Ask a household how much they give and you will get one number, usually the tithe or whatever the budget survived last month. Ask Ron Blue and you will get three. In Generous Living, Blue's exercise for unlocking a...
Ask a household how much they give and you will get one number, usually the tithe or whatever the budget survived last month. Ask Ron Blue and you will get three. In Generous Living, Blue's exercise for unlocking a family's generosity is to stop treating giving as a single figure and instead name three distinct numbers, because each one answers a different question and only one of them is about money.
The should number is your planned obligation: the giving you have already committed to and build the budget around, the way you build it around rent. For many families this is the tithe. It is the floor, paid first, not negotiated monthly.
The could number is what you could give if you made real but survivable adjustments: pausing a subscription tier of life, driving the car two more years, taking the cheaper holiday, delaying the kitchen upgrade. Nothing heroic, nothing that breaks the household. The could number measures flexibility.
The would number is the one that exposes everything. If fear left the room, if you truly believed the future was secure, what would you give? Not what you can justify. What you would love to do: the school fees for your late brother's daughter through graduation, the borehole, the church roof, the seed capital for the widows' cooperative. The would number measures desire, and the gap between could and would measures fear.
Most families have never seen their three numbers written side by side. The gap between should and could is usually comfort. The gap between could and would is usually fear. Naming which gap you are looking at changes what you do about it, because comfort and fear are treated with different medicine.
Here is how to run the exercise as a couple in 30 minutes. Single? Run it alone with a trusted friend as witness; the structure holds.
Sit down with two pens, two pieces of paper, and no phones. Agree three rules out loud before any numbers appear.
First, no accusations tonight. Whatever number your spouse writes is information, not a verdict on their character. Second, write before you talk. Numbers written independently are honest; numbers negotiated verbally are diplomacy. Third, the output of tonight is one decision, not a new budget. You are choosing a single gap to close this year, nothing more.
Each of you privately writes three annual figures:
` MY THREE GIVING NUMBERS (annual)
SHOULD (our planned obligation) ........ ___ COULD (possible with adjustments, and the 2 adjustments I'd make: 1. ____ 2. ____ ) ............. __ WOULD (if fear left the room, and what it would fund: _______ ) ...... ____ `
Two coaching notes while you write. For the could number, name the specific adjustments, because a could number with no adjustments attached is just a wish wearing a suit. For the would number, do not censor it down to something reasonable. The whole diagnostic value of the would number is its unreasonableness. Randy Alcorn's observation applies here: giving is the only antidote to materialism, and the would number is where you find out how much antidote you actually want.
Swap papers. Read silently first, then discuss with one question per number.
On the should numbers: do we agree on the floor, and is it actually being paid first, or is it paid from what survives? If your two should numbers differ, that is tonight's most important discovery, because it means the household has been running two unspoken giving policies at once.
On the could numbers: which of the four listed adjustments would we genuinely make? Circle any adjustment that appears on both papers. An adjustment both spouses wrote independently is as close to a pre-approved decision as married life offers.
On the would numbers: ask each other what the fear is, specifically. School fees risk? Job loss? Medical shock? Old age? Vague fear blocks giving forever; named fear can be sized, insured, or saved against. Often the exercise reveals that the fear blocking a 5 million shilling would number could be retired by a 2 million shilling emergency fund, which is a trade you can actually execute.
Now the decision. You will not jump from should to would in a year, and trying is how giving plans die. Instead pick one gap and close part of it.
If your giving has been erratic, the goal is to make the should number real: automated, paid first, twelve months without a miss. If the should number is already solid, move toward the could number by executing the circled adjustments and redirecting the exact amounts. If could is already your reality, take one measured step toward would: fund a named piece of it this year and retire the named fear with a plan.
Write the decision as one sentence, both sign it, and put the paper where the budget lives:
` This year we close the __ gap. We will give ___ by December, funded by ____. Signed: ___ ___ Date: ___ `
Diary a 30-minute review for the same week next year. The exercise repeats annually, and the numbers should chase each other upward over a decade: this year's could becoming next year's should, the would number pulling the whole convoy forward.
One warning before you file the paper, because a hard season will test this plan and you should decide the policy now, not inside the storm.
Blue tells the story in Generous Living of Ruby, a businesswoman whose company fell thirty-six months behind on its bills. Every sensible voice said stop giving until it stabilizes. Ruby did something better than either extreme: she shrank the amount and kept the rhythm, tithing at reduced scale every month through the entire recovery, so that when the business came back her generosity was still alive and simply grew back to size. The rule for your household is the same. When the hard season comes, the should number may shrink to something that would embarrass a proud person. Let it shrink. What never stops is the habit: same date, same act, smaller load. Shrink the gift, never the habit, and your giving plan will still exist on the far side of any season.
Put the 30-minute session on the calendar within the next seven days, copy the worksheet twice, and come out with three numbers each, one circled adjustment, and one signed sentence naming the gap you will close this year. The numbers do not need to be impressive. They need to be written, because a giving number that exists on paper is the only kind that ever grows.