The Advent Conspiracy

Church Name: LifePoint Church

This Christmas season we challenged our people to get back to the basics of what Christmas is all about. We challenged the to “run” for consumerism and materialism and spend less on the stuff of this world on more on the stuff of the kingdom. We watched as several of our small groups lead a movement of people who spent Christmas Day at the Salvation Army feeding the homeless and passing out goodie bags that they had spent their Christmas budget on. They then went to Waffle House and had a time of celebration and community. As a church we asked our people to pick out gifts from the world vision catalog and gave that money instead of buying worthless things that none of us need. We raised approx. $6500 of which $2500 went to clean and safe drinking water. Praise be to God who through his birth (incarnation) is teaching us what His coming here was really all about and teaching us what it looks like to be His followers in this culture we find ourselves in.
Thanks advent conspiracy for the challenge and leadership!

How much money was redistributed?: $6500

How much went to water?: $2500

What can we do better?:

Just keep challenging us!

This post was submitted by Joe Tessin.

Church Name: Bay Area Community Church

We had a phenomenal experience through Advent Conspiracy. Bay Area Community Church is a one-and-a-half year old church that I planted, and this was our second major missional outreach. I taught a four-part series (also called Advent Conspiracy), drawing off of the messages and themes on the website for a foundation. The end result was supernatural. The Holy Spirit moved people to selfless generosity and compassion, and we were able to raise enough money to fund 50 water wells. By partnering with Operation Blessing, we were able to reduce the cost of each well to a mere 1,000 dollars per well—-nearly tripling our impact.

We will be traveling with church members and leaders to Ghana, Africa in July to be present for the drilling of some of these wells. We’ll also be brining several doctors to work alongside Operation Blessing to do a medical and feeding outreach. The best part . . . God answered our specific prayers to not only provide clean water, but also the good news of Jesus the Living Water by allowing us to help plant a local, indigenous church in Ghana. We asked for one, but God has enabled us to plant six, by partnering with existing churches on the ground and their local pastors. Then CBN contacted us and asked to film the entire story wile we are there. What a gracious God to take such a simple step of obedience and generosity and turn it into something so much larger than we could ever have imagined. The impact will be nothing short of eternal. Thank you for all you have done to make Advent Conspiracy available to the church at large! We are grateful to have partnered with the Body of Christ to bring lasting change and not only proclaim, but also demonstrate the Gospel!

How much money was redistributed?: 50,000

How much went to water?: 50,000

What can we do better?:

This post was submitted by Pastor Steven Yoes.

Church Name: New Life Fellowship

My wife and I chose to make some “gift certificates” for our families for a dinner. They had a choice for the dinner to be prepared at their house or ours and we had a magazine with all kinds of excellent dinner choices, (3 course meals). It was really great because we were able to share the real reason behind Christmas and show that there is another way to give other than buying gifts. Both nights were really great and both our parents really appreciated it. I have never seen my dad be REALLY grateful about a gift more than that.

This post was submitted by Aaron Jenks.

Church Name: Grace Community Church

We regularly take on compassionate “projects” as a church. More often, our community groups build relationships through compassionate work in our community. We thought we’d do something church-wide for the Advent Conspiracy.

We worked closely with a Men’s and Women’s shelter downtown. It is only cold a few months out of the year here on the coast. We decided to give away all the coats, jackets, blankets, and warm clothes we could … without buying new ones (either to give away, or for ourselves as replacements). We spent time getting to know the people we gave these items to. The shelters said they don’t get a lot of warm clothing donations (this being a beach/island/coastal community).

How much money was redistributed?: Approx. 1000

This post was submitted by Brian Niece.

Church Name: New Life Fellowship

We participated in the Advent Conspiracy within our weekly cell groups. In mid-November we announced it and began providing resources and articles to spark ideas to the congregation. Rather than collect a single offering, we encouraged everyone to give to our denomination’s Great Commission Fund, which provides for missionaries and relief workers in the Christian and Missionary Alliance and the relief arm, Compassion and Mercy Associates. We provided some info about different water projects that these groups are involved in.

Within our cell group, we had a blast sharing ideas and getting together to work on gifts. Some friends came by and we made beef and venison jerky for the men in our families, and my wife and I made dried apple chips as well (we love the dehydrator). A very popular gift given was a meal with family members, as well as gift bags of recycled cotton with fair-trade coffee and tea. The attitude change within our group was noticeable. Rather than a season of expense and work and worry, we were all able to put more effort and love into our gifts (it was still a lot of work Celebrating Christmas in this way drew us all closer to God, and pointed our non-Christian family and friends towards Jesus.

I can’t wait to see what God will do next year in our community.

This post was submitted by Joe Paparone.

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.

Church Name: Trinity Family

At the advice of one of TF’s leaders, we participated in the AC. We actually lost one of the Sundays due to a snowstorm, but we took time during each worship gathering to discuss the 4 points of AC. We also shared the ideas through our e-newsletter as well as my personal blog.

To be honest, I’m not sure how many people picked up on the ideas, but we hopefully created some serious thoughts regarding consumption and giving.

We were able to partner with another church in town, Lifestream Christian, to raise money for Water Partners International.

How much money was redistributed?: 2,450

How much went to water?: 2,450

What can we do better?:

This post was submitted by Donnie Miller.