Kevin White: Audacious Generosity

Transcript

[0:00:33] DA: Given the choice, everyone of us wants to be more generous, but fear holds us back. Kevin White’s new book, Audacious Generosity, shows you how to exchange any sense of pressure and regret about giving for genuine confidence and satisfaction. Gone are the days where you feel pressured to be the giver. Instead, audacious generosity will empower you to give it limitlessly. In the book, Kevin speaks about God being fueled by courage, characterized by freedom, and overflowing with audacious generosity. As the courage and freedom combine in your life, you’ll experience, receive, and give more than you ever thought possible. Hey listeners, my name is Drew Applebaum and I’m excited to be here today with Kevin White, author of Audacious Generosity. Kevin, thank you for joining us, welcome to the Author Hour Podcast.

[0:01:18] Kevin White: Drew, the pleasure is all mine, thank you so much for having me on the show.

[0:01:23] DA: No problem, really happy you’re here, can we kick this off, can you give us a little run down of your background?

[0:01:29] Kevin White: Sure, I was born in western North Carolina, I grew up in a very poor dysfunctional broken family, it was a Christian family, my parents ended up divorcing whenever I was 12. I did come to know Christ whenever I was 10 and that was a saving refuge and a lot of turbulent times in my childhood and then I committed my life to the full-time ministry, the call of God, whenever I was 17. I had never traveled outside of North and South Carolina until I went to college and my parents never held a passport but, by the grace of God, I’ve now flown over million miles. I’ve been to India 51 times, I’ve been to 27 different countries, I’ve taken a thousand people over to India with me on short term mission trips there. I’m sure we’ll get into it during the show but God really used India in a pivotal moment in my life whenever I was 30, to really change my life. I would go over there on a mission trip, hoping that maybe we can do some good for others, but I really am indebted big time to the country of India because God really use India to change my life. I’m married, 33 years, we just celebrated our 33 anniversary last Saturday and we have three adult children, a son and two daughters and we welcomed our very first granddaughter to our family in January so 2020. I know has been rough for a lot of people but I have a granddaughter, I have a brand new book, and I’m very grateful that so far, our family is healthy and safe and really haven’t been faced with a lot of the suffering that I know a lot of families have during 2020. That’s Kevin White, that’s who I am.

[0:03:14] DA: Well, congratulations on that.

[0:03:17] Kevin White: Yeah, thank you.

[0:03:18] DA: Now, why was now the time to write this book?

[0:03:22] Kevin White: Well, I really felt personally that it was an assignment from God. I have been four to five months a year in India for the last eight years. I really felt, before I even had COVID-19 in my vocabulary, that God was just really impressing upon me to write in the first quarter of 2020. I came back from India on January the 8th, I went into a workshop with a communications coach, January the 27th and 28th, right after our granddaughter was born and outlined the book and began to write. The more things shut down, the more I squirreled in to really pound out the book. I was done by May. Normally I’m in India in April, and then I’m in India in June and July but obviously, because of the pandemic, all international travel has been suspended. It just really focused me on a level that I have not had the opportunity over the last eight years to do so. It was by assignment, it was also just – it was time to really flesh out this message as I share in the book, I really feel like God has been preparing me for two decades over the last 20 years for the things that I wrote about in the book. Just the value, you know, the book title, Audacious Generosity, just the value of generosity and how it really does open doors for ministry and the purposes of God in our lives. I’m grateful that I will very soon be a published author and feel that that is a gift from God, it’s a high honor and I’m grateful to share the book with the world.

[0:05:03] DA: You know, I think a lot of people wanted this time to conquer some long-term goals and not many people did. Major kudos for actually sitting down and really finishing this book and, speaking of the book, who is this book for?

[0:05:17] Kevin White: The book is really for anyone. My context is Christian so it’s going to probably resonate quickest with people that would consider themselves a part of the Christian community, but it was not written for it to be exclusive to make anyone of any particular religion feel intimidated or lost as they’re reading because obviously, there’s a lot of kindness that can be seen, no matter of a person’s religion. The quick answer is going to be that I really accept that the Christian community’s going to feel very comfortable with the book, but it has been written with sensitivity so that anyone that is really looking for meaning and satisfaction in life is going to resonate with the message of Audacious Generosity.

[0:06:10] DA: Let’s start with a real easy ask. Can you just define audacious generosity for us?

[0:06:16] Kevin White: Sure, Audacious is a willingness to take risk and generosity is an action of being kind and plentiful. When you put the two together, it really is being generous on a level of willingness to take risk. Really, the book is in three sections, setting God free, setting yourself free, and setting others free. Audacious is really that form of generosity where you let go of your own personal needs in order to fulfill the needs in the lives of other people. There is risk involved in that because what if they abuse your generosity? Or what if you have to go without something in order for them to have their needs met? It is, in my perspective, the best description of what we see demonstrated in John 3:16, for God so loved that he gave. That gift of his son is available to everyone whether they accept it or whether they reject it, he gave and, in my perspective, that’s audacious generosity. That’s who I follow as a Christian and so that is what we can and should be expecting to happen through us as God continues to give with audacious generosity through us.

[0:07:50] DA: Now, what is audacious generosity not?

[0:07:55] Kevin White: It’s not bossing God around, it’s not entitlement to get God to do things for us as far as material blessings, it’s not for ulterior motives of you know, I’m going to give to really meet someone’s needs and then God’s just going to give me jet planes and BMW’s and all those things. It really is being pure hearted and giving without strings attached.

[0:08:28] DA: Why do you think people avoid the subject of giving?

[0:08:32] Kevin White: Well, from my own personal experience, I really believe, most of us avoid the subject of giving because we’ve been made to feel like we are the giver and that giving depends upon what’s in my bank account, giving depends upon what’s in my hands and when you really dissect generosity down, we love to see people give things away. We watch Ellen DeGeneres’s night of giving and we love Oprah’s giving shows and probably most Americans and all of us would remember Tie Pennington say, "Move that bus,” and to see this very deserving family blessed with a completely makeover of their home. The problem is when we start feeling like we’re being asked to give of our resources and, you know, the pressure to just become the giver really scares us and it can even offend us to a place where we just avoid it. We don’t want people to talk to us about our giving, to ask us to give out of our resources, you know? An open guitar case on the subway while someone is providing a very world-renowned talent is not offensive. Where we are given an opportunity to express our decision is not a big deal. It’s when we start getting, whether it’s the church or whether it’s charity or whether it’s a charitable campaign in our company, we don’t like being pressured to give. One of the primary things that I make clear in audacious generosity is that God is the giver, according to the bible, he owns all and he has come forth, demonstrating audacious generosity to us, John 3:16 again, for God so loved that he gave. When we understand that he is the giver, it takes the pressure off of us. When we understand that giving doesn’t depend upon what’s in my hands, or in my bank account, but it depends upon him, it again takes the pressure off of us. We avoid it until we understand that fundamental truth that God is the giver, and that giving depends upon what he puts into our hands, not in what we can produce.

[0:10:52] DA: Now, you mentioned some interesting research in the book that shows younger generations consider themselves more generous than previous generations but they actually give substantially less. Can you tell us about that?

[0:11:05] Kevin White: Yeah. Drew, you’ve done a good bit of homework. I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to prepare for this interview. Thank you for reading Audacious Generosity. Yes, in the third section, one of the last chapters, I really lay out my own research of what I did to look through and I wanted current statistics, I didn’t want something that was 15 or 20 years old, I wanted something. Research is showing, that millennials are very quick to really feel satisfied about their level of generosity but they’re giving substantially less than baby boomers did. Baby boomers, it’s sort of ironic, felt as if they could do more in the area of generosity that they weren’t doing enough but yet, they were giving substantially more than current generations. It’s just interesting how the attitude has come to where younger generations feel very good about their level of generosity but, statistics show, they’re actually giving less. They’re really not as generous as their parents or their grandparents were whenever it comes to generosity.

[0:12:18] DA: Now, there’s an incredibly uplifting story in the beginning of the book, I’d love for you to tell us. Can you talk about how on the early days, you were struggling to find food for your family and then suddenly, you had more food than you knew what to do with?

[0:12:32] Kevin White: Yeah, it’s really that moment when I began to understand that God was capable of doing through us way more than we could do on our own. Put it in the context of being in full-time ministry as a pastor, really seeking to be a part of the mission of God, and we had our young children, all three and a foster son at that time, six of us living in Carry, North Carolina which is a very affluent, highly educated area with pretty high cost of living. This was 20 years ago and at that time, we had a mortgage, we had a car payment, we had the American dream if you will. I was serving in ministry where the counseling ministry to pastors and cemented our church were helping to underwrite the book of our support, and one of those men left the church and that month, that giving through that particular group of men stopped and we all of a sudden, found ourselves living on less than $500 a month. Our mortgage payment was over a thousand a month so you can see, very quickly, the dilemma. Our car payment was nearly $500 a month and groceries, you know, would quickly be several hundred dollars a month. Here we are, we have less than 500 and so it didn’t take very long until there wasn’t food in the cabinets, in the refrigerator was empty. I did what anyone would do, I started looking for work, I certainly was praying, and I just began to experience something with God that I had never really experienced before and that was – I would have time in the word, reading the bible, I would pray, and I would have so much peace with God, and then I would go to what my human logic would say I needed to be doing, and I would start looking for work. I could just really have the strong sense of the peace of God just leaving and I kept looking for work, and I’d go back to more time and prayer, just really seeking God’s face and his will for us in that moment, you know, the scarcity of money was becoming more and more a reality. As I was in the word, the bible story of the feeding of the multitude, really was a predominant story in front of me and I just began the sense, God, speaking to my spirit, “You can feed your family but only I can feed the multitude.” I give him my life to full-time ministry and so I was really sensitive to that and I just all of a sudden came to a prayer I’d never prayed before in my life. It was, “Father, give us food that others might eat,” and that was really one of the first tender moments of audacious generosity in my life. Because here is my family of six at that moment, needing food, and yet, I am being called by my God to forego my needs in trusting him that he has covered my needs and has promised that we are secure and he will take care of us. But to let that go and to take that risk, audacious, take that risk of actually praying, “Give us food that others might eat.” My heart was just breaking in that moment because we were without food, but yet we knew the comfort of God. What about all those that had no food and they didn’t know that they could put their hope in God as an ever present help in time of need? I began genuinely praying, “Father, give us food that others might eat,” and I remember going to Kroger in our area, a big supermarket chain, and I had about $4 in my pocket and I was looking for some hotdogs or something that we could eat that day, and I’d picked up a few things, and I was going up to self-drink isle. And I noticed the Kroger employee coming toward me. I had no prior fault but all of a sudden I found myself in what I would describe as a divine appointment and I just said, “Excuse me, do you work here?” And she identified herself as the manager of the deli and I said, “What do you do with your expired product?” I had no business plan in mind ask her this. It just really came as a spontaneous conversation that lasted less than one minute. She said, “We throw it away,” and I said, “Would you be open to a ministry come in and taking that to families in need?” She said, “Come back tomorrow. I will ask the store manager.” I said, “Thank you and I will see you in the morning,” and I left. I didn’t think a whole lot about it, went back the next day. She said, “Take it,” and pointed to three buggy fulls, grocery cart fulls, of rotisserie chickens, pizza, pasta, cakes, breads, everything that the deli and bakery sold, and I was blown away. I was driving a small Toyota sedan I said, “How do I take it?” And she said, “I have cleared it with the manager, just roll it right out the front door of the store and take it to families in need.” It barely left me enough room to drive home. It was stacked all the way of the backseat, the trunk, the passenger seat stack full. I grabbed some bags as I was loading all of this up, and I went back to the house and I remember the kids coming and running around the car just rejoicing that there was all of these food and cakes and different things there. Rotisserie chicken, and I was having to assure my wife Shelly that I hadn’t just robbed a Kroger. We put as fast as we could the refrigerated items into the refrigerator and the different items into our shelf, and it happened again the next day and then the next day and we soon began to realize while this was expired, it was perfectly edible. There was nothing wrong with eating it but it wasn’t going to last forever and it needed to be given away very quickly. Within a few days, we began to find the needy areas in our community, and we would literally put rotisserie chicken in a bag, and some side items, and some bread, and a cake on top, and fill up a standard brown bag of groceries, and we would start going house to house and just tapping on the door, greeting them and say, “Could you be blessed with a free bag of groceries?” And they would say yes, and we would say, “Here, please receive this with love from Jesus.” And we would turn around and walk off and the next day, it would happen again. So we’d go to more doors and then we started going back to the same doors that we had went to the week earlier and two weeks earlier and it just, over the next year, we literally went from a family needing food to, one year later, sharing food with over 500 families a month with the help of 25 volunteer families. Needless to say, our family of six never missed a meal. It was really a modern day miracle like what we read in John 6 of the feeding of the multitude. Where this $4 going into Kroger, this very tiny amount that I could produce, was trusted to God and a miracle happened that is still going on. You could Google withlovefromjesus.org, it is still happening in Raleigh, North Carolina to this day. Millions of dollars in food, and clothing, and household items, cars, and galore, people are giving that have extra and companies are giving that have extra, and then families in need with high need populations come in, and it is all free With Love from Jesus. It is a great outreach of the gospel to these families.

[0:20:18] DA: It is such an amazing story just from one small connection how it all started. Now, you talk in the book a lot about living recklessly for God. Can you explain this?

[0:20:31] Kevin White: Yeah, I have already described some of it and even the response of our family needing food and needing to give ear to the voice of God in that moment and go against logic. Logic says, “Go flip burgers, do janitorial work, whatever you have to do go and do it. You need to provide for your family,” and that is absolutely true, but for the Christ follower, we have been given the Spirit of God through the Holy Spirit and he speaks to us. We should follow his guidance. We should be sensitive to what he wants to say in prayer. Often it goes against human logic but it is always for blessing. It is not to bring harm. You know, we have all been exposed to people who jumped off bridges and they were told by God to jump off bridges, or they hurt people, and that is not biblical. You are not going to find that aligned with the word of God, but to say that we shouldn’t be listening to the voice of God because of some of the bad examples would be a major disappointment. We should get beyond those bad examples and really understand that there are way more good examples of blessings that come as a result of listening to God but it is going to feel absolutely reckless at times. Reckless is a word that basically says in consideration to yourself in order to have a blessing to others. Really, letting go of the fear of racism is very reckless. It is just living with an inconsideration of yourself, trusting your needs over to God so that you can be a blessing to others. God told Abraham in the old testament, “I will bless you and I will make you a blessing.” We all want the blessings of God but allowing God to then make us a blessing is going to be very reckless and I say in the book, going back to that feeding of the multitude, feeding my family is safe, but being a part of a miracle, that’s messy. That’s reckless. That is an adventure that really takes courage and so I have dedicated two whole chapters to courage because it takes that. And the thing I really – in writing the book, it really began to show forth in my understanding that I had not really paid attention to before, nowhere in the Bible are we ever instructed to ask God for courage. Everywhere, and I list a big list of scriptures for people in the book, to just go check it out for themselves, we are told over and over and over to take courage. We don’t even have to ask for it, but the point is it is going to take a lifetime of courage to live reckless for God. To really go against the grain of logic, human logic, and to go to the higher ways, the Bible says that God’s ways are higher than our ways, it is going to seem reckless at times.

[0:23:38] DA: Now can you tell us about your time in India, how did you end up there and what does your work there look like?

[0:23:45] Kevin White: Yeah, so I was in a place of transition in 1998 and all of a sudden I had an opportunity to go over to India with one of the men in our church. Until that moment I never had a passport, I never travelled outside of the USA, and so it was a major trip for me to go 8,000 miles away over to India and it was – as I shared earlier, it was a really a life changing experience. I will always be indebted to the people of India for how God used this country to change my life. Because it was really in that trip to India that I saw the value of God’s presence in a way that I had not seen in the US and that I had not personally practiced in my own life, even as a minister of the gospel. On that plane ride back, I remember drawing out two crosses and on one I just wrote things that I have been pursuing, success and influence and all of the good things, even worthy things for the Lord, but on the second cross, I just wrote across it, “The presence of God.” It was really that moment in my life that where I just determined that I was going to spend the rest of my life pursuing His presence and it’s been in that, and I hear about this in the book about asking God for more and realizing that God’s more is always going to be more of Himself. It is not about asking Him for more followers on social media, and more cars, and more houses for me, unless I am asking for those things for Him, then I am really going to be disappointed. But just pursuing His presence and that has been a major turning point in my life and it has been in His presence that I have seen all of these miracles happen. I prayed the prayer on that first trip that I look back. It was a very monumental prayer. I prayed, “God, let me bring all three of my kids to see your work here in India,” because I have seen orphans my kids age without a pair of sandals, without a toothbrush, but if they knew Jesus, and had the presence of God in their life, they exhibited true joy and true peace. I was coming back to my own children who I was seeking to raise without all of the pressure of materialism and everything, and they would be challenged to have that kind of joy and that kind of peace. I wanted them to see the difference in that. I went back three years later with our 11 year old son and some friends from church and then I went three years after that with our 11 year old daughter, and then the church that we were attending at the time had never taken a trip to India, and I’d been three times and so in the first 10 years, I only went three times and I talked to our church, Hope Community Church in Raleigh, North Carolina, about leading a team over to India. They said, “Let’s give it a try” eight people went. It was a life changing experience for them. The next year, another team formed, and two teams a year, or three teams a year, and it just began to blow up to the point that I had been at that time on staff with this church as one of the staff pastors. I really felt that God was making this hobby called Global Hope India. We had a bank account and a 5013(c) to help facilitate these projects over in India with some of these teams going and it was just a hobby but I really felt that God would call me to a full-time focus of that. That was 10 years ago and I left the church, started raising supporters of missionary and now have been 51 times. So in the last 10 years, I have gone 48 times to India and have taken a thousand people with me on short term mission trips, raise millions of dollars for His work there, and really been blessed to get to be a part of Global Hope India, and the work that we do there.

[0:27:47] DA: That’s amazing and there is so much more in the book I’d like to talk about but what is really great is that at the end of the book, you actually issue a simple call to action so you could start living with audacious generosity right away. Can you tell us about that and really how to get started?

[0:28:03] Kevin White: Yeah, I love how God led me to close out the book, because it is really something that’s practical on every level, for anyone, no matter of their economic status, their educational degrees, or their gender, their race, you name it. It can transcend for every single human on the planet and that was just in the book with three words, open your hands. If we are in a place where we can open up our hands to God, that is the call. The whole book is just preparing us to live open handedly. You know we can either close our fist and really focus our entire lives on ourselves, and, "Give me, give me, give me, what can I do for me, me, me?” But Jesus has promised that it’s more blessed to give than to receive. The whole grieving cry of audacious generosity is that we have not because we don’t ask God, and when we do ask God, we ask with ill motives that we can spend it on ourselves but if we will open up our hands for the great commission for the mission of God. And we will say, “Father, whatever you put into my hands I will use for your mission” there is no limit to what God can get to us if He can get it through us and so that doesn’t necessarily happen overnight. It took decades for me to come to a place of really understanding that but I really believe, as a result of reading Audacious Generosity, it can happen a lot faster for the readers to just come to place of surrender, of just opening up their hands, and committing before God whatever you put into my hands, I will use to fulfill the great commission. I will help – you know statistically right now seven billion people alive on planet earth, four billion have access to hear about Jesus, three billion in what is called the 1040 window, from Africa into Asia, have limited to no access to know about Jesus and one of those billion is India. For 20 years, I have been really staring at the beautiful people of India with a broken heart, that they would be able to hear the love of Jesus in their life. Yeah, I’ve come to this place of realizing God’s mission is Jesus and His strategy is audacious generosity, and that really comes down to three words, open your hands.

[0:30:33] DA: Wow. Kevin, writing a book especially like this one, which is going to help empower so many people is no small feat so congratulations.

[0:30:41] Kevin White: Thank you so much Drew.

[0:30:43] DA: And this has been a pleasure. I am so excited for people to check out this book. Everyone, the book is called Audacious Generosity, and you could find it on Amazon. Kevin, besides checking out the book, where can people find you?

[0:30:53] Kevin White: So I have a personal website, kevinwhite.us and that links you to all of the resources and podcasts, the charities that I have mentioned, especially Global Hope India, and a brand new project that has come as a result of the book called The Generosity Award. I have given away even an annual award of $25,000 to an unsung hero that’s getting the job done, demonstrating generosity, demonstrating a miraculous proportion, and demonstrating impact for the great commission, and that is also linked on that website, kevinwhite.us.

[0:31:32] DA: Amazing. Kevin, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

[0:31:34] Kevin White: Thank you Drew.

[0:31:36] DA: Thanks for joining us for this episode of Author Hour. You can get Kevin White’s new book, Audacious Generosity, on Amazon. Also, you can also find a transcript of this episode and all of our other episodes on our website at authorhour.co. For more Author Hour, subscribe to this podcast on your favorite subscription service. Thank you for joining us, we’ll see you next time. Same place, different author.