The Advent Conspiracy: Renewing Christmas

America spends $460 billion every year on Christmas.

The amount of money we spend on Christmas in America each year is 45 times the amount of money it would take to supply the entire world with clean water.

The American Consumer Credit Council reports that the average American spends $935 on Christmas each year and carries an average credit card debt of $8562.

Do you remember what you gave to others last Christmas?

Do you remember what you got for Christmas last year?  Is it still around?

If you are an American – with shoes on your feet, who bathe in clean water regularly, who will eat at least two meals today, who will know where you will lay your head tonight and who have clean underwear – you are in top 2% of the world’s richest people.

Half of the entire population of the world lives on less than $2 a day

80% of the world lives with sub-standard housing.

We’re asking a lot of questions together:

What are we to do with such blessing and privilege?

What if there was a better, more hope-filled, purposeful, meaningful way we could approach Christmas?

What if some of that money we spent at Christmastime was used for something more meaningful?

What if we spent less, in order to give more so we could worship fully and love all by how we used our money and what we did with our stuff this Christmas?

Imagine what that could be if that were redirected away from consuming more stuff and toward meeting tangible needs of the poor and the oppressed?

This isn’t about anger, guilt, disgust, manipulation.

It’s just the opposite: its about hope, of joining with the God of the Universe to meet the needs of people.

Ultimately we’re asking the question during this season of Advent: what if we exchanged consumption for compassion?

What if all of us within Renew conspired together to live out the subversive kingdom values in the midst of our culture that worships Empire values in order for us to worship more fully this Christmas? What if practically we spent less money – and instead made gifts and gave each other the gift of presence? And what if our families, our co-workers, our neighbors and our friends got involved, too?

As we spend less in order to give more, we’ll be saving money together and then giving it in a special offering in our gatherings in January.

And none of the Advent Conspiracy money will go to support Renew.

We are giving it all away to two different organizations.

1. Daughters (www.daughterscambodia.org) is an organization in Phnom Pen, Cambodia that seeks to show compassion by taking young girls out of the prevalent human trafficking industry and training them with life and job skills. We’re partnering with Daughters to help bring girls out of the sex/human trafficking

2. The Independent Church of India (www.indchurch.org) is a ministry run by Pastor Britto in Southern India who has served among the poor in leper colonies, among those in extreme poverty and has helped to birth several churches.

Which means for us during this Advent Conspiracy:

For every $840 we collect we can rescue a girl out of sex trafficking.

For every $1080 we can pay for a pastor’s education at bible college and seminary in India for a year.

The gospel has endless implications for right now – its quite thrilling when you see what God wants to do right now.

And that is the good news.

Come and join the conspiracy.