Creative Scribble

It is so amazing to see such awesome stories come out of just one preview service at OneLife. We haven’t even officially launched, but yet God is already using this church to help people discover Him and how their one life can make a difference.

My favorite story so far is of our decision to give all of the money away from our first public offering. First of all, that’s insane for us to do it. We still need about $3,000 to miraculously come in by September to pay for everything that we’ve committed to for our launch. We could have definitely used that money to put a dent into this deficit.

But I’m glad we didn’t.

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Sitting in a meeting where a mission center in the heart of Knoxville’s biggest government housing project shared the need for school supplies to be donated, I knew that God wanted us to do something. I also knew that He wanted us to send a statement to ourselves and our community that OneLife Church isn’t about “us.” So it was a perfect fit to decide that we would just give away every penny of the offering we collected at our first service to buy supplies for these kids.

A little more than $500 was given that Sunday. It was Wednesday afternoon before I found out the amount and called the director of the mission center. To make a long story short, our call came at just the right time. In three days of giving out school supplies, the mission center had given bookbags full of supplies to more than 600 kids. But with an entire day of distribution left, they were running out of necessary items. Then they got our call.

Come to find out, the director had just finished praying with his volunteers when he found out we would be donating $500 to their efforts. Because of our gift, they were able to go Wednesday night and buy the remaining school supplies they needed. About 75 kids are now prepared for the first day of school because of OneLife’s obedience. That’s awesome!

We could have kept that for ourselves and gotten closer to our financial goals of what we still need. But instead we are trusting God to take care of us and gave it away to make a huge difference for many families. It’s amazing to see God do that and have it all in the works even before the need was apparent.

I can’t wait to see other stories like this that are still to come!