John Davenport never expected to find himself alone on a rooftop in Haiti before the sun even thought about rising. Truth be told, he never expected to find himself in Haiti at all. Yet that’s exactly where he was – alone with his Bible and his prayers looking for the Lord to meet him at 4:00 a.m.
“What is it that I can possibly give to these folks?” John asked.
The answer wasn’t what he expected.
“Your role is to be the answer to their prayers,” he felt the Lord say. “You’re going to make enough to take care of yourself and those you serve. That’s how you’re going to help.”
Raised by entrepreneurial parents, John had grown up watching his father weave faith and generosity into his business on a regular basis. “My dad used his business to make an impact,” John recalls. “For him, ministry was part of his work. I didn’t realize at the time just how much it was shaping me to watch how he carried himself.”
When John and his wife, Nia, married, they followed in their parents’ footsteps as far as generosity was concerned. “Growing up, my parents showed me generosity through hospitality,” Nia explains. “John’s parents really discipled me in giving. They both set the example in making generosity a priority.”
Following his father’s path as an entrepreneur, John eventually founded John Davenport Engineering, a leading design, engineering, and consulting firm in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. At the time of his trip to Haiti, John had only just launched his business as an answer to his own prayers. After being laid off from his job at the height of an economic crisis, John hadn’t known then what starting his own business would mean in the years to come.
“All I wanted was a job,” he recalls of that season. “God’s vision was a business.”
Unsure of how to provide for Nia and their growing family, John made the decision to simply show up. At networking events, at business lunches, at faith-based gatherings for young professionals – John showed up anywhere and everywhere he could possibly go to find a way to get back to work.
And God showed up to meet him, too.
“I remember distinctly looking at the first contract we got and thinking it would be enough for now, but what was next?” John remembers. “That’s when the Lord would remind me, ‘You have enough for today. Don’t worry about the rest.’”
So, the Davenports responded to God’s faithfulness in their lives by being faithful to his call to give. “We were committed to giving,” Nia explains. “And in big and small ways, we watched God pour out blessings that we didn’t have room enough to receive. It was almost like he was saying, ‘Watch my faithfulness at work.’”
Now, the Davenports give through a Giving Fund at NCF. “Before working with NCF, we were giving but without much of a system to organize it,” Nia says. “Our Giving Fund has really helped us have a way to put aside money we want to give and direct those funds the way the Lord is leading.”
“NCF has helped us have the ability to put it all together in a place where we have options and opportunities to help us do the work God has called us to do,” John echoes.
But that first year in business, they were still figuring it out. John made more than he’d made in the job he’d lost the year before, and that provision led the Davenports to prayerfully ask one big question:
How can we worship through giving?
When they asked, God answered. At a local networking event, John met Pastor Augustine, a man serving in Haiti with a big vision to reach more people. “I want to start a radio station,” Augustine told him, “because where I can’t go, I know my voice can go and bring the gospel there.”
As John heard the pastor’s vision, he also heard the Lord’s leading. “I felt like the Lord said to me, ‘You can help him.’” He set to work answering that call, gathering others to help fund a transmitter to set up the station in Haiti. Later, when Pastor Augustine invited John to Haiti, he and Nia knew there was more to their calling.
“I prayed about it,” Nia remembers, “but the only answer was ‘yes.’”
That’s how John found himself on that rooftop in Haiti some months later. There in the early hours of the morning, the heat of Haitian air laying thick as he prayed for God’s leading in his life, that answer became a bigger and bolder, “Yes.”
“He came home spiritually energized,” Nia recalls. “It was clear that the company was going to be a vessel to launch, to bless, and to fund mission work all around the world.”
From that day forward, that’s exactly what it’s been.
“God showed me that he wanted me to walk under the river principle,” John says. “With a river, if there’s the source, you’re going to have everything you need from it. God was saying, ‘Trust me, and let that water flow.’”
When God spoke that over their lives, what else could the Davenports do but listen? “It wasn’t an amount or a percentage to give,” John said. “It was more of a question of, ‘Is your heart open to give to the kingdom whatever God asks?’”
Their “yes” to God’s leading has made an impact greater than the two could’ve imagined. Locally and globally, the Davenports have seen God faithfully provide for them so they can continue to let their generosity flow to others. From helping build a children’s school in India, to funding a medical center in Uganda, to incorporating local service and missions as a value of their own company and family, they’ve made worship through giving their legacy.
“There’s a future that is only possible because of the miracle of generosity,” Nia says. “And we get to be a part of all the Lord is doing to make that future possible for others, simply because we said yes.”
Their journey hasn’t been without its challenges. Some of their hardest moments came just after God’s call to give – the loss of John’s sister, Nia’s parents, and John’s parents, and an unexpected Lyme Disease diagnosis that left Nia struggling to find the right treatment. It would’ve been understandable if, amidst those challenges, they’d chosen to hold more tightly to what they had.
But that’s not how the Davenports saw it. “The Lord allowed our company to prosper in our darkest season,” John says confidently, “and we want to use that growth as a weapon against the darkness in the world.”
And that’s how the Lord has used the couple’s faithful generosity: as a light for his glory in this world.
One day at a time,
one prayer at a time,
one yes at a time,
one generous gift at a time.
The Lord isn’t just calling the Davenports to give; he’s providing for them as they do. He’s fulfilling that promise he made to John on that rooftop in Haiti years ago. “If I’m going to live by the river principle, I have to trust that the water’s going to be there,” John says. “I have to believe the same God who told us to give will provide for us to do all that and more.”
Photos: The Davenport family and Gospel Patrons
Video: Gospel Patrons
