generous nature and promises to you. God’s love is generous. His presence is generous. His grace is generous. Scripture teaches us that He desires a prosperous future for our lives and is giving us every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. Confess humbly and powerfully your deep appreciation for His generosity in your life. You have far more than everything you need to live generously. You are overflowing with good stuff that is worth giving.
  2. Learn to listen to God in prayer. My experience is that generous people are prepared, sensitive, and alert. They are ready and responsive to needs. Generosity is both planned, cultivated to become second nature, as well as spontaneous. God will always surprise you with new opportunities to be generous with your time, words, heart, and resources. However, if you have not created listening space in your life it will be impossible to live generously. The Bible is full of stories of how God spoke to people and they responded with generosity. Expect God to speak specifically to you about a blessing He has given you that He needs you to pass on to someone else.
  3. Fast regularly. Fasting is a spiritual discipline that can be a struggle to accomplish as a lifestyle. I have found it helpful to fast regularly of small things like a meal or form of entertainment for a day to remind me of how important a vibrant relationship with God is. Fasting disconnects you from things that can easily have powerful influences in our lives. The gifts of this world can become the authority of our feelings and source of pleasure quite easily. Fasting not only puts my dependence back on God, but it gives me more committed time for talking and listening in prayer.
  4. Live ready. Every day is a new opportunity to both enjoy God’s generosity in your life and extend His generosity to others. Each day create margin in your heart, mind, time, and wallet. You do not have to be rich or debt free to live generously. Everybody can live in 100% fulfillment of God’s generosity dream today. God has nothing in store for you today that He has not already given you the resources for. He has always provided in advance for His people to live generously. Only one of the many examples is the Israelites after having been delivered from slavery built a tabernacle.

If you are not enjoying the fruit of generosity in your life and church, it might just be that you are spending your time focused on the finances and waiting on the future to be different. On another blog we can talk about financial fixes and future plans, but for now I want you to live confidently today. Every leader, person, and church can live generously. It’s a spiritual formation issue far more than a financial resource issue.

Read more from Todd.


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Todd McMichen

Todd McMichen

Todd serves at the Director of Generosity by LifeWay. His generosity roots arise from leading multiple capital campaigns for local churches that together raised over $35,000,000 for their visionary projects. Since 2000, Todd has been a well-established stewardship coach, generosity leader, author, and conference speaker.

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COMMENTS

What say you? Leave a comment!

Recent Comments
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
— Dave
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
— Argaw Alemu
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Amen!!
 
— Scott Michael Whitley
 

Clarity Process

Three effective ways to start moving toward clarity right now.