Transform Your Christmas…Give Well

Posted by Jonathan Brink
November 17, 2008

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What if you could transform Christmas? Would you?

As Christmas approaches many of us are asking the same questions. We’re no longer interested in the idea of buying for the sake of buying. We’re interested in discovering the redemptive meaning of Christmas.  Are our relationships deepening?  Are we stepping into what it means to love  our neighbor in a restorative way?  Are we giving of ourselves in a way that truly has value?

Americans spend an average of $450 billion on Christmas. That’s 1,485 dollars for every man, woman, and child in America.  And yet are we really experiencing the original meaning of Christmas?  To solve the world’s clean water problem would require only $10 billion dollars.  What that means is the problem is not only solvable, it’s easily within our reach.

We would like to extend an invitation to participate with us this year in transforming Christmas from purchasing and getting to really giving.  Our goal is simple: To transform Christmas by gathering families together and sacrificially purchasing as many wells as we can.

We’re working with Advent Conspiracy and Samaritan’s Purse, an organization that has a long history of working with the poor and oppressed in the world. A well costs about $800 to repair or retrofit.  That’s less than the average spending per American to transform the life of a village. It costs about $2,500 to rehabilitate a non-working well and about $15,000 to drill a large well that serves a large village.

And we’re not asking you to just write a check on top of everything.  We’re asking you to consider working with us as a way of stepping into the deeper meaning of Christmas, a day when love entered the world in a profound way.  We’re asking you to consider giving sacrificially in place of the traditional mad rush of gift giving we typically do.

We’ve also created a brochure to understand what we’re doing, invite friends to participate, dream bigger, and help transform the meaning of Christmas.

Donwload it here.

If you do participate with us, feel free to steal the bug on the right or the banner from this post to spread the word.

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Missional, love

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  • Daniel
    We'll definitely be participating.

    Thanks for putting this together.
  • Nice Daniel.
  • Hey, Jonathan ... Don't know if you saw on my blog I'm knee-deep in hand-making Christmas gifts this year from stuff I have around the house. I'm doing this because I just don't want to spend a lot and then I have $$ to give away. But the other part is that while I'm making the gifts for each person, I spend time praying and thinking about that person. Putting some love into the gift. Whether or not they like the gift, the love goes with it and they get that part. So ...

    In any case, I will blog about this to pass it along and talk to my husband about sending some of our extra to this very worthy cause. It's been on my heart too. Thanks.
  • Sonja, a big part of Advent Conspiracy is making gift as opposed to buying them and then using the extra money to fund wells. Love that you are already on that. Hope you can join us.
  • Sam
    About twenty years ago my wife and I started the "sharing tree" at our church. We joined with organizations that worked with the homeless, orphans, abandoned children, women and children in shelters, abused children and the poor. The organizations gave us names, and what those people needed. Sometimes it was a child who needed shoes, clothes or a toy. Sometimes it was a family who needed heat in their home, or a homeless person who needed a blanket, coat or shoes.

    On the first Sunday night in December we had a huge church dinner, and representatives from a few of these organizations joined us and told us about their people. Afterwards, our people chose an ornament representing a person or a family and their need, and hung that ornament on the church Christmas tree. Those were the only ornaments on the tree. Choosing an ornament meant that the person would meet the need that ornament represented.

    Our people brought in their gifts, and the week before Christmas we distributed them. In January, we printed some of the thank you notes in the newsletter - thank you's from the recipients as well as the givers.

    Many of the people in the church told us these were the most meaningful Christmases they had ever experienced. Except for those families with small children, many families gave each other just the info. on who they had bought a gift for in that person's name.

    Sadly, the sharing tree project fizzled out after we had to move due to a job transfer. If we heard the story correctly, someone decided that the church should buy gifts for just families in the church and that was the beginning of the end.

    Last year our little group where we live now helped purchase bicycles for AIDS health care providers in Africa. We really don't need more stuff, do we, even if we try to convince ourselves we do?
  • monachusbellator
    It's so cool to be working *FOR* the Kingdom and not trying to build one.....
    Big smiles! :-D
  • Jonathan -- this is such a great idea! Plan to discuss this at our own community group meeting tomorrow night. Just sent them all a link to the Advent Conspiracy video to get the ball rolling...
  • Mary Jean
    What you are doing seems great to me!!! I'm sending money to Heifer International and I am hopeful that my whole family will do it next year and we can actually buy a whole heifer.
  • Mary Jean, I love it. My family did that with our kids last year and they each got to pick out a goat. They honestly had more fun giving that getting.
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