Dear Friends
Greetings from the Global Generosity Network, the initiative of the Lausanne Movement and World Evangelical Alliance that facilitates stewardship, generosity, giving and fund mobilisation among Christians.
I posted a number of exciting new resources on the Internet that I believe will be useful to reach our vision of a global Christian culture of Biblical stewardship, generous living, Kingdom-focused giving and Kingdom-appropriate fund mobilisation. Visit the Lausanne Conversation or the Global Generosity Movement website to download, use and distribute any of these resources.
As in the past there are resources for churches, ministries, businesses and individuals. I just want to mention a few specific resources that I posted on the websites the past few months:
- The South Asia Institute of Advanced Christian Studies produced a DVD containing 6 hours of teaching on Biblical Stewardship and Resource Mobilization in India. More information is available here.
- The Legatum Prosperity Index Is an innovative way to look at prosperity beyond economic wealth. I posted the 2013 Report and 2 articles here. 'Religious Attendance' is included as variable in the Social Capital Sub-Index but for the report authors it has only an impact on wellbeing and not on income. Giving money to charity, helping strangers and volunteering (giving time) are also included as variables in the Social Capital Sub-Index. Where is your country in this Index? How can you improve its ranking? You can look at the individual country reports on the websites to get a more detailed explanation of your country’s ranking and where Christians in your country might influence its ranking.
- The Indian National Generosity Network had been catalysed after the June 2013 South Asia Generosity Consultation organised by the Global Generosity Network, Evangelical Fellowship of India and Christian Institute of Management India. The Indian Generosity Network is now organising a conference from 1-2 February 2014 to take the generosity message across India. The leaflet posted here gives more information about this initiative. We hope to see such a national generosity conference being organised in each country.
- The Issachar Count for Zero Small Group Curriculum is a resource that I had been waiting and praying for many years. A free 6-week small group curriculum on the Great Commission it includes intentional mission giving as key theme. David Wills, President of the National Christian Foundation and one of the Global Generosity Network leaders is one of the contributors to the study. With David as contributor the study has to be good! The present study is only a beta version. I am very interested to hear about changes that should be made to the resource that I can pass on to the authors.
- Fundraising, generosity and ministry management training had been mentioned as key needs in a survey I did for the World Evangelical Alliance. The National Development Institute in the US produced a number of useful little electronic booklets with advise on how to improve ministry management and fundraising in ministries. I posted a link to the booklets through this page.
- John Stanley of the Generosity Gameplan created the Generosity Checkup as a quick and easy tool to assess somebody’s generosity. Take it by following this link and encourage people in your network and church to take it as well. Just be careful – the checkup raises challenging questions about our own generosity! It got me thinking … I posted the different steps of the Generosity Gameplan on the websites as well.
- When I visited the Philippines recently, I was just again amazed with the economic development in Asia. Another region which sees increased wealth creation despite some of the pictures seen on televisions, is Africa. I posted a number of articles on the growing wealth in Africa and the impact on philanthropy in the region on the resources websites. One of them is a very interesting description on the richest people in Africa. Many of the richest people in Africa are Christians. How can we encourage them to give more to Christian causes?
- Stewardship, generosity and giving are included in the discipleship material of the Christian Businessmen’s Connection. I posted information on this material here. Staying with discipleship and training, I posted outlines of some of the stewardship and generosity courses Gary Hoag teaches. He is willing and interested to help in teaching where needed. Click here for more information.
- Finally Tearfund developed an excellent fundraising resource to help organise increase their funding base. You can access the resource through this link. The French translation can be accessed here, the Spanish edition here, the Russian here and the Portuguese translation here. Tearfund would like to update this resource while we are interested in using it in various levels of fundraising training. I will appreciate if you could send me comments about the usefulness of the resource and how it should be updated. Send any comments to my email address at [email protected].
These are just some of the stewardship, generosity, giving and fund mobilisation resources and information that are available from the mentioned websites. I trust that the will be useful to you personally and also in your service in God’s Kingdom. We are looking for more resources that can create awareness, commitment and engagement in Biblical stewardship, generous living, Kingdom-focused giving and Kingdom-appropriate fund mobilisation. Please send me information on any resources you might know about which would be useful to others. Also look out for the Global Generosity Network Newsletter that we will distribute at the end of December.
Greetings and blessings
Dr. Sas Conradie
Coordinator Global Generosity Network
Email – [email protected]
Skype – sas.conradie
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