As a church we believe that we exist to help people journey with God and that a key part of that journey is us joining God where he is at work in the world. We do this in all sorts of different ways, and if you were with us this Advent season you may have caught some of those stories as we lit our candles each week.
Another way we get to practice this is our annual Christmas Offering. It’s a chance for us to combine and leverage our resources to really do some incredible things.
This year we did something a little different and broke the offering into two parts. The first $100,000 we committed to fund first and chose three projects.
- We decided to partner with the Exodus Road to raise $40,000 to continue to fund rescue for boys and girls caught in slavery
both here in the US and around the world. - We set out to raise $40,000 to help pastor Mohammad Yamout fund the launch of two new lighthouses in the middle east. Lighthouses that meet practical needs, share the hope of the gospel and affirm the dignity of some of the millions of refugees currently displaced in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
- We ventured to raise $20,000 to create a missional expressions fund to help equip each of us to lean into our neighborhoods and look for creative ways to announce and demonstrate the kingdom of God built into the everyday rhythms of our life.
Because of you we are able to do all of it!
That is crazy. (But then, we serve a crazy big God who loves to surprise us so we should have known.)
In fact this year was our biggest Christmas Offering ever by more than $50,000! Our total this year was $190,050!
Our goal with the second part of the offering was to help us speed the rate we retire our mortgage so we can be completely debt free as a church.
We will be able to pay down an extra $90,000 this year saving us around $50,000 in interest over the next four years and helping us retire it in three years instead of four which frees up an additional $150,000 for ministry in that 4th year!
The craziest part about the offering every year, is this $190,000 is on top of the already generous giving of this place. We already give more away more than $200,000 outside the walls of this place every year out of your regular weekly giving.
So thank you.
Thank you for being such a generous and loving church.
Thank you for trusting us with your money.
Thank you for being you.
We are who we are because of who you are.
