once again i love our church.
at this point there aren’t many of us in tapestry that are dads but we wanted to celebrate the few of us who are fathers by doing something that is consistent with who we are. for mother’s day i stole an idea from some of my friends at the ring in baton rouge and tapestry gave our thread mother’s gift cards indicating that three mother/daughter kits had been bought from world vision and given in their names. we guys are different though. we need something to fight for. we need someone to fight for. i talked with a couple of “threads” and we decided that fighting for kids was a worthy way of honoring the dads in tapestry. so we donated to invisible children to help fight for kids who are having their childhood stolen from them by being forced by the LRA (LORD’s resistance army – a blasphemous use of GOD’s name because the LORD has nothing to do with this movement) to be child soldiers. it fits with who we are and most every guy wants to fight for someone who need his help.
the second thing we did for father’s day was “operation blessing” or what i like to call “operation mess with people’s minds.” at tapestry it is said all the time that “the church is the people not a building.” being a nomadic church it is typically easy for us to remember this. tonight a couple of us thought it would be a good idea to take this known fact a little further into our lives. typically people “tithe” to the church so that the “church” can do ministry. of course, when you believe that the people are the church it seems pretty obvious that it should sometimes dramatically affect how we view ministry and tithing too. we decided this was one of those times. so our gathering tonight ended with me placing in front of everyone a basket with $150 worth of $5 bills to “tithe” to the church (a.k.a. the people). i asked everyone to take whatever they thought they could use to minister to those around them during the week. the goal is to use these small resources to show the love of GOD in small acts to those around us. that’s what tithing is for, right? one person said that had a neighbor that needed a screen door but couldn’t afford it (many houses around here don’t have a/c because it doesn’t stay hot very long and always cools down at night – in such situations open windows and doors are the main way of cooling the house). automatically a couple of people joined in with their $5’s to make it happen. quickly several other things were mentioned. next sunday should be fun hearing all was done through simple acts of $5 love.
SIDE NOTE – tonight at the tapestry gathering i announced that we had the opportunity to supply, build, and send in home care kits to help children and adults in africa that are struggling and dying from AIDS. we will be collecting resources over the next few weeks and then on july 12th we will put these kits together after our sunday night assembly. we have to deliver them to rochester, minnesota by july 15th so that they can be shipped with other kits from other churches. each kits costs around $100 and i am sure our little church can do at least 5 but my secret dream is 10. if you’re a thread here’s the list for making a in home care kit.