Welcome again to #GivingTuesday, a day when every $1 you give turns into $2!
#GivingTuesday is a movement designed to launch the Christmas season with an emphasis on generosity rather than material pursuits. It’s a response to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, days focused on spending on self and loved ones.
As in years past, our friends at the Jesus Film Project are our #GivingTuesday partners, and this year’s campaign will help bring the Gospel to parts of West Africa!
According to the Jesus Film Project team:
This year, we have felt led to offer the opportunity for people to support church-planting film and partner teams reaching people in West Africa. This project is a joint partnership with the American Bible Society®, Wycliffe® Bible Translators and their daughter ministry Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), Faith Comes By Hearing, Campus Crusade for Christ® (Cru®) and Jesus Film Project. This collaborative effort has been titled the “End to End” project.
Thanks to a generous friend, matching Challenge Grant funds are available for gifts given to this “End to End” effort. As people give, their gifts and impact are doubled. Our faith goal tied to the grant is to see $200,000 raised, which would be doubled to $400,000. That would resource and send 30 teams, which over the next four years could potentially plant an estimated 900 churches!
Here’s a little about how the project works from the Jesus Film website. Imagine being part of all this:
Identifying a village or neighborhood to show the film
Finding a location to meet
Sharing the good news through the "JESUS" film to people who have never heard it before
Watching people come to know Jesus
Planting churches and distributing DVDs and SD cards
Watching Jesus at work in people’s lives in an unreached part of West Africa
Playing a part in planting as many as 900 West African churches in 2020!
Last year, the SMI family generously gave more than $17,000 in response to the #GivingTuesday challenge. Perhaps this year, all SMI members together, each giving what he or she has a heart to give, could contribute $20,000. With the Jesus Film’s matching-grant donors doubling that amount, that would mean $40,000 would be raised — enough to plant 90 churches! Working together, we can do something significant to "seek and save the lost" in that part of the world.
We hope you’ll agree that this is a great way to begin your celebration of Advent and Christmas! After all, Christ came and loved a lost world (which includes us), and he has given us a similar mission.
"[Father,] as you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world" (John 17:18).
To learn more about this project and then give as the Lord leads, click here. Thank you!