This year at our church to celebrate Christmas, instead of doing fancy decorations and traditional garland we have been planning for quite a while now to do a “food drop” for the Auburn area. So if you were to walk around the church right now you will see boxes everywhere. A Christmas tree made out of boxes, presents made out of gigantic boxes, and the filled and returned boxes we started to give out this past Sunday. The way we have tried to communicate this on our own website is that we are never more like Jesus then when we serve others. And throughout the month of December, Cornerstone members and attenders (or anyone who wants to be a part giving back to our community) will be given the opportunity to serve others using a simple box. We are asking everyone to:
- Pick up a box and packing list from the Cornerstone lobby.
- Pack the box full of food for families in Lee County.
- Return the filled box to the church by January 1, 2012.
- Saturday, January 7, gather at Cornerstone and pack the SUV’s, minivans and pickup trucks with these boxes and head out to specific communities to pass out these boxes to families in our area. (We will work with the Food Bank of East Alabama to target the communities in the greatest need.)
This is an opportunity to make a tangible difference in someone’s life by offering basic necessities that many of us take for granted. We can make the New Year great for our community with our simple gift of a box of food, and we are trying to have over 1,000 boxes filled by January 1st. For more information you can also visit the Cornerstone Food Drop 2012 info page, or visit Lee’s blog post as well.
If you are reading this and saying to yourself, I don’t go to Cornerstone so that’s nice and all but who cares… well, you don’t have to, but you can still participate. If you are in the Auburn-Opelika area, just come by the church lobby and pick up a packing list and a box and return it before January 1st.
Either way, whether you participate or not, I hope you can make it a priority this Christmas to go beyond the normal gift giving and remember others who are not as fortunate. I love that about Cornerstone, and I love seeing the church be the church. We need to think, learn, study, and understand God’s word, but we also need to go… and do. How can we say we believe what the scriptures say unless we actually do what it says. I hate the commercialization that always goes along with this time of year, but I love this. Hope you will help make it a success as well.
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Now that the Christmas holiday is over and the gift giving has basically gone back to normal, I have a few observations. As simple as we try to make Christmas, it seems to get more complicated each year. To try and simplify things at our house this year we went back to the German tradition of opening all our gifts (which is basically one each) on Christmas Eve after we got home from our church service, then have a relaxing and calm Christmas Day.
Throughout the several weeks leading up to Christmas I started noticing a common and expected behavior repeated over several people and basically saying the same thing. When they were given a gift there was an expectation of something in return. This is not new of course. Many times when someone gives you something they expect something in return, or when you receive something, you feel obligated to return the gift with something of the same.
I am not sure where this “tradition” got its roots, perhaps it was just customary of the culture or something we have come to expect. Something with strings. If this is the government talking, yes, I would expect strings. Many times close friends or family put strings on things, but not always. To me, there is not much that follows the example Jesus gave us less than giving a gift with an expectation attached to it. God didn’t do this to us did He?
One of the most famous verses in scripture is John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son”. If we briefly break apart that sentence, we see that God did what he did out of “love”, and He “gave”. The word gave or give appears in scripture so much that you can’t even get out of Genesis without those two words being mentioned over 50 times. The example God gives us is to give out of love, and expect nothing in return.
So, if you received a gift from us this year, I do not want to receive an obligitory gift in return, and don’t expect one either. If you feel like giving someone something, great, and if someone wants to give you a gift out of love, accept it for what it is and don’t add the obligation or expectation of something in return. Personally I would rather receive nothing that a gift given in expectation rather than love.
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This is usually one of the busiest days for getting from place to place with family functions, but for us, it is normally a nice quiet day here at the house. Today was similar. I was able to take a nice bike ride and enjoy some quiet time here at our house. I do this every so often but for Christmas today I wanted to highlight some of the blogs I read that are based somewhat on or about our faith in Jesus. So are you on the list? If not, please let me know, I love to add new blogs to my feed reader and it might be I just haven’t come across your blog yet.
Some here is some Christmas link love for some of the blogs I read.
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Christmas is fast approaching and soon (for some) the gifts purchased up to this point will translate into a lousy January, but if you haven’t finished quite yet, please consider the 50,000 Shoes campaign. I wanted to give a quick update to my post back in November called Soles4Souls Blogging Challenge, 50,000 Pairs of Shoes in 50 Days. As b/ said in his post, there are so many worthy charities around this time of year, but one that is truly worthy is spending just $5 for 2 pairs of shoes for someone who doesn’t have any shoes.
I was listening to a song called “The Christian” this morning when I was getting ready for work, and it made me think, is how people see Christians, or perhaps how we see others who call themselves Christians? The third verse really stood out to me (in bold below) as I thought about the 50000 shoes campaign and how easy it should be for us bloggers to meet the goal put forth by Anne Jackson (they are even giving away really cool stuff like a Nintendo Wii and a MacBook).
What good does it do to just talk. I love when I find people who have taken their blogs or websites and have actually done something worth wild. Even if they don’t reach their goal it was great to see how many shoes have been donated from total strangers across the Internet. Consider these verses below. They may not have anything at all to do with shoes, but this (secular) song points out how we put ourselves first.
It’s a hell of a time to be thinking about heaven
Didn’t you forget the golden rule
You’ve been acting like Jesus owes you a favor
But he’s a little smart for you to foolYou complain how you forgets the gospel
You remind them seek and you shall find
Maybe youth will have a time for seeking
After they clean up what you left behindYou were right there when the plate was passed last Sunday
That’s the second time you’ve been to church all year
Could you really call yourself a Christian
If charity cost half as much as beer
You pray a little more as you grow older
You get religion as your hair turns gray
But you don’t need to worry about hereafter
Just worry what you’re going to do todayCause it’s a hell of a time to be thinking about heaven
Didn’t you forget the golden rule
You’ve been acting like Jesus owes you a favor
But he’s a little smart for you to fool
Yes my friend I think you’ve blown your cool—- The Christian, [Buffett]
After reading Tony Morgan’s post about 50,000 shoes called All Talk and No Action?, where he talked about the correlation between words and action, I was quite disgusted, or more like disappointed I guess. At that point, over 3500 blog posts had been written about the 50,000 shoes and only 1500 of those posts translated into the action of actually purchasing a pair of shoes. That means not only did not all the blog writers donate, but they also didn’t get any of their readers to donate either. We are talking $5 here, less than that cup of coffee at Starbucks or that 12-pack at the grocery store.
Just a quick look this morning found these blog posts from just the past few hours and days. Let’s be bloggers of action, not just words.
- 50,000 Shoes
- 50,000 Shoes In 50 Days
- Shoes From Tires?
- Help me buy 50,000 Shoes.
- Anne Jackson and 50,000 Shoes
- 50,000 Shoes
- 50,000 shoes in 50 days
- 50,000 shoes!
- 50,000 shoes
- 50,000 Shoes in 50 Days
- 50,000 Shoes Soles 4 Souls
- Final Shopping Days
My blog has approximately 100 subscribers. If each one of us donated $5 that would translate into 200 pairs of shoes. Deb and I are going to go ahead and make another Christmas donation and I would ask my readers if they were led to give to a worthy cause this Christmas check out 50,000 shoes. I know Anne Jackson personally (although briefly) and I know she has put a lot into achieving this goal. You can’t go wrong by giving someone a pair of shoes who doesn’t have any.
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Our church started a new series yesterday called Simple Christmas (see Advent and A Christmas thought) marking the beginning of the Advent season, and what started on Black Friday as the Christmas shopping season.
Today is Cyber Monday as it has been called, the day when online retailers do their big sales and discounts that the B&M stores did on Friday. One of the ways Deb and I are going to celebrate Christmas this year is In keeping with the series theme we started on Sunday we are going to make a few donations to Living Water. So, if you were expecting to get an actual physical Christmas present from us this year, this might be it. Our church already knows the impact a well can have (see Day 1 and Creative Chaos 14 // Allowing God to Work in Your Church), when our church raised over $30,000 to dig a well (and much more) for a sister plant church in Uganda. Anyone involved will tell you it was an incredible experience, and it doesn’t take much to make a difference.
This of course isn’t the only way to make Christmas simple again. The idea is to keep our focus on Jesus this Christmas and not the chaos and craziness that goes along with the Christmas shopping frenzy and that might be something totally different to your family than it is to my family. Since Deb and I are in a house of two (minus the dogs), we don’t normally go nuts for any holiday, but our focus is not always on Jesus either.
Merry Christmas everyone.
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This may sound like another semi-negative blog post on my part, but it is something that my wife and I deal with quite a bit and has really struck a nerve, so stay with me if you can.
When we look at what we have and what we decide to give up for various things, it is truly fascinating to see what it is we find worth to give to God. Scripture says we are to give God the first fruits, right? We are not supposed to give him what is left over, but the good stuff. Well, when we started getting involved with thrift stores about a year and a half ago, we found something we really weren’t expecting. A lot of real garbage.
If It is Garbage, Throw it Away
Do we stop and notice what we are donating. Do we think about it before hand. I am donating this so someone else less fortunate than me can have it at a good price. We take up collections of items to ship overseas once in a while for a good mission trip, are these materials you would want to send to them?
This sort of leads me off topic a bit for this conversation to a familiar site among churches, the church garage sale (or bizarre, or flea market). This is where we bring all our junk and try to sell it off to raise money for the church in some manner. I have never cared for the notion of bringing up our items that have no value or meaning to us to sell, but that is all for another article (there are good “church sales” too).
The point here is, when we give, and we know it is supposed to be for a mission, the church, or to further the kingdom in some manner, do we reflect on what it is we give? Does what we give reflect on what perception we give others about the church?
Goodwill, Salvation Army, Mission Thrift Type Stores
Some of you may know that my wife and I volunteer in a mission type thrift store each week. We have done this now for more than a year, going on 18 months, so we have had the privilege of seeing what all we bring into these store to donate, and we are amazed, daily. A huge amount of our time (and everyone else who works there) is spent on sorting through what is actual donated materials that can be cleaned up and sold, and pure garbage. I am not talking about something old that I personally wouldn’t buy, or a color I don’t like, I am talking about trash. The stuff the WM (Waste Management) picks up at your house once a week.
You know, stuff that is of absolutely NO value what-so-ever. Old prescription bottles, coloring books with all the pages already colored, Bible studies that are completely written in or half the pages torn out, old food, broken items of all kinds (as in smashed with no repair possible), and so on. These are things that no one would ever want to give to someone, let alone sell.
Throwing Away Garbage Costs Tons of Money
This is a serious matter for these stores. Just this year, one of the local Goodwill Store in Opelika closed their doors for good. They had been opened at that location for 22 years. They were receiving items they couldn’t sell (stated lack of donations) among other reasons, but their costs to stay opened were just too high.
What is amazing about the whole process is the thrift store is left with taking out the trash. This has become more and more expensive over time but has now reached critical proportions. My wife and I work with one single section of materials, and we personally throw away about 2,000 pounds of materials each week that are not able to be sold in any shape or form. A recent conversation with one of the employees about the cost of trash pickup was amazing. He explained that last year, the thrift store we work with was paying about $300 a month for the dumpster pickup in total. Dumpsters were picked up a few times a month. We are not talking about the small dumpster either, this is the full size 18-wheeler trailer size.
But, prices had been steadily rising. Now, as of this post, the thrift store is paying $450 PER PICK UP, which happens a few times A WEEK, and the cost seems to have no ceiling. Over the past year from what I can tell, the cost for trash pickup at this store has gone from $300 a month to more than $2000 a month.
What is amazing is that the amount of trash that is required to be thrown away keeps increasing as more people donate their pure garbage instead of salable items the store desperately needs. What is truly amazing about this is that people are donating things to these stores, and are COSTING the store money instead of increasing their revenue. This is taking away from their effectiveness as a mission or all the other great things that they can do with donated material revenue.
Please Continue to Donate to Thrift Stores
Please don’t get the wrong idea here. If people did not donate to the local thrift stores none of these missions would be able to continue. Goodwill and the Salvation Army do many things other than sales at their stores. Disaster relief, aid for the hungry, and a whole host of other things, so please continue to donate, but when you are filling that trash bag, think about whether the trash bag should go to the dump, or to the thrift store.
If you dispose of something that is actual garbage, you will be saving the store money. If you are one of those pack rats that just can’t stand to throw something away, no matter what it is, just think about the cost incurred by the thrift stores to dispose of your trash.
What are your thoughts? Do you donate to the local thrift stores? Just leave a comment below, I always enjoy hearing what the readers have to say.
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This Wednesday our weekly Bible study at church was replaced by a gift wrapping party for Operation Christmas Child from Samaritan’s Purse. We enjoyed our weekly pot-luck dinner and then it was on to the wrapping and filling of the shoe boxes.
The church filled 50 boxes last year and the goal was 100 for this year. We did it!! This program is such a blessing to both those children who receive the boxes and especially to those filling them. May God place these boxes in the hands of those who need them the most.
