Thank you Pastor Gary (and God, of course!)

[HogWild]

I wanted to mention that as the new year began I felt really impressed of the Lord to begin a new series of sermons on the ABC's of Christianty - the fundamentals of faith and the life of a Believer.

I knew that I wanted to cover basic topics such as prayer, fasting, emulation of Christ, etc. but I also felt it was important to cover the topic of tithing.

Well, in fact, I've wanted to teach/preach on this 'taboo' subject for sometime but had been hestitant simply because the church had some signficant financial needs and I had been periodically bringing those needs to the congregation (throughout the fall). I felt, at the time, that if I were to start a series of sermons that included tithing and giving it would be perceived as beating up on the folks - understand?

So the Lord and I wrestled for a while and in His infinite wisdom He took care of the problem. Over the late fall and early winter we buckled down significantly and God helped us take care of the situations, one at a time.

So by the time I was into this new series in January we were doing better financially than we have since moving into our new facilities over last summer. It was then that God began to tug at my heart again about adding the facet of giving to my ABC's series. It was that next week that Pastor Gary posted the bulletin insert for the concept of tithing.

I took that bulletin insert (THANK YOU PG) and modified it a bit with our church info and such and added a 90 Day Challenge (to give back tithes to those who feel as though they have not been blessed). We handed out commitement cards that people could turn in saying the would participate in the challenge.

The response was simply INCREDIBLE from those in our congregation that do not tithe or do not tithe consistently. We've done the program for three weeks now (but only had two Sunday services due to inclement weather) and already we have received more than double what we would have expected for the entire month! Our offering yesterday was almost three times what a normal end-of-the-month offering would have been in the past!

We are also hearing really neat and incredible testimonies of the financial provision and blessing of God within our congregation. My wife and I are earnestly praying for our congregation - that God would honor their hearts and faith during this challenge and blow them away with "every blessing He intends for them to have!"

[Pastor Gary]

To GOD be the Glory!

Do you plan to have some sort of wrap-up at the end of the 90-days? Could you maybe pre-tape some interviews with those being blessed and edit it down to 6 or 8 minutes of sound bites set to some Kodak-moment instrumental music? If so, I'd love a copy of the video.

[HogWild]

That's a kewl idea!