This was the largest capital campaign in our church's history, so my wife and I were asked to meet face-to-face with key leaders. As Karen and I drove to Caribou Coffee to meet a twenty-something couple in our church, I thought, This meeting may not be easy. Mark and Debbie care so passionately about social justice that they moved into the lowest-income apartment complex in our area, and they have the bedbug bites to prove their commitment. Now we'd be asking them to give, when much of their gift would go to build a new sanctuary for our suburban congregation.

We warmed up by asking what Mark and Donna thought about Sunday's sermon, in which our senior pastor kicked off the public phase of the campaign with a passionate message about God's call to Abram to "Go."

Mark was direct: "C'mon, just because God told Abram to go to a new land doesn't mean God is telling our church to buy a new building."

Hmmm. Raising money from Millennials is not ...