A legend of sorts has built up around George Müller and his faith-alone fundraising. Time has a way of taking the edges off of stories, and reducing complex people to simple ones. People quote the stories of God providing for his ministry solely through his faith alone approach. They tell how he never talked about his ministry; how he only closed himself in his room and asked God to provide.

Yet they create the doctrine of “faith-alone” fundraising around a story that is at best only half-truth. The stories that they base these claims on are not the full picture. It’s like seeing half of a painting and filling in the rest yourself. 

Here are some facts about George Müller’s “faith-alone” ministry that we know from his own writings and speaking:

Müller told his “stories” in at least 42 countries around the world. 
He travelled the world telling the story of his orphanage and how God was providing through prayer-alone.

It was only after he began speaking about some needs met that the wave of interest started.
Muller did not begin receiving a great sum of money until he began discussing the fact that he has asked God for such.

He published in the paper the names of donors and the amounts they gave 
Hardly a “faith alone” strategy, Muller used a brilliant marketing strategy worthy of the best non-profit fundraisers today: he told people what others were giving, in order to encourage them to the same level of giving.

He had offering baskets near the front of the orphanage where he invited people to come and pray.
While he was certainly a man of prayer, he was also a man of opportunity. Muller made sure the people had an avenue and ability to make donations, including having visible spaces at his orphanage to make a contribution. While not directly asking for money, it is certainly indirectly asking. 

In short, Müller did a lot of talking and promoting about his faith-alone process. The ludicrousness of building a “faith-alone” myth around this is easy to see. By publicly talking about only asking God and the subsequent provisions, he was violating his very premise!

I do not fault George Müller. He is not the one who promoted a faith-alone fundraising philosophy as the answer to funding your ministry. He was simply an honest, clever fundraiser who knew what to say to engage people with his righteous cause. How powerful to tell stories of how God answered prayers! It is those that followed him, those who sought to learn from him that have promoted the myth.

The danger is for those pupils that really believe the myth; that really believe that they are not to open their mouths and seek provision from God’s servants. In following this philosophy, they are self-defeating and possibly causing God to withhold the blessings He has for them. 

If you think I am being to harsh, here is a quote from D.L. Moody on George Müller: “His emphasis on making no appeals was itself an appeal”. Moody recognized what we all need to recognize as well: that Muller was a great man, with great fundraising methods, who has been largely romanticized in our modern day. The faith-alone myth is built around a falsity, and the more fundraisers that know it, the better for them, and the better for the gospel.

Speaking of D. L. Moody, my next post will bring us in to a discussion of his method of fundraising, that of direct appeal.

For more context on the biblical guidance for fundraising, see the first installment of this fundraising series of blog posts.

For more information on the topic of Müller and Moody, see “More Than Money More Than Faith” by Paul Johnson.