Something incredible happened today at Washington Avenue Church! Something that has the potential to unleash a God-sized power that can impact our community with the life-changing message of Jesus Christ!
Generosity is encouraged throughout scripture. Take a look at some of my favorite generosity references right here. Today, WAC took a huge step of faith to demonstrate the concept of generosity to our partners.
Here is an excerpt from the new blog at www.payitforward.cc that explains what happened:
“On April 27, 2008, Washington Avenue Church held our Sunday worship experience and continued the six week series on generosity titles “In God We Trust”. We met at our normal time, with our normal people, our normal pastor, and our normal praise & worship. What happened next was anything but normal!
Inspired by the actions of some other visionary leaders, the leadership of Washington Avenue felt compelled by God to take an extreme risk and display hazardous faith to creatively demonstrate the concept of generosity.
Near the conclusion of the service, the offering bags were passed around. What’s so unusual about that? Instead of people putting things in the baskets, everyone was instructed to take an envelope out. Every envelope contained varying amounts of cash. Some had $20, others $500.
When everyone had their envelope, these instructions were given:
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- You may not spend this money on yourself or your family.
- You must use this money to bless someone else.
- You cannot give the money to a church or organization.
- Act in response to God’s generosity to you.
That’s it. $10,000 was distributed to everyone present that morning – members, attenders, 1st time guests, believers, and non-believers alike.
This site has been set up to share the incredible stories that come from these “purposeful” acts of kindness.”
Keep up with the awesome stories that are shared at www.payitforward.cc.
today i was at walmart and seen a homeless guy who has a wonderful voice and is always singing about god. i have seen him several times and this time he was so happy because he finally got him a apartment the gov. helped him get, and i knew right then the right thing to do was give him the money that the church gave to me! i began to tell him why i was giving the money to him and he began to sing and said that he was going to get him some groceries to put in his new home, and he said god bless you tim and your church! it was really great, thanks.