Today I spoke for 20 minutes at The Bigger Picture which was a training day put on by Canterbury Diocese and Connexions, looking at Youth Work Strategy and Fundraising.
My ‘bit’ was to look at how Christian organisations can access government monies and yet keep their evangelistic identity and not have top compromise on what many of us would see to be our central calling – that of introducing others to Jesus. I think I was asked to cover this as I was fairly successful as Director of Gillingham YFC at accessing government and trust funds of one sort or another.
One thing I had picked up in the past was a real fear that Christians can have of accepting tax payers money and the hoops they might have to jump through and the identity shift that they may have to perform. My personal opinion is that this fear is pretty unfounded as funders like what Christian organisations do and tend to respect our integrity.
To add to this I think it is vital that, as Christian organisations, we network with government and local authority agencies. It is a great way of being ‘salt and light’ in the world. They need us and we need them, and to pretend otherwise is pretty foolish I think.
With this fear of being eaten up by the big nasty organisation’ in mind though, I started my little bit with this video. They enjoyed it as it summed up their real fears and I hope you do!
The Shiny Headed Prophet 
RobGreat blog. Although I don’t get paid by a Christian charity – I couldn’t find one that did what I wanted (oops felt led to do) – I do work for a charity that pays me to work with offenders, prisoners and ex-prisoners in advising, encouraging them back into education or work (eg formulating cv’s, disclosing offences) and haven’t felt ‘swallowed up’ or ‘eaten up’. True, my current paid post doesn’t allow me to be overtly ‘evangelistic’ like Billy Graham (but there are other ways). Who was it who said ‘Preach the Gospel at all times, and sometimes use words’. (I know it was St Francis), and Nike who said, ‘Just do it’. Ciao