The Power of A Changed Life

I recently finished 3 very busy days working with the team at Darwin’s 97 Seven. It was their end of year appeal, and I’m very happy to report that over $35,000 was raised by the end, which really is a great result in light of all that’s happening at the moment. While in Darwin, I found myself reflecting on something that the late Bob Gass shared with me over 20 years ago. I was still in the very early days of my first ever ministry leadership role, which basically made me a clueless noob. And for some reason, Mr Gass decided to take me under his wing. For almost two years, he poured himself into me, despite us being thousands of miles from each other (he lived in Atlanta, Georgia, at the time). I still remember Mr Gass threatening to stick a size 10 boot up my ass when I’d tell him how many copies of the Word for Today we “got rid of” (a colloquialism for distributed). Anyway, one of the principles Mr Gass shared with me, the thing that I found myself reflecting on, was this… … “the power of one life changed”. You probably know already that lots of factors go into a successful fundraising campaign. Still, as the 97 Seven team moved closer and closer to achieving a great result, I knew their success was based on perhaps the two most important of those factors. Firstly, God was fundamentally at the centre of everything that they did, from start to finish. And secondly, we shared heart stories as much as we possibly could – stories of lives that had been transformed by God through the ministry. The take-away is this… When you’re putting together your next fundraising campaign, take the time to pull together as many authentic, compelling, emotive testimonials as you possibly can. And know that, to some extent, how you share those stories are secondary to the stories themselves. Because nothing really moves people to support your ministry quite like the story of a life that has been changed for eternity.