Let me preface this post by saying I love the freedom of the internet.

I think it’s a great place to share ideas and resources.

If it weren’t for the generous spirit of The People of the Internet, I don’t think I’d be able to be a full time author and speaker. I wouldn’t have learned as much as I have in the last five years. I am so appreciative to people who find value in the conversations we have here or as a result of one of my books and who spread that message.

However, when a blog gets to be well-read, something happens. People begin emailing you asking you to plug things (books, CDs, organizations, giveaways, other blogs, their mom’s necklace line, PETA for Christians, etc.) all the time. In the time I was away this summer I had forty-three requests for book reviews or blog tours. It can make you feel like you’re a commodity. I’m not a fan of that feeling. (That’s why I’m also a little over-cautious with how I promote my new book…)

Anyway, one of these requests came from a very well-known pastor (although I’ve never met him). So, I thought I’d try an experiment.

Bottom line? I’ll let him speak to this platform if he lets me speak to his.

I’m typically not so stark or even subscribe to a philosophy of reciprocity. I think people should share because they want to – not because they’ll get something out of it. But again, this is just an experiment because I’m feeling a little snarky after going through forty-three requests. And because I like you guys a lot and don’t want to waste your time telling you about forty-three new books every two months.

Below is the email I sent to him in response to his request. Names have been removed to protect the innocent.

What’s your guess on how this will end? First person who guesses correctly wins a free copy of my new book. At this point, your guess is as good as mine.

Added: I’ll allow two weeks for a response and, if at that point there is no response, we will assume it’s a no go…

—–

Dear Well-Known Pastor,

Thanks for thinking of me for your blog tour.

Actually, first, I have to say I admire your keeping your “real” email address — many pastors of large churches I know change theirs to a tricky combination of their initials or golf nickname their pastor friends have given them like “theplaid@churchname.com” while the messages sent to the obvious email addresses go to gatekeepers. I used to be a gatekeeper. I understand. That’s why I have a generic email address listed on my blog. It can get overwhelming.

Anyway, as you can imagine, I get requests for book or product reviews or mentions all the time for my blog, In fact, just in the time I was away this summer, I received forty-three of them. Some were from new authors, others from pastors of large churches like yourself, and some from grammy-award winning artists (or their representatives).

It can make a girl feel like people are just out to use her for her blog’s audience. If I said yes to everything, that’s all my blog would be – and that isn’t the purpose of my blog.

It’s kind of like how you determine what to promote from the stage at your church. The tens of thousands of people who visit my blog monthly are, in some aspects, like a church, and I want to respect their time and challenge them with a message God’s placed on my heart. It’s one of the reasons I stopped advertising on my blog.

I have done book reviews or studies before, but they are usually books of people I know, or a book I’ve discovered in my own attempt to learn. Those are pretty much the only exceptions to “the rule of no blog tours.” It’s not that I’m completely opposed to them, it just doesn’t always line up with the purpose or the way I need to steward my time and the bit of platform I have been given.

However, for kicks and grins, I thought I’d try an experiment, and your email just happened to land in the right place at the right time.

I have a book releasing at the end of August with Thomas Nelson Publishers called Permission to Speak Freely – Essays and Art on Fear, Confession and Grace.

Since we’re probably in similar boats – each with a platform, each with a message, and each not really knowing the other person, I’d be willing to do a trade off…I’d be happy to share my thoughts on your book with my audience if you’d do the same (with whichever of your platforms is similar to size of reach and depth of influence as mine – it may be online, or perhaps your main audience are the people sitting in your church).

So–whaddya say?

Sincerely,
Anne Jackson

(PS – I emailed this from my personal email address, so feel free to respond here as I check this box more frequently.)

There has been a lot of press lately surrounding the illegal activities on Craiglist. This morning, the Today Show even had a feature clearly showing the prostitution that is readily available in their “adult” section.

(*Note: It’s PG-13 with some mildly graphic imagery)

Many people in the faith community have responded by suggesting we boycott Craigstlist.

Is that the right response? I don’t think so.

I don’t think anyone needs to boycott Craigslist. (And this is coming from me, a girl who was just in Moldova a month ago and saw girls get bought and sold right in front of her at a cafe.)

Here’s why.

• If we boycott Craigslist, we’re just making noise. Noise doesn’t do much. Noise is passive. Unless you are actually using their adult service section, they aren’t making any money on you. I go on Craigslist to sell my car or buy an ottoman. It’s a third-party trading site for most of us.
• It’s the Christian Status Quo to boycott. “They don’t say Christmas at Target! Let’s show them who’s boss!” We throw our faith around like a proud badge and try to prove our points. I’ve never seen this as a humble, loving response.
• People who don’t subscribe to the Christian faith see this as us attempting to push our beliefs on people. Should we share our beliefs with people? Sure. Share them. Nothing wrong with that. How do we do that? Read John 13:35.
• Unless something is done to help solve the problem (illegal activity), the people who are breaking the law will find another place to do it. Shutting down the adult service section of Craigslist will just make people use other sites.

Going off the basis of “how will people know we’re Christians” (as referenced in our own Bibles) it’s by love. I don’t think the action of boycotting shows love.

So what should we do?

• We should first thank Craigslist for donating some of their money to anti-trafficking organizations. Thank you.
• We should get involved in our local government and make sure they know the issues of illegal activity occurs on Craigslist. Then we should ask them to take appropriate government action (which, by the way, Craigslist is protected from liability – however, the law doesn’t cover the people breaking it).
• Find a way to support the women who feel like they need to prostitute themselves. How can we care for them?
• Ask “Is there a way faith-based organizations can partner with Craigslist to help solve this problem?” If someone came up with a brilliant solution, I bet Craigslist would be more than willing to listen.

Over and over again, I find that Christians (myself included) can be reactive and not proactive. Maybe this is an opportunity for us to actually come alongside of Craigslist and see how we can help them instead of just yelling at them.

Idealistic? Naive? Maybe.

But I have to believe it’s better than the status quo.

A friend and I were sitting down one evening looking at a financial report for a faith-based charity. I’ve always respected the “80%-20%” rule that Compassion follows (80% or more going to support their programs, 20% or less going to overhead and fund raising costs).

Another friend of mine mentioned how he had learned what his local church spent on administrative costs and how much they spent on ministry programs.

Where his church spent money and where the faith-based charity spent money was very different.

I wondered if this was a coincidence, or if it was a trend, so I randomly found two churches online who shared the details or where they spent their money. (As a side note, I think any organization who list this information publicly should be commended.)

I also looked up two random faith-based charities who shared the details of where they spent their money.

Here is what I found. I changed the numbers just a bit – but kept the appropriate ratio of income to expenditures – to protect the organization).

First, allow me to define some terms based on these reports:

Administrative Costs include personnel, taxes, debt, utilities, administrative and facilities overhead, retirement plans – for charities, this also includes fund raising expenses.

Ministry & Program expenses are focused on progressing the organization’s mission through programs and things needed to support the programs outside of administrative costs.

All organizations have office space and facility (in some cases, multiple sites for both church and charity). All pay staff. All provide insurance. Everybody has a marketing budget and everybody spends money making the world a better place.

Secondly, let me clarify this is by no means a scientific or perfect study, rather a noticeable trend we kept finding wherever we looked.

—

Church #1
Total Annual Budget: $4,651,000
Administrative Expenses: $2,110,000 – 45%
Ministry & Program Expenses: 2,541,000 – 55%

Church #2
Total Annual Budget: $13,699,900
Administrative Expenses: 10,770,000 – 78%
Ministry & Program Expenses: 2,929,900 – 22%

Faith-Based Charity #1
Total Annual Budget: $2,700,000
Administrative Expenses: $596,000 – 22%
Ministry & Program Expenses: $2,104,000 – 78%

Faith-Based Charity #2
Total Annual Budget: $395,800,000
Administrative Expenses: $72,473,000 – 18%
Ministry & Program Expenses: $323,300,000 – 82%

—

As you can see, the percentages on administrative expenses as compared to program expenses vary greatly from churches to faith-based charities.

I’m not saying this is a bad thing.

I’m just wondering why it’s so different.

(I like to figure things out. It sometimes gets me in trouble. Please know this is a genuine question and not an attack on “the church.” For the record, I tend to think of the church very fondly and have worked on staff at a few great ones myself).

Or maybe it’s like comparing apples to oranges. Maybe you can’t compare the two.

Many of you are on a church staff. Some of you work for non-profits. Some of you are stay at home moms or work in retail.

I’m curious — why do you think there’s such a large gap in overhead and program expenses when comparing churches to faith-based charities? Do you know of any churches whose budgets represent something different or charities who spend more on overhead than programs?

—

Edit: I did contact the EFCA to see if they could provide any insight on this. I found this on their website when comparing the salary of a “senior” person at a church and a “senior” person at a non-profit. This is a USA-wide comparison of all budget sizes.

Church Senior Pastor Salary Information
Average: $153,753
75th Percentile:  $164,630
85th Percentile:  $206,750

Community Development Non-Profit CEO Salary Information
Average: $84,857
75th Percentile: $92,051
85th Percentile:  $113,038

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I’m headed to California Tuesday for Catalyst West Coast (and a few other things!)

In case you happen to be attending Catalyst, I’d love to meet you!

I’ll be speaking with Carlos Whittaker (Ragamuffin Soul) & Jon Acuff (Stuff Christians Like) on Wednesday at 3:30pm at Catalyst Labs about coming off the blogs and heading into the real world, using social media for social causes.

Even though Catalyst is sold out, you can enjoy the Labs on Wednesday and hear from some amazing speakers. You can still register by clicking here or you can purchase a Lab ticket at the door (it’s at Mariner’s Church in Irvine).

After the lab, we’ll have a meet and greet in the Resource Area at 4:30pm.

Thursday and Friday, Carlos, Brian Wurzell and myself will be hosting the online Catalyst Backstage experience. We’ll be interviewing main session and lab speakers, and occasionally pumping in the live feed from the stage and introducing some great organizations.

I plan on keeping a running tally of how many embroidered shirts I spot while I’m there.

You can pop on anytime to catch us Thursday & Friday from 8 am – 5 pm PST at CatalystBackstage.com.

At 1:00 pm on Thursday, I’ll be signing books in the Resource Center. If you don’t have my book, I’m more than willing to sign another author’s book. Or, if you don’t want me to sign your book, I can find someone else to do it.

I’ll also sign embroidered shirts.

My friend Adam shared some great ideas yesterday for churches (could also apply to other organizations) to become more involved and open to their communities. I found this list to be very easy to implement and practical.

1. If you have a building, offer a public bathroom and shower that’s open to whomever needs it during your office hours.
2. Ask every attendee to get in the habit of bringing a canned food item to church every week. Then start a food pantry that’s open a couple days a week for people to drop in.
3. Buy things for the church from local suppliers. Avoid the big box (probably cheaper) stores for ones that support a local company. Encourage your church attendees to do the same.
4. Encourage people who go out to lunch after church to be generous with tipping servers and conscious of how long they are staying. You want wait staffs to desire the church crowd, they are avoiding it at all costs now.
5. Require church staff to live within the area you are trying to reach.
6. Add a requirement to all board and staff job descriptions that they attend public meetings. (Schools, city planning, city council, county government, etc.)
7. Ask adults to volunteer at the public schools. (Give staff lots of freedom to volunteer)
8. Participate in organized community events. Cleaning up, planting flowers, helping with parades, etc.
9. Make church property open to the public. (Playground equipment, skateboard park, community garden, host local festivals, allow the schools to hold events in the auditorium.) Better yet, turn all of your property into a community center.
10. Create a culture of saying yes to community involvement instead of no.

I spent six years on staff at a few different churches, and I know sometimes the first reaction to suggestions like this is, “Well, that sounds nice, but realistically…”

A tip?

Your community doesn’t care about your policies and structure.

Your community cares about how you treat them.

Anything you’d add?