Legos and Life
God sees something bigger in us.
John Eggen (CFRE, CIPM) is my responder this week. He is responding to my post “Long and Winding Road: Second Chances and Transferable Skills,” which you can read here. Thanks, John!
I’m here because someone else saw something in me I hadn’t seen before. That, and a few twists and turns in life’s journey may have helped me discover a part of the map I never imagined exploring.
Many of us went to school or set out in life with what we felt was a clear trajectory. For me, that was engineering. I went to school for mechanical engineering, was set to start a master’s degree and had a clear career path. Until I began to better understand a sense of call. Queue a significant academic shift—going to seminary. I’d gone from reading books simply to understand concepts, differential equations, physics, statics, dynamics, even combustion theory—to Hebrew, New Testament classes and even gender in Medieval Christian Mysticism and thousands of pages of reading.
I still remember how challenging it was, how much I thought I had wasted a lot of energy getting an engineering degree that felt, in many ways, like it did nothing to prepare me for seminary. There were some challenging moments, but I made it through seminary and continued education, both theological and financial. I’ve discovered there was no waste of time or energy, but that there are unexpected ways that everything I’ve learned has formed who I am, how I lead, and how I think about fundraising.
We might only be able to envision one path, like the Lego box designed to build one thing. God sees something bigger in us.
Legos have always been a big part of our family life. One of our favorite things is to just build. Sometimes the kids used to even hand out random piles of Legos and we’d have challenges where we’d each create something, explain what we created, and vote on the best creation. (Apparently, we are a little competitive, too.) Finding creative ways to use these is one of our favorite things. In fact, one of the kids will buy Lego kits designed to build one thing—build it, take it apart, and then put all the pieces in the general collection to find a new use.
I think that’s how God sees us, and our life experiences. We might only be able to envision one path, like the Lego box designed to build one thing. God sees something bigger in us. That understanding leads to a belief that a concept of “transferrable skills” is really our way of saying that God has a broader vision of how to equip us for our calling than we would have ever imagined for ourselves.
How does this impact who I am as a fundraiser? It’s made me more confident in who I am. I know I’m an objective person, I love processes, and I love clarity. As a fundraiser this means I’m clear with my donors, “Next time I come, can we talk about ___?” or “Last time we met we agreed to ___, is now a good time to talk more about that?” That’s just me, it’s how I’m wired, and I’m okay with that.
How does this impact me as a leader? I also don’t think anyone ever says, “I’m going to be a fundraiser when I grow up.” Someone saw something in me that I didn’t. As a leader one of the greatest privileges is to see that in someone else. I’ve been blessed to be able to hire many fundraisers who are new to the profession, and they are excellent.
John Eggen is the Senior Director for Annual Giving at the ELCA Churchwide Office. He leads a dedicated team inviting direct giving to the ELCA Churchwide general fund, ELCA World Hunger, and Lutheran Disaster Response. John is driven by a theology of sufficiency and believes in the power of generosity to support the church's mission.
Kelly Wendell is the editor of “To Be a Fundraiser.” She is Coordinator of Communications at South Dakota State University.