Have you ever had a God-given vision so large it made your current resources feel embarrassingly small?

Maybe it was a ministry idea that kept you awake at night. Maybe it was a burden on your heart to help someone, plant something new, or change your corner of the world. You could see it clearly. You even believed it was from the Lord. But then you looked at what was in your hand—your time, your skill, your budget—and the gap between vision and reality seemed impossible to bridge.

I’ve been there. I’ve lived there.

A Job Lost and a Bathtub Full of Boxes

In the early 1970s, I was working in a ministry position that I absolutely loved. I had spent years helping to build music teams that reached into secular spaces with the message of Christ. It wasn’t just fulfilling—it felt like exactly what God had made me to do.

Then, in a stadium filled with nearly 80,000 people, I learned I was being replaced. No warning. No memo. No heads-up. Just an announcement—and suddenly I was out of a job.

Months later, I found myself in the office of a ministry vice president. Still licking my wounds, I wasn’t sure what came next. That’s when he showed me 28 boxes full of old pledge cards. They had come from that same event where I had lost my job—cards from attendees who had committed nearly $2 million toward international ministry efforts.

The cards had been sitting untouched for over 90 days.

He looked at me and said, “Can you figure out what to do with these?”

I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t have experience in fundraising. But I did have a calling—and a friend who had told me months earlier, “Larry, you have the freedom to fail.”

So, I picked up the boxes. And I got to work.

The Gap Is Where God Shows Up

I’ve come to believe that the space between vision and resources—the gap—is exactly where God does His best work.

It’s where we stop relying on our own strength and start stewarding what He’s already placed in our hands. It’s where the Lord trains us to trust Him with the unknown. And it’s where we stop asking, “Can I afford to do this?” and start asking, “Am I being faithful?”

What began with 28 boxes and no plan eventually became a team of 125 people across seven departments. And those boxes? We not only recovered the pledged amount—we exceeded it by more than $200,000.

But this wasn’t about the money.

It was about learning to walk by faith. It was about obeying God when we couldn’t see the outcome. It was about stewarding vision even when the resources didn’t seem to match.

Fundraising or Faith-Raising?

One thing I learned early on: there’s a big difference between fundraising and fund development.

Fundraising is often transactional—it says, “Give to get.” It relies on incentives, exchanges, and benefits. But fund development—when rooted in biblical stewardship—invites people into something eternal. It shifts the focus from the gift to the giver’s role in God’s mission.

We stopped calling people “donors” and started calling them “partners.” And you know what? Something shifted. They didn’t feel like outsiders supporting someone else’s dream. They owned the mission with us.