Momentum (Christ – centred, Spirit – empowered, Mission – focused)
One of the great joys in my life is watching my four-year-old grandson in action. He is filled with energy and amazing innovation. I watch with awe as he creates whole worlds of play out of his unbridled imagination. Skye Jethani, in his book The Divine Commodity, writes, “The challenge facing Christianity today is not a lack of resources or motivation, but a failure of the imagination.” I could not agree more. Opportunities to advance God’s Kingdom are everywhere, but in order to seize them, we must be willing to take risks and embrace innovation. In the past few weeks, two stories have emerged that express the transforming power of unleashed imagination.
Swim-a-Thon for Water
Joanne Beach, our Director of Justice and Compassion, received a donation for the Water and Sanitation project in Niger. The amount was $1,900, and the story behind how the money was raised is inspiring. The Kwiatkowski family, from one of our Alliance churches in British Columbia, was receiving the weekly updates from International Worker Lisa Rohrick. They saw the need for clean water in a photo that she sent; the photo was of children scooping orange sludge into water containers. As a family, they decided to raise $1,000 toward providing a well for a village. Their eight-year-old son, Nathan, chose to do a swim-a-thon as his contribution; he raised more than half the money we received. In one hour, he swam 2.4 kilometres! Talk about a moment of inspiration and imagination. One child swam in clean water with a heart to provide clean water to those who do not have it! Can you imagine?
Pennies for Goats
The Christian and Missionary Alliance has a program in which goats are purchased for village women in Niger, one of the poorest countries in the world. These women care for their small herds; their children drink some of the milk, and the women sell the rest, enabling them to better care for their families. A group of kids from our Club 57 program (a club for children in grades 5–7) at Mission Alliance Church decided to take on the project of raising $50 to buy one goat for Niger. The energy began to grow when the idea of a penny drive was presented. With pennies going out of circulation, the team thought that people may be more willing to part with these copper coins to buy goats for Africa. This burst of imagination multiplied into buckets of pennies weighing over 152 kilograms, enabling the children to raise $718.96 to buy 14 goats for Niger. Can you imagine?
Let’s step out of our routine patterns of thinking and let our imaginations run wild. I am convinced that the best years of the Alliance are yet to be experienced, but that they will require innovation, creativity and the willingness to risk. We can see the marginalized embraced, the lost redeemed, our cities transformed by Christ, and the Kingdom of God advanced.
Can you Imagine?
Visit www.justiceandcompassion.com for more inspiration! Visit today to access the new 2012–2013 Justice and Compassion Gift Catalogue. You can purchase a goat for village women in Niger and other important items for people around the world!
“God is calling us at this time to a larger faith for this special work— the testimony of Jesus in all His fullness to all the world” — A.B. Simpson
Please find the original version in C&MA website