My church is in the same city this idea came out of and I'm excited to see how God can use my pitiful attempt at doing something different. I wrote about the 3 things my wife and I are doing here:
My church is doing the “advent conspiracy” as a series this year and it is really impacting our congregation. This video made my husband and I decide to “give up” our Christmas gifts and give our money to a ministry we both love.
if you double click on the video itself it should take you to the actual youtube page. from there you can copy the URL (http://….etc) and paste it onto an email.
Do you really want to know what I feel within me? I feel anger. Every December Christians, pagans, and even well meaning idiots think they have the right to tell me what to feel and how I should feel it. What is it about Christmas that gives the world an entitlement to tell me how to live my life, my faith? I celebrate the birth, life, death, burial and ressurection of my Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Christ, all year long, and not because some stupid meaningless ritual tells me to. How real can Christmas be when it only celebrated once a year?
My wife and I decided this year, and more than likely from now on, we are going to get each other something very small. Less the 60.00 and by Christmas i.e. meals, electricity, presents etc… for at least one under privileged family, maybe two. I mean seriously I'm typing this on a 1 year old MacBook Pro, my wife works on a mac laptop and iMac. We have a new house, seriously we're good.
My wife and I saw this a while back and decided to commit to it this year. We're doing more meaningful stuff for friends and family. We're spending less money on dumb gifts. And we're giving to help build clean water wells. I also showed this at our youth group and many of our students got on board. If only our whole church would. If all Christians would be more giving, this world would be a far different place.
Well, this is off topic of Advent Conspiracy per se, but when I saw the topic “What are you doing different this Christmas?” I immediately thought of a prayer initiative this Christmas for North Korea. It's so simple, and all it really takes is a little bit of time and attention to remember our brothers and sisters who are celebrating Christmas under horrendous conditions. The North Korean Christmas Prayer Initiative can be found at the Serving China Prayer Blog.
This video has made the rounds and has really made me think. Home you don't mind if I share this post i made about it… but…
I believe that the problem with the disparity of wealth in the world, is NOT because of our generosity at Christmas. It's because we're NOT generous the rest of the year. But God says that he'll give seed to the sower so that we can be generous on ALL occasions!
We are in our 7th week of AC. So far over $10K has been raised for socks and underwear for less fortunate as well as a global clean water initiative. Our people have been lit up about this since we started. Great stuff.
OK I just did the math….$10,000,000,000 is 2% of $450,000,000,000. So if every American would choose to only spend 98% of what they were planning on spending on Christmas and give the difference to clean water initiatives the problem would be eradicated. I'm starting to think we may be a bit selfish.
We normally only give the kids three gifts each year, this year we are giving them one normal, non charity supporting gift, one that does support a charity (like TOM's shoes, Product RED, saints coffee, etc) and one gift to an organization like BloodWaterMission.com or ChildrensCup.org in their name.
I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now. We've decided that we are going to get one small family gift (e.g. puzzle) for each of the extended family and give a gift to a non-profit in their name as the second part of their gift. We're also going to choose one non-profit to give a gift to as a family. I've been compiling a list of worthy organizations: http://mylifethemusical.blogspot.com. I'd love more input.
This is our last year of gift giving. I've been wanting to get our families (brothers and brothers-in-law and their families) on board with giving to a charity/ministry in the name of those family members we'd have normally given gifts to… the catch for me comes in with my two siblings… both atheist. IF they bought into my plan, I have some reservations about what causes they'd give money to in my name. cuts both ways, but i'm seriously up to here with the consumerist rat race that Christmas has become.
RAIN IT DOWN
Our church is partnering with them this year. Hopefully we can put a dent in this water crisis. Its great to see the church meeting needs.
You like videos with Carol of the Bells behind them.
Great one, though. I feel like each year my family moves more away from gifts that nobody wants and more toward just loving each other.
Thanks for pushing us in that direction. I may reblog this.
how do I email this video? It will go great with an email I am sending out abouthelping a fmily in need. Los, can you email it to me?
My church is in the same city this idea came out of and I'm excited to see how God can use my pitiful attempt at doing something different. I wrote about the 3 things my wife and I are doing here:
http://manofdepravity.com/2008/12/05/advent-con...
My church is doing the “advent conspiracy” as a series this year and it is really impacting our congregation. This video made my husband and I decide to “give up” our Christmas gifts and give our money to a ministry we both love.
lyndsey-
if you double click on the video itself it should take you to the actual youtube page. from there you can copy the URL (http://….etc) and paste it onto an email.
anger, frustration.
Do you really want to know what I feel within me? I feel anger. Every December Christians, pagans, and even well meaning idiots think they have the right to tell me what to feel and how I should feel it. What is it about Christmas that gives the world an entitlement to tell me how to live my life, my faith? I celebrate the birth, life, death, burial and ressurection of my Lord and Savior, Jesus, the Christ, all year long, and not because some stupid meaningless ritual tells me to. How real can Christmas be when it only celebrated once a year?
My wife and I decided this year, and more than likely from now on, we are going to get each other something very small. Less the 60.00 and by Christmas i.e. meals, electricity, presents etc… for at least one under privileged family, maybe two. I mean seriously I'm typing this on a 1 year old MacBook Pro, my wife works on a mac laptop and iMac. We have a new house, seriously we're good.
oooo
praying for you in that…
My wife and I saw this a while back and decided to commit to it this year. We're doing more meaningful stuff for friends and family. We're spending less money on dumb gifts. And we're giving to help build clean water wells. I also showed this at our youth group and many of our students got on board. If only our whole church would. If all Christians would be more giving, this world would be a far different place.
Well, this is off topic of Advent Conspiracy per se, but when I saw the topic “What are you doing different this Christmas?” I immediately thought of a prayer initiative this Christmas for North Korea. It's so simple, and all it really takes is a little bit of time and attention to remember our brothers and sisters who are celebrating Christmas under horrendous conditions. The North Korean Christmas Prayer Initiative can be found at the Serving China Prayer Blog.
This video has made the rounds and has really made me think. Home you don't mind if I share this post i made about it… but…
I believe that the problem with the disparity of wealth in the world, is NOT because of our generosity at Christmas. It's because we're NOT generous the rest of the year. But God says that he'll give seed to the sower so that we can be generous on ALL occasions!
http://bigearcreations.blogspot.com/2008/11/adv...
We are in our 7th week of AC. So far over $10K has been raised for socks and underwear for less fortunate as well as a global clean water initiative. Our people have been lit up about this since we started. Great stuff.
We had our boys give up one gift each so we could give one to needy families in third world countries. We bought chickens and fish nets!
READ ABOUT IT HERE
OK I just did the math….$10,000,000,000 is 2% of $450,000,000,000. So if every American would choose to only spend 98% of what they were planning on spending on Christmas and give the difference to clean water initiatives the problem would be eradicated. I'm starting to think we may be a bit selfish.
I twittered this.
We normally only give the kids three gifts each year, this year we are giving them one normal, non charity supporting gift, one that does support a charity (like TOM's shoes, Product RED, saints coffee, etc) and one gift to an organization like BloodWaterMission.com or ChildrensCup.org in their name.
I've seen this video before..and when I did..I cried. It was like woah. (and I'm not a big movie crier either)
I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now. We've decided that we are going to get one small family gift (e.g. puzzle) for each of the extended family and give a gift to a non-profit in their name as the second part of their gift. We're also going to choose one non-profit to give a gift to as a family. I've been compiling a list of worthy organizations: http://mylifethemusical.blogspot.com. I'd love more input.
I'm doing a little experiment in giving to whomever asks of me, even if they have beer on the breath.
This is our last year of gift giving. I've been wanting to get our families (brothers and brothers-in-law and their families) on board with giving to a charity/ministry in the name of those family members we'd have normally given gifts to… the catch for me comes in with my two siblings… both atheist. IF they bought into my plan, I have some reservations about what causes they'd give money to in my name. cuts both ways, but i'm seriously up to here with the consumerist rat race that Christmas has become.
can i get $100.. its for a good cause.. maybe.
@texas in africa..
can i get $100.. its for a good cause.. maybe.
Most importantly, it reminds me of how much I hate the word “incarnation”, along with “incarnational” and “incarnationalism”.
As a result, I was peeved by the 44 second mark.