Generous helping

Charity | Unlikely bestseller plants seeds of generosity worldwide | Warren Cole Smith, Rusty Leonard

Brian Kluth did not intend to write a best-selling book or build a ministry empire. In fact, his life work is all about combating the materialism that often produces a "bigger is better" mentality. "I want to help lead a generosity movement around the world," he says. "I hope to counter the secular materialism of our day, on the one hand, and to counter the prosperity gospel on the other."

One of his first efforts was the creation of a little book called 40 Day Spiritual Journey to a More Generous Life. Kluth was pastor of the First Evangelical Free Church in Colorado Springs, Colo., when, 11 years ago, a wealthy man he knew asked him to compile and organize a list of all the verses in the Bible that related to giving. "I knew that people like Larry Burkett had done this sort of thing, but I went through the exercise myself," Kluth says. "I came up with 600 verses that I organized around 40 key principles."