Brad Layland | CEO, The FOCUS Group | Author of Turning Donors into Partners
Key Takeaways
- Presence rarely happens accidentally for busy leaders; we have to create room for it.
- Jesus consistently saw individuals even when surrounded by crowds, conflict, and competing demands.
- Some of the interruptions we resist may actually be opportunities to serve.
- Relational fundraising requires more than communication; it requires genuine presence and listening.
- Taking donors seriously begins with seeing the person, not the prospect or the potential gift.
It has been a joy and an honor for The FOCUS Group to serve Biola University in its current Streams of Influence campaign, a $250 million effort designed to extend Biola’s impact for generations to come. Along the way, I’ve also been grateful for the opportunity to develop a friendship with Dr. Barry Corey, Biola’s President.
Barry recently co-authored an excellent book with Dr. John Townsend called Necessary Burdens: Addressing the Complexities of Leadership. The book explores 14 burdens senior leaders carry—responsibilities that often come with leadership but are rarely discussed openly. Barry will be joining us in St. Augustine this year to speak at our symposium, and I’ve been thinking about his book as I prepare for his visit.
This morning, one of those 14 burdens struck me in a particularly personal way: the burden of presence.
Barry writes about what it means for leaders to truly be with people—to make ourselves available, enter into the midst of others’ lives, and, perhaps most importantly, actually see them. That idea sounds simple until you consider how difficult it can be for a busy leader to practice. Leadership fills our calendars, our inboxes, and our minds. There is always another decision to make, problem to solve, meeting to attend, or goal to pursue. In the middle of all that activity, it becomes surprisingly easy to stop seeing the people standing right in front of us.
As I thought about presence, my mind immediately went to Jesus.
In John 8, religious leaders bring a woman before Jesus who has been caught in adultery. They aren’t particularly interested in her as a person. She has become an object in their argument—a way to test Jesus and force Him into a theological and legal dilemma. They place her in the middle of the crowd and demand an answer.
Jesus responds in an unexpected way. He bends down and writes on the ground. After they continue questioning Him, He stands and tells them that whoever is without sin should cast the first stone. Then He bends down again. One by one, the woman’s accusers leave until eventually only Jesus and the woman remain.
I don’t want to speculate about what was going through Jesus’ mind beyond what Scripture tells us. But there is something about the scene that moves me. In the middle of accusation, noise, religious argument, and tension, Jesus encounters someone the crowd had reduced to her worst moment.
And He sees her.
Not merely the accusation. Not the theological controversy. Not the problem that needed solving. He sees a person standing in front of Him.
That story made me think about an experience from much earlier in my own life.
When I was young and serving on staff with Young Life, our office was right in the middle of the campus at Flagler College in St. Augustine. It was a wonderful place to do ministry because college students were constantly around us. They would wander into the office to talk, ask questions, seek advice, or simply hang out.
There was only one problem.
They kept interrupting my work.
At least, that’s how I saw it at first.
I had phone calls to make, administrative responsibilities to complete, meetings to prepare for, and things I needed to accomplish. I would settle into the work I thought mattered, and inevitably a student would walk through the door wanting to talk. I enjoyed the students and cared about them, but part of me still viewed those unexpected conversations as interruptions to the work I was supposed to be doing.
Eventually, God helped me see the situation differently.
Maybe they weren’t interrupting the ministry. Maybe they were the ministry.
Once I understood that, I changed the way I worked. I started arriving at the office early and tried to finish as much administrative work as possible before students began wandering through. That simple adjustment created margin in my day. When a college student walked into the office looking for direction, encouragement, hope, or sometimes simply someone willing to listen, I didn’t have to stare at my computer wishing they would leave so I could finish my work.
I could look up, listen, and be present.
Decades later, I still think about that lesson because the demands have changed, but the temptation hasn’t. In fact, as our responsibilities grow, I think presence becomes more difficult. There are more people who need something, more decisions competing for attention, and more ways technology allows work to follow us everywhere. We can be physically sitting across from someone while mentally answering an email, preparing for the next meeting, or thinking about the problem waiting for us when the conversation ends.
That’s why I appreciate Barry’s idea of intentional—or even scheduled—presence. At first, scheduling presence may sound contradictory. Shouldn’t presence be spontaneous? Sometimes it is. But I’ve learned that very little happens consistently in the life of a busy leader unless we create room for it. If we believe people matter, our calendars should provide evidence that they matter.
That doesn’t mean leaders should abandon structure or allow every interruption to control the day. There is important work that requires concentration, and healthy leadership requires boundaries. But it does mean we need enough margin to recognize when an interruption may actually be an invitation. Sometimes the most important thing God has for us that day isn’t on the calendar.
Presence and Fundraising
I think there is an important lesson here for fundraising as well.
Here at The FOCUS Group, we talk constantly about relational fundraising, and rightly so. But there is no such thing as truly relational fundraising without presence. You cannot build a meaningful partnership with someone solely through a database. You cannot truly know someone through an annual appeal. And you cannot develop deep trust if the only time you contact people is when the organization needs money.
Relationships require presence.
Sometimes that means sitting across the table from someone over lunch without rushing through an agenda. Sometimes it means visiting a partner in his or her home. Sometimes it means asking a question and being willing to listen to the entire answer rather than using the question as a bridge to what we wanted to say next. Sometimes it means remembering that a donor has a child getting married, a spouse dealing with an illness, a business going through a transition, or a prayer request that matters far more to them at that moment than our campaign.
And sometimes presence simply means noticing.
After decades of working in fundraising, I’ve become convinced that one of the most important disciplines we can develop is learning to see the person rather than the prospect. When we look at someone and primarily see giving capacity, we have already diminished the relationship. When we see a potential gift rather than a person created in God’s image, fundraising becomes transactional no matter how relational our strategy claims to be.
This is one reason I’ve always believed so deeply in the idea of taking donors seriously. Taking donors seriously isn’t primarily a fundraising technique. It is a way of treating people. It means recognizing that the person sitting across from us has a story, a calling, fears, hopes, responsibilities, relationships, and a journey with God that existed long before we arrived with an opportunity to give.
Our job isn’t simply to discover how much someone might contribute to our organization. It’s to listen carefully enough to understand what God may already be doing in that person’s life and whether the ministry we represent might become part of that story.
That requires presence.
Learning to Look Up
I’m grateful for Biola and for the opportunity The FOCUS Group has had to serve the University. I’m grateful for my friendship with Barry and for the wisdom he and Townsend have offered leaders through Necessary Burdens. And I’m looking forward to having Barry with us in St. Augustine this year.
But this morning, as I thought about the burden of presence, I found myself grateful for something even more fundamental.
Jesus sees me.
He doesn’t see me primarily as a CEO, fundraiser, author, husband, father, elder, or anything else I may accomplish. He sees me as His son. And if that is how Jesus sees me, then perhaps one of the ways I can become more like Him is by learning to see the people He places around me.
That begins close to home. I want to see my wife Wendy, not simply live alongside her while thinking about work. I want to see my children, not just hear their words while my attention is somewhere else. I want to see the people I lead, the ministries we serve, and the partners who entrust us with their stories. I want to notice the person who walks into my office when I was planning to do something else.
There will always be another email to answer, another meeting to prepare for, another problem to solve, and another item on the list. Good leadership requires us to attend to those things faithfully. But it also requires the wisdom to recognize when the person in front of us matters more than the task in front of us.
I learned that lesson years ago in a little Young Life office at Flagler College, and I’m still learning it today.
Every once in a while, put down what you’re working on. Create some margin. Look up and pay attention to the person God has placed in front of you.
They may not be interrupting your work.
They may be the work.
About the Author
Brad Layland is CEO of The FOCUS Group, a fundraising consulting firm that serves more than 150 Christian ministries and organizations. Before acquiring the firm, Brad spent 20 years with Young Life, including serving as its Chief Development Officer.
Over the past three decades, Brad has helped ministries strengthen leadership, cultivate generous partners, and raise significant resources for Kingdom impact. He is passionate about helping Christian leaders think strategically about stewardship, generosity, succession, and long-term ministry effectiveness.
A lifelong endurance athlete, Brad has completed 75 marathons and two Ironman triathlons. He is the author of Turning Donors into Partners (InterVarsity Press), holds a B.A. in Communications from the University of Florida and an M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary, and serves as an elder at Good News Church in St. Augustine, Florida, where he and his wife, Wendy, live and enjoy time with their four children.
We’ve been privileged to help many organizations be more effective in their fundraising by learning and implementing relational fundraising principles in their work with donors. Want to talk?