Christmas Conspiracy 2007:  Revolutionize Your Church

Orginally published on Thursday, November 01, 2007 at 7:40 AM
by Todd Rhoades

Rick McKinley writes: "Every Christmas it happens; I get excited for the celebration of Jesus' birth - that moment in history when all of scripture came to life! God became flesh. The Christ-child moved into our neighborhoods and revealed to us another Kingdom: pregnant Mary, evil empires, and that moment when the world stood still to worship with the angels. It was the pinnacle moment of redemptive history! And then I get depressed; inundated with commercials of what new gadget to buy, people in mad rushes to get more stuff, credit cards opening up sink holes that people will be climbing out of for months to come, and newscasters telling us that fights are breaking out at Wal-Mart over the last Xbox 360...

It isn’t just THEM! It’s us too! We’re missing out on this powerful moment of worship that changed the world because we are spending every spare moment buying meaningless sweaters for uncle so and so. Can you name two presents you got last Christmas? I can! For the first time, I can tell you what I got for Christmas, six months after Christmas is over.

We preach of His greatness, we sing the songs, and for that sacred hour on Sunday we get pulled back into what matters most. Then we are quickly hit in the head by the elbow of a competing shopper, assuring us that what matters most is not what matters most.

Last Christmas, some pastor-friends and I pulled the plug on Christmas. What started out as an experiment ended up transforming us, our people, and a whole bunch of other people with whom we shared the love of Christ. We worshipped the Baby as though it was for the first time. Because God gave us His Son - the world has never been the same.

So here’s the story, and I am praying that as you read it you will want to join us. It’s so simple it’s scary; so revolutionary it’s world-changing.

We decided that we would ask our people to live the advent story - not just talk and sing about it or dress up like shepherds. We asked them to live counter-culture lives that modeled our celebration after His incarnation.

Christ resisted the empire of Herod by coming in weakness as a baby, making Herod so insecure that he murdered hundreds of toddlers. We decided we would resist the empire of consumerism and spend a lot less.

Because God gave us a relational gift, his Son, we decided to give meaningful and relational gifts too. We didn’t want to focus on just buying stuff but rather concentrate on things we could make, trips to take, poems to write - the kind of things you keep forever and will recall a year from now when someone asks you what you got for Christmas last year.

Since Christ re-distributed his wealth by becoming poor to make us rich, we redistributed our wealth also. We took all the money we saved by giving relational gifts and we gave an offering with the money that was left over. We brought in close to half a million dollars between five churches. Crazy! We adopted low-income schools and blessed hundreds of people, locally and globally, with the monies we raised. We also decided that we would use a large portion of the money to bring clean water to people around the world whose very lives are at risk because they don’t have clean drinking water. Just this week I received pictures of four wells we are sponsoring in Liberia. People are drinking clean water because God gave us the Water of Life.

Because Christ was worshipped, we worshipped the Baby in a way we never had before. The kids led the way. Everyone feared they would hate it, but it turned out that they understood it better than the adults. Some children emptied their whole piggy banks the day we took the offering. The Imago Dei Kids bought alpacas for some families in South America. (We had a llama at church that day to show them something close to an alpaca.) Our worship started on Sunday and went all week. Instead of rushing to the malls, families were hanging out at home making gifts. Because God gave us His Son, we in turn were giving of ourselves to others.

There were so many stories it was, and continues to be, somewhat overwhelming. It had a viral effect. The main factor was not the offering, or the meaningful gifts, or the hundreds of people who were helped - it was that everything we were doing pointed us back to The Story - God gave us His Son and we have never been the same.

After an amazing last year, churches started asking us about what we did. So, we began to dream. What if the church created a conspiracy of kindness at Christmas? What if every church in the West celebrated Christmas this way? What impact could that have on the proclamation of Christ in our communities and our world?

So we created the Advent Conspiracy and we are inviting you to join the revolution. Now, every year we anticipate the coming of Christ at Christmas because we can’t wait to worship Him and see how He changes the world again!

Ten billion dollars gets clean water to everyone in the world. Fifteen billion feeds everyone. In America we spend 450 billion at Christmas. Get the picture? The world is watching for the star to rise again and the people of God to gather around the Baby. Will you join us?

What is the Advent Conspiracy?

The Advent Conspiracy is a catalyst to help churches and organizations equip their people to engage in the Christmas story in a way that will transform their people and as a result bring transformation to the world through their people as they worship Christ at Christmas.

To find out more about the Advent Conspiracy, click here to read more at CatalystSpace.com...

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Hi... I'm Todd Rhoades. I'm a Christ-follower, husband, father and I love to connect leaders with other leaders. Hopefully you'll find something here at MMI you like and will return often. If you want, you can find out more about me or follow my every step on Twitter.

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