THE GIFT - Score

I love it! All the ministries across the church - adult, children, student and college aged - are on the same page. We're all talking about our upcoming opportunity to expand our church and reach out to the community to impact more people (through buying the rest of a city block in the downtown area and adding a commons area and childrens space to our church). We all have differrent names for the series, but all pretty much land on answering and praying through the question "How is God calling me to use my time, talent and resources to affect eternity?"

In Oasis, I wanted to make this an extra special series - something different. Frankly, I'm kind of getting tired of the whole preach a message and walk through some discussion questions "in hope that they'll take what they've heard/talked about and apply it to their lives." It's not bad, we've got hundreds of students that have been impacted in that way. I just think sometimes students need a little extra jump start. So, here's the twist for this series. We've allocated to every breakout group $120 (a total of $1,440). As a group (they can split it by gender if they want), they have to figure out a way to bless others. The only stipulations are that they have to work on it during their breakout group time, it can't involve an event (we are in a six week event blackout so we everyone can concentrate on the campaign) and they can't use more than the money that's been allocated. They are however invited to use their time, talent and resources creatively. In fact, the last week, we will do a video extravaganza of 1-2 minutes summaries of each group and award trophies.

I had no idea had excited the leaders would be about this. They are totally stoked. They all want to bend the rules to make it the coolest thing ever, but I've been keeping them in line. We've got everything from fleece hats being made for babies after they leave the hospital to canvas paintings for nursing homes going on. Fun stuff.