Breaking up your unplowed ground: Stories of unconventional & innovative generosity

In Hosea 10:12, God calls us to “break up your unplowed ground”—to look beyond the areas we’ve already cultivated and explore new spaces where our resources can have impact:  

“Sow righteousness for yourselves, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until he comes and showers his righteousness on you.” (Hosea 10:12, NIV)

This verse serves as both an invitation and a challenge:

• Where have we yet to sow?
• What areas of our lives remain untouched by generosity?

Just as a farmer must intentionally break new soil to grow a fresh crop, we are invited to creatively invest our time, talents, and assets in ways we haven’t before. The process may require intention and effort, but it opens the door to greater abundance.

When we take the time to assess where God has positioned us and what he has entrusted to us, we discover opportunities to give that we may have previously overlooked.

It is all too easy to fall into the trap of viewing generosity as limited to cash giving. When we adopt this common perspective, we miss the opportunity to make a broader, lasting impact.

God has entrusted each of us with gifts beyond the cash we steward—our skills, professional expertise, networks, real estate, business stock, and even personal life experiences can be used to further his kingdom. Expanding our view of generosity allows us to steward everything he has given us for a greater purpose.

There are so many areas of your life that you can give from. God has handcrafted each of us individually, with our unique talents, passions, and vision. For every skill that you have, there is someone in need of it.

What parts of your life or resources have you yet to consider using for God’s kingdom?

To see what this can look like in practice, consider the stories of a few families and entrepreneurs who broke up their own “unplowed ground”—reimagining what they had to offer to further the kingdom of God.

“We wanted to give to The Signatry to make it official,” Brian Roland said of the moment his family donated part of their business to a donor advised fund (DAF)—”and essentially make God a shareholder in our business as we were taking those next steps of faith.”

Donating part of the business to a donor advised fund (DAF) gave the family’s giving a new kind of structure—and freedom. It let Brian and his brother support causes individually and at different levels than before, all with a layer of accountability that formalized what had started as a heart-level decision.

The result: the team’s focus shifted from acquiring more clients to sponsoring more children. The Roland family has now sponsored over 250 children in Senegal and Rwanda, and helped fund a school for the village they serve through African Oasis Foundation.

“Can I think about investing in what God is doing,” Brent Haverkamp asked, “in the same way I think about investing in something I want to do?” For Brent, the answer connected two things he’d never linked before: his passion for college ministry and his real estate portfolio.

Rather than selling two rental properties to fund a ministry need and cover the capital gains tax generated by the sale, Brent donated one—before the sale—to a donor advised fund (DAF) at The Signatry. “We only had to give one [building] instead of two in order to satisfy the amount we wanted to give,” he said.

That one gift now fuels ministries spreading the gospel on college campuses through The Salt Network, supporting church plants in college towns across the country.

Jason Roberts couldn’t raise the salaries of the essential workers that were getting priced out of his community at alarming rates. But as a development investor, he could build affordable housing units for school staff, police officers, nurses, and more to live in. At the intersection of his unique capabilities and the urgent needs of his community, he found purpose and a project that is bringing hope and lasting change to his neighbors

“I can’t solve their income problem,” Jason said. “But what can I do? Can I build them an amazing house, an amazing community, things that they would all want to live in?”

The result is Upward Communities—private, market-built neighborhoods offered to essential workers at attainable rates. “From a faith perspective, this will be our legacy, what we leave to our kids,” Jason said. What started as one entrepreneur’s response to a local housing crisis is now bringing hope and lasting change to communities in central Texas, south Florida, and west Tennessee.

Where might God be calling you to “break up unplowed ground” in your life, utilizing your existing resources and redirecting them towards lasting change? 

We’d be honored to walk alongside you as you think through what this might look like. Let’s start a conversation.