The ROI of AoK (The Return On Investment of Acts of Kindness)

2014 was a big year of community outreach for The Redemption Movement. By doing a church-wide act of Kindness every Sunday, along with other various outreaches like designated driving, welcome-back-to-school week, rock shows, holiday care packages, the Town & Gown Gala, and much more, we directly reached more than 1,000 Oneonta residents with "a small act to show God's big love." With so much of our time, money, and resources put into this AoK ministry (45% of our current church budget), we have a responsibility to ask ourselves, "Is it worth the investment?"

More than 1,000 kindness cards passed out in 2014.

The Return On Kindness 

Businesses have a formula called ROI that helps them determine if an investment is profitable or not. Essentially, companies compare the total cost of their investment to the amount of revenue the investment brought in. If all goes well, the ROI formula will show a profit.

Due to the fact that churches are non-profit, it's difficult to apply this financial ROI formula to church expenditures. Instead, for a church, a more appropriate ROI-type question to ask would be, "Are these investments furthering the goals and mission of the organization?" For our church, these acts of kindness furthers some of our goals, but not all of them.

Goal #1: Church Growth

Like any organization, every church desires to grow and will use much of its resources to meet this goal. For the majority of Christian churches, the goal of growth is spiritualized and made the primary goal of the organization. This is due to the fact that adherents to the faith believe that church growth is directly tied to Jesus' Great Commission. This is true of the mission of The Redemption Movement, and it's one of the defining traits of what it means to be an Evangelical Church.

Therefore, let's first take a look at how much our kindness efforts in 2014 have impacted church growth. Pastors and leaders from other churches who are considering doing acts of kindness for the sole purpose of growing your church, take note.

50 care packages with candy and a $2 bill given to people working on Christmas.

Concerning the 2014 acts of kindness completed by our church, the ROI for church growth is rather dismal. Of the more than 1,000 Oneonta residents reached by acts of kindness (and 1,000 is a conservative estimate, the actual totals for the year include a few hundred more), not one of these people visited our church. Zero, zilch, nada; not one person that we directly showed the love of God to with an AoK in 2014 stepped foot inside of our doors. This includes the dozens and dozens of people that enthusiastically received our kindness and replied, "This is great! This is the nicest thing that anyone has done for me. I'll be sure to visit your church!"

Granted, we weren't trying to use our AoKs as a heavy-handed method to invite people to church, but the conversations often went in the direction of a church invite, and every kindness card we passed out includes our church address, meeting times, website, and contact information. Therefore, I want to communicate to my fellow church leaders that, if you're considering doing acts of kindness for the sole purpose of growing your church, then you will be disappointed with the results (or the lack thereof).

Goal #2: Reputation Improvement

In today's headline-driven culture, people outside the church don't have to look very far to find a story about something rotten a Christian leader has done; or worse, a person may have had something rotten or judgmental happen to them at the hands of someone belonging to a church. Unfortunately, a far-too-common reaction to these negative stories and experiences is for a person to write off all of Christianity as rotten to the core. If somebody who makes such generalizations about Christians only surrounds themselves with others that share their negative worldview, then they will have no reason to believe otherwise about the faith.

Donating 1,200 pounds of concrete mix to our friend Jo for an AoK.

The beauty of reaching out with acts of kindness is that it breaks unexpectedly into a stranger's life and lovingly challenges negative and false generalizations about Christianity. For us, the ROI for kindness concerning improving the reputation of Christ and His followers has been very good. Thanks to all the outreach and kindness that we've shown, our community thinks very highly of our new church, and we've forged positive relationships with several individuals who strongly disagree or may even feel hostile towards the faith.

For The Redemption Movement, improving the reputation of Christianity and the church is a huge goal that we've met through acts of kindness. In fact, we feel that our church is called to sow goodwill and the good news in a community known for having a hardened heart. Therefore, we will continue to do this work of reaching out and loving people in practical ways, knowing that it's a much needed first step towards healing, and that this healing must happen before a person would even think about visiting a church or seriously consider the teachings of Jesus Christ.

Goal #3: Showing the Love of God

Free funnel cake!

Showing God's love with acts of kindness is the primary reason we do them. For us, showing kindness is all about being obedient to God's commands to, "Love our neighbors as we love ourselves."

As Christians, we feel like it's our duty to display God's character to those around us, which means loving others sacrificially. When it comes down to it, continuing to show our neighbors kindness isn't a matter of, "If there's an adequate return on the investment or not;" instead, it's a matter of being obedient to the commands of our Lord. And regarding obedience, one never questions the cost of doing what they're supposed to. After all, Jesus Christ our Savior invested everything he had for the sake of our salvation, which meant being obedient to death on the cross. For Jesus, He didn't get to see the return on His investment until His resurrection. As followers of Christ, we've been given the promise that we will one day see a great harvest (i.e., a reward) on our investments of kindness that we've shown.

In conclusion, instead of calling this ministry "Acts of Kindness, or AoK," perhaps a more accurate description would be IoK, or an "Investment of Kindness." Be on the look out Oneonta for more kindness invested in you for 2015!

2010: The Building of a Movement

(click to enlarge)

2010 looks to be the year the Redemption Movement will begin, and like the word "movement" indicates, it will start with something small, like Bible studies and acts of kindness, that will move forward into a full blown church with several life-giving ministries. Our approach will be less focused on a time table and more geared toward a one-step-at-a-time strategy. This ties in better with the idea of movement, and allows us to grow at a healthy and authentic pace.
To better communicate this movement, we have created a step-by-step illustration that captures the vision of growing us from a small group of believers meeting in homes, into a public church with weekly ministries and local outreaches, and finally, into a church that has worship services, provides aide internationally, and plants new churches.

Information Meetings Step one: build a group of committed people who are passionate about Jesus and His church. Information meetings act as a great way to introduce new people to the Redemption Movement by laying everything out about our purpose, doctrine, vision, etc. This way, an informed and prayerful decision can be made on whether or not one would feel this is the right time to join the movement. People who sign up at this stage will make up the founding core group of the church. They will be challenged with the founding work of the church and enjoy the spiritual growth of watching the fruits of their labor blossom into a church that blesses others.

Small Groups
Small to medium-sized groups will weekly meet in each others homes and enjoy meals, Bible studies, worship, and good old fashioned hanging out. This will be key to building a strong faith community. Small groups will provide a believer with several important ministries of the church including discipleship, worship, prayer, fellowship, and giving.

Acts of Kindness
This is a simple idea that can make a huge impact: teams of people regularly going out into the community to show others the love of Jesus by serving them in practical ways. Passing out food, raking leaves, washing cars, the possibilities to make a difference in peoples lives is enormous. Not only will the acts of kindness teams help others, but this outreach ministry will be even more rewarding for the people who serve.

Weeknight Gatherings
Think of this like a hybrid of a church service/coffee house/family living room. This will be an experimental and casual model of public ministry that can be enjoyed by both the super spiritual Christian and the open minded skeptic. The gatherings will operate with an open-to-close format, have short teaching and worship sessions throughout, allow time for prayer and discussion, as well as provide an area for games and snacks. It is a rather new way of doing ministry, and a more detailed blog post will be made before it premiers.

Partnering with Local Charities
We want to be a church that helps the poor, one the most effective ways of doing this is to partner with an existing local charity that is already doing a great job.

Establish Church Ministries
In this stage we will start several different ministries and programs that churches typically have. Ministries for kids and teenagers, men's and women's groups, worship teams, all of these groups and more will be added as we go along and have need, instead of having every one in place before we start.

Public Launch Event
Everything until now has been invitation-only or semi-public. When we finally enter into the public arena we want to go big with a an event called a "launch." It would be ideal if we could coincide the public launch event with the grand opening of a new location that can accommodate more people, preferably something in the downtown of Oneonta. This event will be very celebratory and heavily promoted, it will also be set apart from the weekly routine.

Weeknight Gatherings (New Location)
The format of these meetings will be unchanged, and they will continue to be the churches main gatherings, but by moving to a new location that is closer to the downtown, we are hoping to add the dynamic of picking up more casual passer-byers and being more in the public eye. This will mean beefing up the coffee house element of the meetings and include more introductory aspects to the teachings.

Start a Church Charity
At this stage, we hope to have the numbers and resources to start our own charity for the community, while continuing support of other charities and the work of our acts of kindness teams.

Public Launch Event
Another heavily promoted launch event will be used, this time to promote the next phase, which is the addition of church services.

Church Services
For us, the church service will not be the foundation of everything we do; but rather, the gooey celebration-flavored icing on the moist and delicious cake of who we are. I think it will be a healthy approach to not put all of our energy from the beginning, into trying to put on a perfect church service every week, for a culture that may be tired of simply "going to church." But by adding the church service element after years of strong ministry and healthy relationship building, I think the services will be more meaningful for everybody who is participating.

Meeting International Social Concerns
By now, the influence of The Redemption Movement will have gone well past the doors of our church and even the borders of Otsego County, New York. At this stage the church should be able to address big problems that are facing our world. We may not be able to solve every issue, but I believe God intended His church to make a big difference.

Plant a Church
Spreading the movement through replication. We want to be a church that is planting new churches, and then the new churches plant new churches, and so on. As a church plant we believe in church planting, and we would especially like to start new churches in communities in the area that could benefit most from a new church.