Do you think your church would go for something like this? I would be open to giving it a shot.I love it when people take the Bible seriously:
The challenge began in April. The Rev. Jeff Greenway used $67,000 loaned by some church families and distributed $50 to adults and $10 to children, challenging them to use their talents to turn the money into something larger.
The $117,500 ultimately collected was enough to repay the families who provided the startup money, while generating $50,500 more for charity. That amount is being divided and distributed to four causes to help people locally, regionally, nationally and internationally.
...
At the Reynoldsburg church in April, congregant Karen Howald sat and listened, and accepted the $50 inside an envelope.
“The thing that ran through my mind was, ‘The only thing I can do at my age is make a pie,’ ” the 81-year-old recalled this week.
So the pie lady, as she is known, got to work in her kitchen, making the crust by hand, as she always does, and baking 58 pies, which she sold for $10 each. She wound up donating $500, after she kept $80 for her expenses. Her blackberry pies were the most popular.
So many congregants came up with so many products that the church held a bazaar every Wednesday night.
There, services including financial consulting, golf caddying and calligraphy were up for sale. So were products such as homemade chicken pot pies, hand-knit baby hats and painted birdhouses.
A churchwide yard sale brought in thousands of dollars more, as church members sold clothes, toys and housewares, said Dave Stoffel, who organized it.
For Stoffel, who has belonged to the church for 12 years, the fun and rewarding part of the pastor’s challenge was watching people dream up ways to raise money and learning the congregation’s talents.
“It was so neat to see people proud of what they had made,” Stoffel said this week. “It really gave the congregation a chance to really be involved with each other.”
Friday, August 22, 2008
Collective Investment in the Kingdom
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1 comment:
They did this at a church I used to go to out here in Waco (I'm from ABQ but I'm at school at Baylor). They gave everyone just $1 on the way out of service in order to raise money. However, there were a few issues. First, shortly after the money was raised, the first major improvements seen were flat-screen TVs around the church, a second and third projector to flank the already ubiquitous projector screen, and several improvements to the church's weight training facility (I kid you not).
Second, this was an initiative started by a brand new pastor who replaced a twenty-five year incumbent. In his preaching about the "ingathering" as they called it, his emphasis seemed to be on helping the church function better. However, his soft view on Biblical authority allowed some command decisions that went unquestioned by the church's constituency. There were also some ripples in the church because it was a Baptist church and the decision had been made by the elders and pastor without any vote among the congregation (which is, I believe, required in BGCT churches when church monies are used outside of budget).
I personally did not take a dollar because I did not feel led to - it seemed to me much more like a pyramid scheme than a means of good stewardship. From my conversations with the college pastor, I seemed to be alone in my discomfort. I took no credence in his interpretation of the parable of the talents because he had already shown a careless disregard for Biblical authority by proof-texting nearly every sermon.
That's my take. The cheerful and willing giving of God's people ought not to be a game. Things like this can make it a game of shame and comparison.
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