Kingdom Investments

Perimeter Church is committed to making and deploying mature and equipped followers of Christ deployed for the sake of family, community and global transformation.

Deployment involves serving people in need and partnering with other organizations dedicated to ministries of mercy and justice.

Today, the Perimeter family is serving people in need with both word and deed through twenty-five local ministry partnerships, as well as with indigenous churches and partners in twelve regions of the world.

Kingdom Investments, a ministry of Perimeter, was created to help strengthen and grow these relationships. It receives donations from the Perimeter family through the Pressing Onward Campaign and turns them into grants which are then awarded to the respective ministry partners. It simplifies your giving experience and multiplies the impact of your gift.

I sat down recently with Jon Cleveland, Director of Development of Kingdom Investments, to learn more about how the organization works.

Greg: Please tell me about the history of Kingdom Investments.

Jon: When Perimeter Church launched Next Generation Now on 2002 to add the hand of the mercy and justice ministries, we created a new division called Extension Ministries. That includes outreach and ministries of mercy and justice. Our goal was to add a focus of the church’s energies outwardly and into the community. Our research led us to conclude that the most effective means of reaching people in need was to build strategic bridges with other faith-based non-profit organizations. These resulting “partnerships” remain critical to Perimeter’s mission of deploying our people for the sake of family, community and global transformation.

I was asked to take the ministry role of Director of Development to help raise support for these ministries and ministry partners. This led to the creation of Kingdom Investments our mutual fund-like entity that on the one hand receives donations, and on the other hand, makes grants to our ministry partners in the community to help fund their work.

Greg: How does the grant process work?

Jon: A six-person lay ministry team meets at least once a month to review and act upon the grant applications we receive; our internal ministries bring applications to us on behalf of their respective ministry partners. One of the great things about Kingdom Investments is we have the flexibility to look at new initiatives that align with the vision of the church, and provide start up capital to those new initiatives. Our grants carry an expectation if not a directive, that the amount of the grant be matched at least dollar for dollar. In other words, the ministry partner would raise from other donors funds to match the grant given by Kingdom Investments. In just the last ten months we have made close to $900,000 in grants. Considering the matching gifts, that’s 1.8 million dollars that have been put to use in God’s Kingdom.

There are three key aspects about Kingdom Investments that are important for the Perimeter family to know. One, Kingdom Investments is like a mutual fund that helps donors SIMPLIFY charitable giving to our mercy and justice ministries and partners. Donors can designate their gifts any one of three ways: to a specific ministry or, to a geographical area of ministry or, you can allow the ministry team decide where to grant the money.

Two, matching grants MULTIPLY donor gifts often several fold. Third, TRUST is a major consideration in our giving decisions. Kingdom Investment grant recipients are select ministries and partners that are critical to Perimeter’s mission. Donations to Kingdom Investments and the full grant process of awarding and funding grants are under the full authority of Perimeter Church. There are no fees or costs deducted from dollars donated to Kingdom Investment.

Greg: Please give a few examples of ministries to which you have awarded grants.

Jon: Our first grant was to Street GRACE, the organization combating the sexual exploitation of children, and we made a grant to a church in Cairo, Egypt that wanted to host a Christian festival. Most recently, we made a grant to enable the startup of a PCA Student Ministry at the Atlanta University Center. Our vision is to help start, fuel and sustain ministries that are critical to Perimeter’s ministry.

Greg: Any success stories yet?

Jon: The $20,000 to our indigenous church partner in Cairo allowed our Global Outreach team to raise an additional $120,000 in matching funds from churches throughout the U.S. The festival was held; 14,000 people attended and the event was televised in over a half-million homes in Egypt. Because of that one event, thousands of people have learned about the Christian faith. There were over 1,400 professions of faith in Christ! That’s a huge Kingdom impact!

Also, God blessed a grant we made to the Salvation Army of Gwinnett County that provided for homeless shelters where once there were none. We have helped plant churches in greater Atlanta, Boston, and Miami. We gave a grant to a halfway house in Poland that had no heat; now they do. God has blessed us in that he has brought many others to match our initial grants and therefore rapidly and significantly multiply the money we’ve given away. We are very excited about how He is using us.

Greg: It must be so rewarding to your donors to see how their money is being used in such profound ways.

Jon: It is, especially for the highly successful but extremely busy donor. We have a number of donors who have a heart for ministry but do not have the time to do some of the investigation and research work themselves. For those people, their gift is the ability to give. To give is itself an act of service. We enable busy, successful people to make a difference in a way that is comfortable and convenient for them, and where necessary, confidential, too.

Greg: I’m thinking of the great stories in the Bible about serving and helping others in the way that Jesus did, but I can’t think of a single story about giving money. Can you?

Jon: I love 2 Corinthians 8 where Paul is talking about giving and the generosity of the Macedonians who gave well beyond their ability. Paul suggested that perhaps they shouldn’t give so much, that they should keep something for their own support. And the Macedonians responded, “Don’t rob us of our blessing.”

Greg: We really can find joy in giving, can’t we?

Jon: The true joy of generosity is knowing that you are blessing somebody, often in ways that you can’t even imagine. When you make sacrifices for someone else and you do it with the right heart, not for recognition or praise, you begin to understand how God blesses us so that we may bless others. When you share the fruit, you bring glory to God. The apostle Paul tells us in 2 Corinthian 9:11, “Yes, you will be enriched in every way so that you can always be generous. And when we take your gifts to those who need them, they will thank God.”