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Generosity: A Lesson from Bon Jovi

New Jersey. Most people do not think of the Garden State as the first choice of vacationing or retirement living. But if you go to the Jersey Shore (the place, not the TV show), you just might run into Jon Bon Jovi.

Bon Jovi recently opened the Soul Kitchen as an experiment of sorts to help those who cannot afford to eat out to do so. He hopes this will be a template for other restaurants who can offer encouragement to those less fortunate.

According to Amy Sussman of the Wall Street journal: “The idea is this: There are no prices on the menu, which features such items as Garden State Gumbo, with chicken, pork sausage and Jersey fresh kale and a BBQ grilled salmon filet with soul seasonings, sweet potato mash and sautéed greens. Diners who are able to pay should leave more than the suggested minimum donation; Diners who can’t afford to pay can volunteer to work at the Soul Kitchen to cover their meals. The restaurant will be open on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and for Sunday brunch.

“The initiative is part of the JBJ Foundation, which for the most part has focused on developing affordable housing. But with the economic downturn, great achievements in that area were slower to come by, Mr. Bon Jovi explained. One night, he and his wife caught a segment by Brian Williams that showed restaurants offering free menu items to needy patrons in Salt Lake City and Denver. They decided that feeding the community would be the next step for the JBJ Soul Foundation.”

One of the problems of the Christian subculture is this: some may be tempted to dismiss such an attempt, or only to criticize it. simply because a church or group of Christians did not come up with it. A Gnostic attitude, one that sees good coming only from explicitly spiritual sources, would think this way. But a biblical mind that recognizes the imago Dei in all people would understand that believers do not have a corner on thought, on compassion, or on value.

That being said, we who know Christ and have been changed by the gospel should be leading the way in such endeavors.

But there is another force at work here which has to do with economic theory. Once upon a time in the rise of commerce and industry, people who provided goods and services asked a price that met their needs. But along the way a shift happened where the emphasis moved from what was needed to provide one’s needs, to the maximum amount one could get. The shift from getting enough to having it all has crept into the church as well. In this sense, “Christian-run” businesses, let alone the church herself and ministries often (but certainly not always) focus on the same bottom line, profit, as others who do not have a Kingdom focus.

My point is not to give for-profit businesses led by believers a hard time, because virtually every one of these I know run by believers also gives large sums of profit away. But can we learn from Bon Jovi’s example?

I heard a lady on a Christian radio station recently talk about how her family and others in their church, rather than hosting a yard sale and making some money, gave all the extra stuff in their garages and storage buildings away. She told her story as if it were some remarkable, amazing discovery-believers could actually give their junk away to help people-amazing! Yet in Acts we read more than once of believers giving away more than just their extra stuff, and we are reminded in II Corinthians 8 how Jesus, thought rich, gave all for our salvation. What has happened to us that giving away even our leftover stuff can be seen as an example of remarkable ministry?

Until the rise of money for purchasing things and a more structured society, a gift culture dominated. People would trade and barter things they made, hunted, or gathered, with one another, with a bottom line for most being sustenance not opulence. Certainly greed has been with us since the Fall. But a shift has happened in more modern times: instead of valuing the person who gave the most away, today we value the person who has it all.

This is a fundamental problem in American consumerist society, and the church is not immune. Let’s face it, Extreme Makeover never seems to take someone living in a mansion and doing a show on how they gave it all away to live modestly, do they? This is why many believers, especially Baby Boomer Christians, struggle with David Platt’s book Radical.

In Linchpin, Seth Godin writes that the digital age with so much free information available (google, wikipedia, craigslist, etc), the gift economy is making a comeback, that the future belongs to those who give more than those who seek to get. This is why I make a very meager attempt to be a part of this by providing information free through blog articles and through ebooks.

Watch advertising today. Note those who emphasize giving more than getting. Note those who intentionally seek to display generosity.

Then ask yourself, what can you, or your church, or ministry, do to display generosity, especially to those who struggle? How are you displaying the gospel in your community, especially to the broken?

I have never personally been a big fan of Bon Jovi’s music, perhaps because he was biggest when I was earning a PhD and on cultural lockdown to survive. But I am a fan of his approach to doing something for those who have less than he does. To be sure, his riches will not vanish because of this. But do we display a certain kind of poverty when we who have obtained the riches in Christ fail to set a gospel standard for generosity?

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alvinreid@churchleaders.com'
Alvin L. Reid (born 1959) serves as Professor of Evangelism and Student Ministry at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in Wake Forest, North Carolina, where he has been since 1995. He is also the founding Bailey Smith Chair of Evangelism. Alvin and his wife Michelle have two children: Joshua, a senior at The College at Southeastern, and Hannah, a senior at Wake Forest Rolesville High School. Recently he became more focused at ministry in his local church by being named Young Professionals Director at Richland Creek Community Church. Alvin holds the M.Div and the Ph.D with a major in evangelism from Southwestern Seminary, and the B.A. from Samford University. He has spoken at a variety of conferences in almost every state and continent, and in over 2000 churches, colleges, conferences and events across the United States.