The Kept Campaign and Ministry Plan

By Lance Olimb

I wanted to take a moment and reflect on something about the Kept campaign. Most initiatives like this are undertaken to raise funds for capital purchases or improvements, which is why they are often called capital campaigns. We certainly have some aspects like that with our debt reduction and Midtown location hunting. We would like to raise (and spend) a large amount of money once in order to free us up for ministry down the road.

However, I also think the Kept campaign is more expansive than that in some very intentional ways. I really considered that fact after preaching on Give last week. In Kept, we are also attempting to point to some long-term ministry initiatives we are committing to undertake. So, we’ll raise and commit less money (in the short-term) for the Give and Scatter portions of the Kept campaign, but only because those categories are not traditional capital expenses. We do not want them to be a one-time expense. We want to give and give and give and scatter, scatter, scatter.

The goal with Give and Scatter, then, is to weave them into our DNA and spending for the next few decades. What will be an initial allocation of $150K or $250K, or whatever, will hopefully become yearly commitments as ministries become established. It may very well be that 5 years from now we are allocating $100K each and every year from our normal budget for ministries like this.

You may resonate with more traditional capital portions of this campaign. You can’t wait to be free from debt or to plant a stake in the ground in Midtown. Or you may resonate far more with the idea that we will have ongoing ministries to the poor, vulnerable and unreached areas of the world. Either way, my prayer is that you see our big picture goal remains the same… we want to complete the Great Commission and see Jesus receive the goal due His name.

Thanks for thinking and praying and talking with us about the future.