Why It’s Genius to be Generous by Chip Ingram2

JOHN SAVILLE AND THE SECRET PACT

I met John in the first church I pastored in rural Texas. I was a young, inexperienced pastor with a lot of zeal and not much wisdom. John, by contrast, was an elderly man who came to Christ late in life and had suffered some pretty hard knocks along the way. We had absolutely nothing in common except that he was the chairman of the elders and I was the new pastor of this not-so-thriving church of 35 people in a town of 3,500.
To be candid, I thought John was a little kooky at first. He had simple answers for my “complex” questions; he quoted Galatians 2:20 or Oswald Chambers as the answer to almost everything. On top of that, he said “praise the Lord” a lot, which was very uncool in my mind. And he drove a Cadillac which caused me to question his spiritual maturity. I mean, how can you really love God and have nice stuff? That didn’t make sense to me.
John wasn’t up on sports, pop culture, or church growth. I was in my late 20’s, and he was in his mid 70’s. There was absolutely no reason for John and I to see each other except for a once a month elders meeting, let alone become best friends-apart from the genius of generosity.
One day John asked me to drive into Dallas to have lunch with him at the downtown accounting firm he owned. He told me to wear a tie because the restaurant required it. I’ll never forget how intimidated I was as I traveled up the glass building’s elevator to his wood-paneled reception area. My middle-class roots were being deeply challenged as we dined on the top floor overlooking all of Dallas. It was a world I had never experienced, and John seemed particularly thrilled to treat me to the best he could offer in insist that I get the filet-”best steak around,” he assure me.
Toward the end of lunch, this grand old man pulled a small white box from his coat pocket and told me he had a proposition that he wanted me to consider. He called it a business deal of sorts. Not a business deal to make money, but a business deal to give it away. I will never forget John’s three-point outline as he laid out what he called our “Secret “Pact”:
1. I have a desire to help poor and hurting people.
2. You are in contact with poor and hurting people daily.
3. I want you to be my eyes and ears and help them as God leads you.
With that, John reached into the box, pulled out a brown checkbook, and handed it to me. As I opened it, I say the word “pastor’s discretionary fund” neatly printed on the front. The deposit ledger in the back had a five and three zeros neatly printed in the far right column. I looked up at this loving, kooky man and said, “Do you mean you want me to figure out who to help and then help them the way you would if you saw the situation, Mr. Saville?”
John smiled and said, “That’s exactly what I want you to do Chip!”
Five thousand dollars, five thousand dollars...My head was swimming as I repeated that number over and over riding down the elevator to get in my old non-air-conditioned car in the 98 degree Dallas summer heat. John had sworn me to secrecy, and thus began a series of divine lessons that only later would I recognize as the genius of generosity.