My name is Andrew Arndt.  The church where I’m the associate pastor (Sanctuary here in Tulsa, OK) decided to join the Advent Conspiracy this year, and we were blown away by the way in which our folks responded.

Coming off of a November in which the congregation stepped up to the plate in a HUGE way both financially and with their time to help with a Thanksgiving project we put together, we decided that it would be best to set “modestly aggressive” goals for our Advent Conspiracy campaign.  First, we decided to participate in a local coat drive to help provide underprivileged kids with winter coats.  200 coats we felt was a realistic goal.  Second, we decided to see if we could raise $5,000 to drill one clean water well through Living Water International.

Each week coats kept rolling in, until we had finally pulled together 275 winter coats by the end of the month.  We were just blown away by that.  But what was more surprising was the way in which people gave for Living Water International.  The first week, over $6,000 came in, surpassing our monthly goal in ONE WEEK!  We were suspicious at that point that we had hit our high point for the month, and that giving would drop dramatically the next week and slowly taper off throughout the month.  We were SO wrong.  The next week we collected over $5,000.  The week after that (the Sunday before Christmas - while people were in the THICK of holiday shopping) we pulled in another $9,000!  “Surely,” we thought at that point, “we’ve seen the best that our folks have to offer.” That assumption notwithstanding, the weekend after Christmas (with many of our people out of town), another $6,000 came in.

When all was said and done, we pulled together nearly $27,500, which we’ll be using to drill five clean water wells in Guatemala through Living Water International.  The Advent Conspiracy impacted our congregation in a way that will not soon be forgotten, inspiring us to pursue a “get your hands dirty” kind of Christmas spirituality that worships Jesus as it remembers the poor.

Thanks for letting us be part of the story.

Andrew Arndt - Staff Pastor
Sanctuary
Tulsa, OK