At church this morning we gave each person in attendance a $1 coin. We may be the first church in history to pass the offering basket and ask people to take money. The challenge was to see the $1 as God’s money, Kingdom money, and find a way to make a difference with it. While a dollar is not much, our hope was this would be a learning experience, challenging those in attendance (and you who are reading the blog). As a church, we felt that it was a $75 or so investment in living the Gospel and in the Kingdom of God. We also encouraged those attending to check this blog and share the story of how they used God’s dollar for His glory. Check back often to see what people have done.
Two dollars (we put ours together) didn’t seem like much to work with. After a lot of thought, brainstorming, searching the internet, etc. we finally came up with something that fit our budget.
We took our two Gold dollars and purchased some card stock. On it we printed little business sized cards something like this:
Have a great day!
…this is our simple way of saying that God loves you!
Let us know if we can be of more assistance.
GENESIS CHURCH…a place for new beginnings
Sundays 10:00 AM Eureka High School Theater
genesiseureka.com (636) 549-3189
Tomorrow (labor day) we are going to take our cards down to the local WalMart and exchange them for shopping carts after people unload their purchases into their cars. Then we can return the carts for them as an act of service.
The gold coins inspired us to contribute some additional monies. We purchased helium baloons that we will be able to hand out to children while we are returning shopping carts.
Thanks, Mike for challenging us to see money as a blessing from God, and us as His stewards.
Mission Money In Motion! Mike Buehrle gave me his dollar and asked that I add a dollar to it and either pass it on to someone in need or to someone who would add a dollar to it and pass it on to either someone in need or someone who would add a dollar to it and either pass it on to someone in need or to someone who would add a dollar to it and so on and so forth. As Mike Buehrle and I sat talking to Andy Hubbard today I felt he was the person I was suppose to share the money with. I explained Mike Buehrle’s idea and asked Andy if he would like to take responsibility of the money. Andy accepted the $2 and said he was going to add $20 to it and give it to Dr. Dana Abendschein, a man who attends the bible study he leads. Dr. Abendschein is the organizer of Story Link, a ministry that allows incarcerated women a chance to stay connected to thier children by reading a book to them via DVD. Knowing my involvement with and passion for Prision Ministries I can only thank God for the opportunity to watch His dollar land in such a place! This was awesome!
The concept of “$1 For The Kingdom” is challenging! So often I find myself thinking that “doing great things for God” requires the grandeous and forgetting that He calls me to live my ordinary day in extra-ordinary ways. I love Mike’s challenge because it requires me to look differently at my day and what I perceive to be “missional” or “living the gospel”. Sometimes it’s the simple things that make the greatest impact….like “$1 For The Kingdom”!! I found a great web-site that gives ideas on “living the ordinary for His glory”. I hope by sharing it – it will serve as an encouragement to spur you on to “living the gospel” in your common place day amongst common place people…..with one ordinary dollar.
http://www.servantevangelism.com
“ideas to change the world”
Have fun serving Him!
We were challenged by the idea of what difference we can make with one dollar. We went out to lunch after church on Sunday, and noticed that our waitress was working very hard, and looking pretty tired. We put our two dollars together, then added it to the tip we were already giving. Since we hadn’t spent much for lunch, it added up to a pretty sizable tip. It wasn’t a terribly creative idea, but hopefully seeing the extra tip gave her a little extra joy in her job, even if for just a little while! I will say it definitely made me think about where I put my “treasure” in my life. I will continue to actively look for ways to help others rather than waiting for an opportunity to fall in my lap.
Dawn and I served the community with our dollars, we actually had three dollars, as we had brought a visitor sun to church. Dawns mom from Archie mo, “Kansas city mo”. since you need $4.00 for a value meal it wasn’t enough to buy breakfast lol 🙂 .
So We visited Grants Farm on MON “labor day” with mom and we gave or dollars to families there that were feeding the goats which actually is a $1.00. We told them that our church give us the money for attending services sun morning, it is a act of generosity serving god from our church, what a better way to do so than feeding Gods creatures.
Like the Taylors, we pooled our $3 together and purchased new toothbrushes. Not for us…..to begin a new mission project for Genesis. Our church will be collecting items as requested by Eureka Fire Dept. The fire dept. will contact Mike immediately after a fire to deliver these goods to families who have just lost their belongings. Hopefully our church will be the first friendly faces to minister to these families in need in our community! Check out the members newsletter for a list of things to contribute to this effort.
First of all I’ve been in church all my life, and I don’t know about anyone else, but I can tell you it felt a little weird taking money out of the offering plate and I almost didn’t do it because of how “I” felt. But I did and I carried the coin around with me all week faithfully asking God to allow me to use it for his kingdom. Now in my mind I had already figured it out for God, how He would ordain that special moment where I could faithfully use the coin in some miraculous fashion to shelter all the people made homeless by the hurricane. It never happened. Instead on Friday I found myself in a somewhat embarrassing situation. I had went to our local snack shop to grab a hotdog for lunch, put all the trimmings on it, went to pay, but the Credit Card reader didn’t work and I had missed the sign on the way in. I had already fingered the hot dog and the guy behind the counter is looking at me like I’m trying to steal the cash register. Of course I had no cash … except the Gold dollar, and some change. All I wanted was out, I pulled out the coin paid the guy, mumbled something about getting it from church and I blew through the doors making my escape. As I walked back to my office, hot dog eaten, I was thinking about how I had probably blown God’s miraculous plans to save the homeless and how that was one wasted kingdom dollar … no blogging about this one. Then in that small still voice of His God said “I provide for your EVERY need, sometimes that’s change for a Hot Dog”.