Following is a letter we sent out over the weekend to all our MemberPartners and major donors. It’s a letter that explains why we need to raise $5,000 by the end of the day today. We are sending it out this morning to everyone because 1) we realize some might have missed it, and 2) we’re going to need everyone’s participation to make this happen. But that’s as it should be, since the future belongs to all of us.
Are we as Boomers going to be content to just coast into the station at the end of our lives oblivious to the changing world we live in and content to float on home watching some movie about the way we were? Or are we going to wake up, turn around and head back out on the morning train into the world as it is, looking to build bridges — bridges into the culture, and bridges to the next generation as they seek to figure out what faith means in their world. Let’s face it: It’s not our world anymore; it’s theirs. Wait long enough and we’ll all be gone anyway, so who cares about us? It’s not about us.
So I invite you to read the letter and do what you can to help us reach our goal today.
A descendant of Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Life and its brick-and-mortar church, the Catch Ministry is a nonprofit organization governed by its Board of Directors and offers a real time internet ministry and means of teaching, encouraging and building up the body of believers, connecting the disenfranchised, and serves as a personal ‘triage’ to individual members and, considering the degree of urgency, matches the individual to its established worldwide network of Christian professionals and other resources.
With the creation of the Board of Directors in December 2012 and its first Marketing Plan approved in July 2013, the Catch became the Catch Ministry reaching over 12,000 people with expansion occurring in every direction, resulting in more engagement with our community including a prayer ministry, counseling, exposure to current cultural thinkers such as Os Guinness and Tony Campolo through interviews and podcasts, discipleship and Boots on the Ground in 143 countries, and Church at the Catch, a weekly interactive service via Facebook Live.
What continues to astound us is the fact that without solicitation, the Catch is attracting a large number of Millennials, people born between 1973 and 2002.
Why, you ask, are the Millennials the Catch community’s second largest demographic after an audience of primarily Boomers? Millennials, like our primary audience, want to be a part of a faith community where they can build deeper, more lasting connections including truly meaningful relationships, connecting and applying their hearts and minds to today’s cultural realities, mutual mentoring that makes a difference in each other’s lives today and not sometime in the future, the making of marketplace disciples, and the integration of Jesus into all areas of life. Millennials especially are drawn to our central theme of grace, and not just grace, but Grace Turned Outward.
Cultivating intergenerational relationships is one of the most important ways in which we are developing flourishing faith in both young and old. At the Catch this means changing the metaphor from simply passing the baton to the next generation to a more functional, biblical picture of a body – that is, the entire community of faith, across the entire lifespan, working together to fulfill God’s purposes.
Grace is doing its work, and, out there among us, you and I are following Grace, and not getting in its way. We are Showing Up through a new channel — Music That Matters — our own radio station which provides a new way of looking at a time and a generation that laid the foundation for today’s Christianity. The “Jesus Movement” musicians and influencers are bringing the discussion forward for those of us today by setting the stage for the transparency, honesty, and spiritual passion found in the rest of Music that Matters Radio, blending music of the boomers and the music of the Millennials (and everything in-between) and finding a synthesis.
These are exciting days when we see the fruit of our consistent commitment to the radical nature of Christ’s teaching to point us clearly towards a new frontier you and I call Grace Turned Outwards.
With this kind of growth it isn’t surprising we are outgrowing ourselves. It’s wonderful to look back at who we were with love, acknowledging the truth of what you and I shared and how we showed up, and how it resonated.
This does not mean we need to shed the old and make space for the new. We build on the past, we just never want to see ourselves the same as we were a year or even six months ago. If we do, we know we have gotten too comfortable. We will know we’ve chosen safety and security and certainty over growth. Though it’s challenging and often scary, we never want to stop choosing growth.
Growth is hard. It hurts and sometimes it feels like we might not survive it. Sometimes it feels like we might actually die before we see the other side. It’s scary, but it’s the only way to build a life and relationships that bring us joy at our core. It’s the only way to become who we’re here to be, and to leave the mark we’re here to leave.
I thank God that you know what I am saying and why I feel it is important we stand together with this incredible next wave of ministry, and why I feel not only compelled but free to invite you to participate with us in laying down a $5,000 bridge that must be in place financially by Monday morning. That is why we are asking you to provide a significant one-time gift to The Catch Ministry today.
We saw this opportunity coming but we didn’t anticipate the speed at which it was traveling nor did we expect it would require our immediate response.
This is one of those times when you and I are required to move out by faith in order to take full advantage of what is happening right now. We have an incredible opportunity to come alongside the Millennials God has entrusted to us and share our wisdom and insight from when God moved on our generation 50 years ago right up to where He is moving today.
God is calling us forward to a new frontier. We need you to help us answer the call by sending a generous gift today. By utilizing the online link below, your gift will be available right away to help us take advantage of the present opportunity to set up a bridge to the next generation. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
For the Gospel of Welcome — Grace Turned Outward — to everyone, everywhere,
John & Marti
John Fischer The Catch 