Contributing To The Needs Of The Saints
Romans 12:13 says: Contributing to the needs of the saints, practicing hospitalityThat's one of the verses that the youth group is memorizing this summer (so far, the group has memorized Romans 12:9-15). I was thinking about that verse, and thinking that there are so many ways that we can contribute to the needs of the saints. Some obvious, some not so obvious. Perhaps the most obvious would be to actually give money to a family in need. And that may be what Paul was referring to specifically; in I Corinthians 16, Paul talks about a "collection" being taken for the saints.
But it doesn't necessarily have to be monetary contributions, may not be just a family in need; it could be a church in need, or a missionary in need.
Whenever our teenagers go out and rake leaves for our elderly and shut-ins - without asking anything in return - they are contributing to the needs of the saints. Whenever they shovel snow from driveways and rooftops during the winter they are doing the same.
Whenever they willingly and faithfully giving to our offering each week, to help support the work of a missionary in Moldova, they are contributing to the needs of the saints (and helping bring others into the flock of God!). They have given pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, dollars, soda bottles, and some even write out checks to help support the work of missions around the world, and in the last nine months have given about $2000 to help the work of missions in Moldova. A couple times I've talked to people from other churches about the money our youth group has shared, and the response I've gotten is, "Yeah, we've had fundraisers that bring in about that much..."
And I say, "No, you don't understand...we didn't do a fundraiser. We simply asked our teens to give as they believed God had called them to give."
(I'm not opposed fundraisers, but I've realized something about them (just from conversations like the one above) that I'm not really keen about; a fundraiser does not teach people to contribute to the needs of the saints; it teaches people to ask others to contribute to the needs of the saints on their behalf. In a sense, a fundraiser allows us to sidestep our responsibility to give.)
Another way that our teens have "contributed to the needs of the saints" is by willingly giving up a week of their vacation to teach "Family Bible Time" (our own version of a Vacation Bible School) at churches in Stow and Lovell. These two churches are very small, and felt that they could not effectively have a VBS without some help of younger folks. So they asked us. And we saw it as an opportunity to serve and contribute, so we said "Yes!".
And now, just a few pics from that week...
Good Friends
Game Time
Rachel and Thommy at Game Time
Josh, Jeorge and Me
Becky Doing the Review Game
Rachel Teaching the Memory Verse
Incidentally, the Stow and Lovell churches agreed to have the Family Bible Time offering go to the same mission that our youth group has been working to help this year. The children, teens, and adults were very generous, and over the course of the week the offerings were larger each day than the previous day, even when the attendance was smaller. In all, they contributed approximately $286 to CEF in Moldova!
Back on the subject of "Contributing to the needs of the saints" - I think we may have hit on another way for our teens to put this verse into practice...but nothing has been finalized yet, so I'll save that for another day!
Posted On Aug 20, 2005 at 4:58 AM
On Aug 20, 2005 Laura wrote: Fundraisers don't necessarily teach children/teens to sidestep their responsibilities - basically I think that what ends up being taught depends on the ways the money was raised, since there are different ways to "do" a fundraiser. If teens were to have a bake sale and spend their entire Saturday baking things, and then selling them in order to raise money for missionaries, wouldn't that teach them the value of giving time as well as just money?
Doug Replied: Yes, it would teach them that. However, I don't think it is the only lesson that gets taught. There are other more hidden lessons that go along with it. And they're not all taught to the people doing the fundraiser, either...
And I'm on my way out the door, so I'll try to remember to write more about this later.
On Aug 21, 2005 Doug wrote: Just received the sad news today that one of the girls pictured above, her mother was killed in a car accident this past week.
On Aug 23, 2005 Doug wrote: Here's some follow-up thoughts on fundraisers:
Fundraisers, Fundraising, and Gimmicks For Raising Money
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