In this weeks Leadership Weekly email put out by Christianity Today an interesting tactic is being employed by many churches in their communities that will certainly do nothing to create a sense of goodwill or bring about any sort of partnership between the church and the communities they’re trying to reach and be a part of. Here’s the story:

It’s become known as “The Bush Doctrine.” In order to prevent another devastating terrorist attack like 9/11, President Bush announced that the United States would launch a preemptive strike against any credible threat. It doesn’t exactly jive with Jesus’ command in the Sermon on the Mount to “turn the other cheek,” but then again the United States Government isn’t pretending to be a church.

So what happens when a church decides to employ the Bush Doctrine by preemptively suing their local government for a zoning code the city hadn’t yet violated? This week Collin Hansen reports about the escalating tensions between churches and cities over land use. Municipalities are less welcoming to churches buying and building in their communities, because it takes land off their tax rolls. As a result, many are changing their zoning codes to severely restrict where churches may locate.

Some churches are responding with aggressive legal maneuvers of their own—including filing lawsuits before the cities even reject their land use applications. Do these strongarm tactics work? Are they right? And what is the impact on the church’s mission in the community afterward?

Here’s a full-length article in Leadership Journal about the same issue.

I must say that this is a rather destructive tactic, and one that will certainly engender more and more animosity against the church in the community. This certainly can’t be the sort of message Jesus was asking the church to convey…

Every month I get the privilege of helping someone around the world, whom I have never met, work their way out of poverty and this month I get to help Habil Orujov from Azerbaijan and a group of women from Paraguay. This month I get to help out two people because a previous loan from several months ago was repaid! A total of 5 of the loans I have given out have been repaid now and each and every time I get so excited to know that they have succeeded and that they are one step closer to better providing for their families.

I stumbled across Kiva in late 2006 and eventually made my first loan. Nineteen loans later and I can’t get enough of it! I started out sponsoring a child through Compassion International and after my child left the program I began looking around for a different way to make a difference. My favorite part about Kiva as opposed to Compassion is that the $25 a month that I give to it can keep on working. Once your loan is repaid, you can turn right back around and re-loan that $25, meaning instead of just helping out one person for one month (Compassion) you can help multiple families at multiple times. I have had 5 loans re-paid, and those $25 loans have already been turned around to help out 5 more families. Talk about stretching a dollar!

Check out Kiva, and if you’re looking for something to get involved in look carefully at Kiva. It’s a great organization!

According to this month’s issue of Leadership Journal, over the past 40 years giving to benevolent needs has decreased from 0.66% of someone’s income (an extremely paltry sum) to 0.39%. This was somewhat surprising considering the prevalent mantra today in the church is, “people give to the need.” Unfortunately these statistics show quite the opposite.

Now, I understand that statistics can be interpreted to say what you want it to say, but you cannot deny the fact that people in the church simply are not giving “to the need”—if they’re even giving at all.

Two weeks ago Community Christian Church, did their very best to blow this statistic out of the water. This past Sunday we held our first ever Generosity Celebration where the entire offering taken was given completely away to one of 4 benevolent needs: Building a reproducing church in Uganda that will work to eradicate poverty, building a reproducing church in the Philippines that too will work to eradicate poverty, building a community center and campus in East Aurora that will work to eradicate poverty, and planting reproducing churches all around the world through the NewThing Networks. Together each of these initiatives will work together to help people find their way back to God and change the world!

When all was said and done the people of Community Christian Church, in one weekend, gave nearly $250,000! That’s almost 3 times more than in a normal weekend offering! I am so excited to be a part of a church that is stepping out in faith to do something so remarkable.

An amazing dream was birthed within our Romeoville campus pastor a few years ago to do something very similar to this on a weekly basis. My friend David Herrick has recently joined this team as they prepare to move to Schaumburg, Illinois and plant a reproducing church with the NewThing network called Waterfront Community Church. Every single week, Waterfront will give away every last cent of the offering taken during the weekend celebration services to meet a need or two within the community to truly make a difference. I’m extremely excited to see this dream become a reality and see what amazing things God will do in this community through the generosity of the people. Its through dreams like this and communities like Waterfront and Community that the church can once again be known for its amazing generosity!

Community Christian Church is up to something big… really big. In fact, something that’s fairly unheard of in a mega-church. On April 19-20, the offering collected that morning will be given away—all of it. For the past couple of months we’ve been talking about this and making preparations for a huge response from people as we’ve given them the option to join one of four teams: the Uganda Team, the Philippines Team, the East Aurora Team, and the NewThing Team.

The Ugandan Team will be using the money pledged to them to start a reproducing church in an impoverished village in Uganda that will eradicate poverty, and reproduce themselves into another village and so forth. The Philippines Team is set to do something very similar in partnership with Frontline Ministries in the Philippines. The East Aurora Team is set to do the exact same thing in East Aurora, which maintains the the highest population of Latinos outside of East L.A. It’s a highly impoverished area, and the dream is to work in partnership with Community 4:12. The NewThing Team is set to launch multiple reproducing churches around the country and throughout the world in partnership with a vast array of church planting organizations.

This is going to be an amazing experience, all with “reproducing” as the key element running through them all.

I had the opportunity this past weekend to speak at the NewThing vision dinner and share a little about my experience here at Community as well as share what we’ll be doing in San Francisco. It was one of the most exciting experiences of my life, where for the first time I was able to communicate to over 100 people, in a public setting, the dreams and visions behind The San Francisco Project. All of a sudden, this thing is getting more and more real with every passing day!

I’ll update you on the offering totals for this in a couple of weeks when the final tally is in!