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On any given day, nearly every Christian household receives pleas for money. The letters tell us about hungry children, people with AIDS, and the spiritually lost. They include underlining, computer-generated handwriting, postscripts, exclamation points, and yellow highlights. They come from Christian relief agencies whose materials and names blend together in compassion confusion—Compassion International, Christian Aid, Food for the Hungry, Feed the Children, International Aid, Samaritan's Purse, World Concern, World Relief, and World Vision.

These groups have raised billions of dollars over the years, and they have done an immense amount of good in the world. But some people question their fundraising strategies. The appeals, they say, rely on guilt-inducing pleas and high-pressure tactics. They create a false sense of urgency, or make promises that a small gift can really change a child's life. They rely on Madison Avenue techniques instead of honest and direct appeals to Christian brothers and sisters. Some critics say they should never even ask for money but simply operate by faith that God will provide.

Such criticism is not new to the people who write such appeals. Nor is the challenge of getting Americans and Canadians, some of the wealthiest citizens of the world, to give more of their money for others. The fundraisers wrestle with ethical dilemmas every time they write a piece of direct mail. "Our challenge is to present reality as clearly as possible," Steve Woodworth, president of MasterWorks Associates, an agency that produces fundraising material for Food for the Hungry (FFH), told CT. "Every time you make an offer to a donor, you must be honest. You can't deliberately mislead, and you try to avoid stereotypes. Yet you have to focus on the need. That's what people respond to."

What are the major criticisms of relief agencies' appeals? How do agencies reply to these critiques? What ethical guidelines do they follow? Are they being honest with us?

Evangelist George Müller founded his first orphanage "on faith" in Bristol, England, in 1835. Writing in More Money, More Ministry (Eerdmans, 2000), parachurch historian Michael Hamilton describes Müller's method as one that compelled him "never to speak of the orphanage's current needs, even if asked, and never to incur debt." Müller was a frequent speaker in churches, where he extolled the virtues of God's grace by recounting instances when God had provided needed funds at the very last minute. The accounts alone, no doubt, encouraged donations without his actually asking for them.

Pioneer missionary J. Hudson Taylor used the same approach, as did Mother Teresa in our time. But the apostle Paul was not afraid to ask for money, and following his example, evangelists Billy Sunday and D.L. Moody used direct fundraising to sustain their ministries. Moody, whose preaching held audiences spellbound, elicited the support of wealthy entrepreneurs who underwrote evangelistic campaigns. He candidly referred to his solicitations as "begging letters." The post-World War II economic boom enjoyed by evangelicals and the broader society sounded the death knell for most faith-mission proponents, Hamilton says.

Keith Jespersen, president of the Russ Reid Company, a pioneer Christian advertising agency, offers a concise assessment of faith-based techniques: "They didn't work." He also dismisses the notion that faith fundraising required more spiritual maturity than today's high-powered approaches.

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December 3 2001, Vol. 45, No. 15