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Well, now that Politics Season is over and my state has decided it is good to give our broken education and political systems even more money, it’s also a good time to talk about the next two seasons ahead: Thanksgiving and Christmas.

I am a part of an amazing grass-roots movement this season.

It’s called #GivingTuesday. You all know about Black Friday, some of you know about Cyber Monday, well now there’s Giving Tuesday. After two days of coupon consuming deal-or-die days of shopping – this should come as a cathartic celebration.

Just to let you know. In 2011, Americans spent 40 million dollars on pet costumes. PET COSTUMES. We balked at the 6 billion dollar price tag of politics, but in 2012 Americans spent 370 million dollars on pet costumes!

Have we lost our capitalistic minds?

• 
Black Friday brings in 11.4 billion dollars (http://goo.gl/OaqbS)
• Cyber Monday brings in 1.25 billion dollars (http://goo.gl/G6KUY)
• So how much will Giving Tuesday generate? We decide.

I didn’t grow up poor. Well, not in terms of a roof over my head or food on the table. I don’t have any walk-in-the-snow-uphill-to-school-and-back stories either. And I’m not rich in comparison to the paper worth of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. However, I am extremely wealthy compared to Erik (my son’s boda-boda driver and part time security guard in Gulu, Uganda).

I am living in the top — 1% of the world (http://www.globalrichlist.com/how.html).

I did not have any concept of money as a child. I was worried about surviving in other ways (emotionally and mentally). I either begged money from my family or stole it as a teenager (before Christ, of course). Eh hem, the point is… I did not know much about the concept of giving money until I got involved at the church.

I was a brand new Christian and didn’t have a job to be able to give. When I received my first paycheck I was excited to be obedient to my pastor’s/church’s request that I tithe. I felt like a real insider when I learned that the word “tithe” simply meant 10%. I would tell other Christian friends and they would give me a “duh, we knew that” look. Robin (my wife) was a tithing pro. She’d been raised in the church and informed me that she had been “tithing” since she could remember receiving money. She even tithed on birthday money she received from family! I thought that was a little crazy, but I admired her commitment. Tithing became an act of worship and service as our faith and family grew over the years. It was pretty mechanical for me. It’s not like I was ever giddy or thankful to have money to give. It was just a required action. 

When Robin and I began serving on staff at a church in Lakewood they had something really wild going on. They called it “Miracle Sunday.” One Sunday a year the Pastor would challenge the entire congregation to give 90% of one week’s pay and trust God to be able to live on the 10% left over. Well, our very first Sunday to start at the church landed on Miracle Sunday and we were nervous about participating in the church’s little “swap my tithe” campaign.

The history behind Miracle Sunday is this: Back in the day, our church wanted to build a brand new sanctuary and could not get a single bank to loan them money. So the Pastor had this wild idea. Challenge people in the church to sacrifice and raise the money themselves. The church only had a few hundred people, so it was a huge leap of faith. However, the very first Miracle Sunday was a success and the rest was history. Oh, if you’re wondering, Robin and I did not participate that first year – we had ZERO income from that week so it was a draw!

We continued to tithe, participate in Miracle Sunday almost every year, and also gave monthly as a part of our “Faith Promise” Mission’s giving. Our church, at the time, had close to 200 Missionaries on the “mission’s roster.” Each time I gave, or really “payroll deducted”, there was no joy or thankfulness involved. It was just a required action. 

Every year around Happy Uncle Sam Day (April 15) I would be pleasantly surprised that we had given far more than 10% of our combined income. We were closer to 15% most years. I just thought, “Hmmm, that’s good, right?”

As time went on, we realized our children had nothing to do with the family decision to give. Our kids knew some of the missionaries (especially the “MK’s” or Missionary Kids) and knew that I was involved in putting the Missionary Family Booklet together and promoting the Mission’s Convention. Our church hosted a “free” banquet where we would put the mission’s challenge out and publicly add up the totals for the convention and celebrate all the money raised to support our missionaries. Robin was in charge of the Kid’s Missions Convention. Personally, I think the kid event was way cooler and a lot more fun. One year she and the kid’s team converted the upper kid’s room into a gigantic airplane complete with Microsoft Flight Simulator in the cockpit monitors and cool sounds of wind and airplane noises. They would “fly” to a few destinations and hear about the country in which one of our missionary’s served. So our kids kind of understood tithing and kind of understood giving and kind of understood mission’s giving. Robin, being a “PK” (Pastor’s Kid), taught our children about tithing and challenged them to give 10% to God (the church). I’m not sure if we monitored it very well, but we did our best. I know as each one of the kids began to get jobs, Robin would have the “are you tithing” talk and they would do their best to give 10%. And I’m sure they each participated in our kids and youth emphasis of missions (BGMC and Speed the Light). But we really didn’t talk about the joy and thankfulness angle of giving. It was just a required action. 

A few times we would hear about someone struggling or a family in great financial need and we would get together and decide how we would help. Normally, it was a secret giving mission. They really like that part. Well, I really like that part.

It wasn’t until I started working at Royal Family KIDS, asking for mission’s/ministry money and some tough talks with Wayne Tesch to discover that I had not really learned how to be generous, how to give with joy and thankfulness. So would you think that a person that asks for money, especially mission’s money, should not be giving money away? The very first missionary we started giving to came as a result of a Fund Raising Training Seminar taught by my friend, Henri Moreau. He simply asked the class, “who are you supporting?” The class was silent. The group thought, “we came here to learn how to ask not give!” Henri followed by saying you CANNOT raise money without understanding generosity and giving – wow! 

So now, ten years later, let me tell you the Garvin Family Generosity Plan. You may have a better understanding of how we see money as a tool and how we are growing in our excitement and thankfulness to partner with ministries and give as much as we possibly can.

• We give to our church – we give a monthly amount to the general fund as well as to the mission’s fund
• We give to our Missionaries – it is a joy to get behind a dear friend who senses the call of God to step out and live by faith to accomplish great things for the Kingdom of God. We consider this an honor
• We give to our STM (Short Term Missions) trips – these are students, friends who want to experience missions in other cultures or countries. We consider most of these trips to be “discovery” and “learning” trips rather than missions, but we still support folks who go.
• We give to ministries that reflect our heart. We want money to follow our heart and passion. So we are committed to ministries and sometimes organizations that have children and families as their main focus.
• We give to critical needy families. This is an awesome opportunity for the Christmas season
• We are growing in these new areas: 
We are committing to one RFK camper. We really feel this is critical to send one camper a year to be a part of a camp, club and mentor experience. It is life changing for a child. 

Those who serve us
- can I do 30% tip for folks who serve?
 When I travel I would like to tip hotel maids who work for miserable pay and serve?

Our giving path has been a journey that we have grown to enjoy. And hopefully our giving has become more personal and joyful. What’s your generosity plan?