Most successful non-profit organizations try to run with business world efficiency, but they are limited in many ways because of the funding models they must rely upon. Most of the men and women who serve on a board of trustees come from a business background, and they often cannot understand why this organization cannot be run just like a business.

Thomas Tierney recently tried to explain why non-profits often run differently from profit-making businesses. He used this thought experiment when he discovered that many CEOs of non-profits spend nearly half their time managing funding streams.

“Imagine if a typical CEO spent 2+ days a week with bankers, Wall Street analysts and venture capitalists. Now imagine that it took over 100 different sources to capitalize his business, and that none of them would ever commit to more than a single year’s funding. It would be like trying to drive from San Francisco to Boston on a gallon of gas at a time. You’d never be able to plan the fastest or most direct route and would always be looking for the next gas station.”

Thomas Tierney says that as he has “looked under the hood” of various non-profits. He has concluded that much of the balky performance is due to the donors. Often we give for personal reasons. If a family member dies of cancer, you are likely to give to the American Cancer Society. If your child made a commitment to Christ at a Christian camp, you are likely to support that camp or Christian ministry.

He also notes we often give to lots of organizations. “We need to avoid what I call ‘peanut butter philanthropy,’ spreading our resources too thin. We can’t save the world by giving one dollar to every worthwhile cause. We also need to invest in nonprofit infrastructure.”

All of this should not be an excuse for nonprofit organizations. They need to be effective and efficient. But they are different from businesses because of the funding models they rely upon.

Today is Memorial Day. For many Americans, it is merely a day off. For others it marks the start of summer. But hopefully for many of you, it is a day to honor those who fought for our freedom and especially for those who paid the ultimate sacrifice.

Sure we can enjoy our picnics and go for a walk or go for a swim. But we should take some time to put up a flag, make a banner, and perhaps participate in a parade honoring our military.

Certainly those in the military feel more loved than the vets who returned from the Vietnam War. But it wouldn’t hurt to thank those who have served our country and to make them feel appreciated. We will never be able to repay them enough for their service.

What else can we do? If you visit a few websites, you will find all sorts of suggestions. Here are a few to consider. Participate in a “National Moment of Remembrance” at 3 PM today. Pause, listen to taps, and reflect. I was in London’s Heathrow airport on Veterans’ Day. When time came to stop and reflect, the airport was absolutely quiet for a minute or so. I was impressed. We can learn something from the British and their reverence for their war dead.

You might encourage your friends, neighbors and family to visit cemeteries and perhaps even place flags on the graves. I have been to military cemeteries in Hawaii and the Philippines and have seen what is done there. We need to do the same back home.

Those of you who live near the nation’s capitol might visit one of the memorials for the Vietnam Veterans, the World War II veterans, or the Korean War Veterans.

I will let you consider what you might do to make this day special. The point is to make this day special. Too often we come to think about it as nothing more than a Monday holiday or the kick off for summer. It should mean so much more for us.

Is poverty in the world increasing or decreasing? Economists are discovering that is has substantially decreased. Kevin Hassett summarizes the data from economists who have been looking at the world distribution of income. By gathering data from many different countries, they have been able to count the number of individuals who live on a $1 per day or less, which is a key measure of poverty.

According to their calculation, the number of people living in poverty so defined has plummeted. The number used to be 967 million in 1970 and is now about 350 million. This trend is even more impressive when you consider that the world population has increased by 3 billion people over the same period of time.

What is the reason for this reduction in poverty? The biggest factor is the emergence of middle classes in previously poverty-stricken China and India. And as capitalism has spread to other countries, there has been a similar impact.

Kevin Hassett makes a bold prediction. He believes that if this current trend continues for just 40 more years, “poverty will have been essentially eradicated from the globe. And capitalism will have done it.”

Does capitalism reduce poverty more effectively than socialism? To answer that question the authors reconstructed the distribution of income for the countries of the former Soviet Union. Back in the days of communism, poverty was much higher than it is today. More open societies with freer market raised annual incomes.

Kevin Hassett believes that the current criticisms of capitalism may be off target. He disagrees with “those who have argued that the current financial crisis has served as proof that capitalism is a failed ideology.” The work of these economists “suggests that there are about a billion people whose lives prove otherwise.”

At one time or another we have all heard the comment that what we believe “may be true for you, but it isn’t true for me.” In his article, Francis Beckwith provides a humorous but instructive way to respond to that oft-used comment.

He said: “Several years ago, after a pick-up basketball game, I got into a discussion with one of my teammates about a book I was reading on the Christian philosophy of religion. When I mentioned that the book claimed that a Christian may have rational warrant for his theological beliefs, my teammate, a committed believer in reincarnation, responded, ‘That may be true for you, but that’s not true for me.'”

We have all heard someone say something like that before. So let’s rejoin Francis Beckwith and hear how he handled it. He said: “Puzzled by that response, I replied, ‘Is it true for both of us, or just true for you, that what may be true for me is not true for you?’ Quickly losing confidence in his coffeehouse aphorism, he said he didn’t think it right that I was trying to push my religion on him.”

“I, of course, was suggesting that he was trying to push his religion, in particular, his religious epistemology, on me. . . . In other words, under the guise of openness and tolerance, he was, without my consent, dictating the epistemological terms under which I could announce my religious beliefs to others.”

Francis Beckwith is using some big words here, but essentially what he is saying is that phrase “it may be true for you but not for me” is actually pushing a particular philosophy of knowledge. So it is indeed ironic that his basketball teammate then retreated to saying that Francis Beckwith was trying to push his religion on him.

Without realizing it, his teammate was more dogmatic then he even realized. I think he ended up learning some philosophy and apologetics on the basketball court.

One of the challenges for us in the future will be perception. We observe the world with linear perception, but we live in exponential times. Exponential growth is very different from arithmetic growth. We live our lives in a linear way. We live day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month. But the changes taking place around us are increasing not in a linear way but in an exponential way.

Exponential growth is not something that we would consider intuitive. Scott Armstrong demonstrated that when he asked a graduate class of business students the following question. If you folded a piece of paper in half forty times, how thick would it be? Most of the students guessed it would be less than a foot. A few guessed it would be greater than a foot but less than a mile. Two students guessed it would be greater than a mile but less than two thousand miles. The correct answer is that the paper would be thick enough to reach from here to the moon.

This is the challenge of living in exponential times that are affecting everything from economics to the environment. If the trend on a graph is linear, we have a fairly good grasp of what that will mean for us in the future. When the graph curves upward exponentially, we have a difficult time comprehending its impact.

Another challenge is trying to integrate all the various trends (many growing exponentially). This makes it difficult to accurately predict the future. We might know the individual trends, but trying to integrate hundreds of trends into a comprehensive picture is difficult, if not impossible.

That is why I believe we need godly wisdom and biblical discernment like never before. The future is coming at us at unprecedented speed. We need to search the Scriptures and depend upon the Lord like never before.

What are the key components of the free enterprise system in America today? Arthur Brooks in his book, The Battle, describes five principles.

The first principle is: The purpose of free enterprise is human flourishing, not materialism. In this statement he sets forth the moral case for free enterprise. He argues in one chapter that people flourish when they earn their own success. It’s not money per se that is a measure. Instead, it is what Arthur Brooks calls “earned success.”

A second principle is that America stands for equality of opportunity, not equality of income. Arthur Brooks has found that non-Americans will tell you that Americans are the most egalitarian people in the world. Most of us believe that we should have similar opportunities but also believe that we might end up in different places.

A third principle is that we seek to stimulate true prosperity, not treat poverty. Arthur Brooks says nearly every study of impoverished communities around the world shows that prosperity, not poverty, is the right focus if we want to lift people out of poverty.

A fourth principle is that America can and should be a gift to the world. Here is where we see a split in values. While some Americans see America as exploitative, most Americans believe that our country does more good than harm. And they believe the nation has been a force for good in the world.

And a final principle is that what truly matters is principle, not political power. Americans reject the pursuit of political power at the expense of principle. Confidence in politicians in America is now as low as it was during the era of Watergate.

Arthur Brooks in his book explains how we can make the case for the free enterprise system. These are key principles we need to promote.

The United States developed a culture of free enterprise early on, and most Americans want it to continue. That is one of the conclusions from The Battle by Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute.

The founders promoted a free market. Thomas Jefferson said this in his first inaugural address. “A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

People from other countries began to realize how exceptional America’s culture of free enterprise was. French nobleman Alexis deTocqueville called Americans ‘”the freest people in the world.” During his time in America he was struck by the fact that Americans pursued their interests under the supervision of limited government and banded together in voluntary associations.

Arthur Brooks contends that we live in a 70-30 nation. A Pew Research Center poll asked a broad range of Americans this question: “Generally, do you think people are better off in a free market economy, even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time, or don’t you think so?” Almost 70 percent of respondents agree that they are better off in a free market economy.

The good news is that 70 percent of Americans believe in free enterprise. The bad news is that the other 30 percent are in control of important arenas in our society such as the academy, media, and government. And that leads to the subtitle of the book by Arthur Brooks that says, “How the fight between free enterprise and big government will shape America’s future.” This is our challenge for the future.

Is Christianity really as bad as atheists say that it is? For decades we have heard the charges from the new atheists. So we shouldn’t be surprised that many of those criticisms showed up at the 17th annual “White Privilege Conference” held last month in Philadelphia.

Paul Kivel (founder of the Challenging Christian Hegemony Project) blamed Christianity for “almost every dysfunction in society, from racism and sexism to global warming and a weak economy.” He warns that the United States is run by thousands of predominantly white Christian men who want to “colonize our mind” with Christianity’s core beliefs.

It is hard to take some of his criticisms seriously, but they deserve some response, if to merely remind others about the benefits they enjoy because of Christianity. Jerry Newcombe in a recent column provides a long list.

If you are educated, you should probably thank Christianity. “Education for the masses was a gift of Christianity to the world.” Education in America was established so that citizens could read the Bible for themselves and not be deluded. Nearly all of the colleges in America’s early history were founded on Christian principles.

If you have ever been in a hospital, you should also thank Christianity. “St. Basil of Caesarea, who lived in the fourth century, is credited with creating the first hospital in the history of the world.” And let’s not forget the advances in science. As Norm Geisler and I explain in our book on origin science, most of the pioneers in the field of science had a Christian worldview and others were theists who believed in God.

Most of the social movements in the 19th and 20th century sprung from Christian convictions. The abolition movement, child labor law movement, suffrage movement, and the civil rights movement are a few examples.

Christianity shouldn’t be blamed for what is bad in the world. We should be grateful for the many blessings it provides each of us.