The Advent Conspiracy

Church Name: The Bridge

We had a tremendous experience here in Leadington, MO with Advent Conspiracy at The Bridge Community Church. Our church was just a little over a year old when this all got started and there are only 202 people who live in Leadington (but about 400 amazing people had been showing up from surrounding communities). Our AC experience started when I met Chris Seay of Ecclesia Church at the Catalyst Conference in Atlanta last fall. His presentation on AC really struck a nerve with me, so I went back and shared AC with our entire church and challenged them to really give their CHRISTmas to Christ. We used a lot of your videos and focused on really listening to God throughout the fall as we prepared for the Advent season and our offering on December 23. I think that people really did worship more, spend less, give more, and love all.

The situation at Chacocente with the families living on the landfill has also really struck a nerve with our entire church. About 700 people showed up at our Christmas services, and our offering from our little church plant totaled almost 13,000 dollars. The average age of our group is about 35 and we have many young families with a lot of small children, so we were amazed that our people responded that strongly since most of them are really strapped financially. It was truly sacrificial. We had some conversations with the wonderful disciples at Living Water International about what to do with the money. They were very selfless and told us that if our hearts were with those families that we should give all of the money to the families in Nicaragua through Cheryl Avery’s ‘Project Chacocente’ ministry that continues to build villages and help these people. That is what we have done; we sent the entire worship offering for God to Project Chacocente.

However, the story does not stop there. Our people are so moved by this whole experience that many want to go down and actually work on the project. Between 30-40 of our folks are making plans to fly down in July and work on the second village of Project Chacocente. They want to meet these people and see how God is working to change the world. We are very excited and are already talking about being involved in 2008 on another AC project (probably something with Living Water) and some other area churches may join us.

We thank you for your Biblical teaching on Advent, on selfless giving, and on shining the light of Jesus Christ to a dying world.

Tim Gray
Vision Director
The Bridge

How much money was redistributed?: 12,989.99

This post was submitted by Tim Gray.