Designing generosity training for the Middle East

Emad leads NAME Sports Movement based in Cairo, Egypt. NAME reaches people with the gospel through sports and games. Recently, Emad and his team became determined to inspire generosity in their leaders. The team believed that, at its core, generosity begins with discipleship.

So the team at GenerousChurch worked with the leaders of NAME through the Generosity Design Lab.

Emad and his team were skeptical, wondering if “western ideas” would work in Africa and the Middle East.

By the second day, Emad and his colleagues were convinced.

“Working together in the Lab has been extraordinary,” Emad said. “This is the catalyst we need. The Lab provided insight and ideas, but GenerousChurch works with us, and allows us to customize the training to fit our needs.” 
Throughout the remainder of the GDL,

Emad and his team created their own training for three different groups of their leaders.

Making changes due to COVID

Emad’s staff began planning a retreat for their leaders. However, heightened COVID-19 restrictions made convening all leaders in one place impossible. “Creative thinking led us to an even better idea,” Emad stated.
“Using principles from the Generosity Design Lab, we created an online experience which lasted 21 days.”

The NAME network in Egypt is made up of 15 city teams with 220 leaders. “All 220 are volunteers and, as a part of their discipleship process, we wanted to teach them about generosity.” Emad said. “We called the 21-day experience Inside Out since it was both online and outside.”

Emad went on to say: “Not only did our leaders discover that generosity is part of their discipleship growth, each group and individual engaging in a practical event impacted hundreds of people’s lives.”

Stories of each team’s generosity were shared in a closed Facebook group. Daily reports built on each other. By the end of the three weeks, there were stories of nearly 600 orphans, widows and immigrants who were helped.

“Part of the disciple-making process is to restore the discipline of Biblical, whole-life generosity into the daily lives of believers.” Emad said. “This is something that has been lost in many churches and ministries. It’s time to change.”

WHAT’S NEXT

“It’s been seven months since GenerousChurch was with us here in Egypt, but their staff continues to work with us. They connect with us frequently by Zoom and WhatsApp. They don’t give up on us,” Emad said with a smile. “Next month, they are returning to Cairo and have scheduled time to connect with us. We are currently considering what we might do together with other sports ministry leaders around the world.” 

Back in November 2018, I was introduced to Adel Azmy, Managing Director of NABLA. He invited me to share a GenerousChurch curriculum for growing local generosity in Egypt. Up until that point, our work was focused on equipping church workers to unleash generous disciples in the USA, and honestly, after 17 years of effort in that field, I was burned out and not in a good place.

In March 2019, God led our team to through an intense season of prayer and fasting, God broke us and led us to repentance. Gary Hoag spoke into my life around that time and challenged me to think of multiplication, not addition, related to ministry. I began to consider how to multiply in the USA, but God had bigger plans.

Gary exhorted me to shift from serving alone to working together. He invited me to join him on a trip to Egypt to serve Adel, who also volunteers as GTP Regional Facilitator for MENA (Middle East and North Africa). I was hesitant, but with Gary’s coaching and Adel’s encouragement, I decided to go for it.

I went to Egypt in December 2019 with open hands and tempered expectations. After all, it was my first time to teach overseas and with an interpreter. The gathering was the third in a NABLA series on accountability, fundraising, and generosity. We used Overflow, a GenerousChurch curriculum, which GTP had translated into Arabic.

The impact was phenomenal. Many shared about how they were able to apply the principles they learned to their own lives and in their local church setting. Read the impact story by Pastor Botross Fadel Gubrael for more details.

During that trip, Adel shared his dream of developing local generosity materials. I revisited this idea in February 2020 with Cameron Doolittle of The Maclellan Foundation. Together, we conceptualized the Generosity Design Lab (GDL).

GDL is built on the foundational idea that biblical truth is constant and cultural contexts are different. We provide national workers with biblical building blocks and help catalyze the development of their own generosity training materials for one or more networks in a country.

The architecture of GDL includes Malcolm Webber’s Four Dynamics of Transformation, so like four pillars, GDL has spiritual, relational, experiential, and instructional aspects. With that structure, we lift up 12 biblical generosity principles. Each one is linked to Bible verses, Bible stories, present-day stories, and an activity or exercise.

Through GDL, we took what we learned through years of working on the generosity space, simplified it, and created a two-day experience where influencers who serve one or more church or ministry networks can convene and design contextualized generosity materials.

Tim Keller says that the announcement of Jesus’ resurrection resulted in the early church becoming “a city within a city—of love and service, not power and exploitation.”

For those looking in from the outside, the early Christians in Jerusalem would have appeared very odd. Why?

While the 1st century world did not practice possessive individualism, it did reflect an imperial pyramid of rank and status. Those whose rank was at the top of the social pyramid (the emperor, Roman senators, local aristocrats, those of free-born status) had access to social power and wealth. All others lacked the currencies of rank and status.

The Early Church Contrast

In contrast to this paradigm was the early church’s communal practice of shared life (“…they had all things in common” – Acts 2:44). This shared life in Christ found expression in a lifestyle fully dependent on God (see Acts 2:45). This in turn was radically countercultural.

This generosity flowed from the resurrected life of Christ (Acts 2:32-36). The power of this new life with Jesus was visibly seen in the generosity practiced by these Christ-followers. It’s worth noting that this power was expressed in the mundane, daily, normal routines of life: worshipping together and sharing common meals in homes (Acts 2:46). It also moved outside the shared life of the Christ-followers, resulting in their “having favor with all the people” (Acts 2:47).

Generosity Applied

Generosity is about using anything and everything that might draw people away from death and into the life of God and into the shared life of the people of God, bringing flourishing to the world by ending the reign of isolation, loneliness, poverty, hunger and despair. Applying this countercultural practice will be a signpost to the world that Jesus is Lord and that God’s kingdom is present.

“Christianity always flourishes most as a life-giving minority, not as a powerful majority. It is through subversive, countercultural acts of love, justice, and service for the common good that Christianity has always gained the most ground.” – Scott Sauls 

Reflect and Respond

How could churches in your network recapture the energy and impact of the Acts 2 and 4 church through biblical generosity?  

What if people you serve through your network started using everything to draw people away from death and into the life of God?

We can help you create your own transformational generosity training through our Generosity Design Lab. 

 

It all started with a conversation.

Malcolm Webber, the founder of LeaderSource ‒ a global leader development organization ‒ and Patrick Johnson, the founder of GenerousChurch, connected by Zoom for an introductory call. As Patrick described the vision for unleashing generous disciples through transformational training, Malcolm stopped him and made a statement that would alter the direction of GenerousChurch. “Patrick, you need to think beyond the Western church. The world needs the message of generosity,” Malcolm said. “I know global church leaders who have the faith to pray for people to rise from the dead who fear talking about money and giving.”

A meeting in Cambodia

This led to a gathering in Cambodia with teams from both ministries to brainstorm on how to best spread generosity in the 40+ countries where LeaderSource trains church and ministry leaders. “GenerousChurch spent one day with our LeaderSource family from around the world,” said Malcolm. “As we unpacked the vision and passion for the biblical truth of generosity, our hearts were further stirred with the importance of this message. Moreover, we saw how whole-life generosity is a critical component of the life of the Christian leader and in the life of the Healthy Church.” What became clear over the course of that day was that the models of generosity created by GenerousChurch (see ReThink Generosity) intersected with LeaderSource’s models of leader development. There was synergy.

The development of LeaderSource generosity training

Over the next two months, LeaderSource developed a training course using their leader development models with GenerousChurch’s generosity content. There were back and forth conversations between the ministries to sharpen the training. The “Shaping a Culture of Generosity” course emerged from this work. “It was such a joy working with Malcolm and his team to design the generosity training,” says Patrick. “They are skilled training designers so we simply helped catalyze the development through the 16+ years of generosity content and expertise that we’ve gained in serving church leaders.”

The launch and impact

The following month, Malcolm and Patrick delivered the “Shaping a Culture of Generosity” course to the global LeaderSource network through Zoom. There was deep engagement by the LeaderSource team and excitement at how this generosity training would be another tool to strengthen leaders and churches. Impact didn’t take long. Within 60 days, generosity training had been held by LeaderSource in Northern India and Nigeria. Stories began to emerge of leaders feeding the poor, a leader buying land to build an orphanage, and one leader who even gave the shoes off her own feet to someone in need. One of the most powerful stories of impact was a generosity training led by LeaderSource in Southeast Asia. During three half-day sessions, close to 2,000 pastors and leaders were led through the generosity training. “It was a fantastic training,” says the LeaderSource staff member who led the training. “I think it was totally new for everybody. It was mind-blowing for everybody. People kept sharing their amazement at God’s generosity throughout our time together. We are already hearing stories of these pastors taking the training back to train their churches.” Over the last 18 months the LeaderSource team has trained over 5,000 leaders on biblical generosity using the Shaping a Culture of Generosity course.

An effective model

There are typically three ways that the West brings training to the rest of the world. The first is the “expert model.” A Western speaker will travel oversees to deliver content. The second is the “train the trainer model.” A product will be created in the West and then people will be trained oversees to deliver the product. The third model which LeaderSource has pioneered is the “design model” ‒ people working together to design training that fits their culture and context. This is what LeaderSource and GenerousChurch partnered together to do with their Shaping a Culture of Generosity Training! What would it look like to recapture the energy and impact of the Acts 2 and 4 church through Biblical generosity? What if global leaders could unleash generous disciples who obeyed the teachings of Jesus on generosity? We believe that models like partnerships like LeaderSource and GenerousChurch are a step closer to this vision. ——————————————————————————————————————————- GenerousChurch has launched the Generosity Design Lab, a process to catalyze the development of generosity training for church and ministry networks. LeaderSource has been both the inspiration and a mentor along the way.