Wednesday, November 18, 2009

advent conspiracy - year 2

It's time for my favorite thing of the year again! = Advent Conspiracy time! (In order to save some time in this blog you can read what I wrote about Advent Conspiracy HERE, HERE, HERE, & HERE. If you read those I won't have to repeat myself a lot.)

Here's a short video that will give you the scoop too:

So that's what we're about in this conspiracy. It's a conspiracy because it is sooo counter-cultural. It's a rebellion really. We're trying to take Christmas back!

Here's the bottom line if I can summarize it really quickly:
Dirty water is killing more people than anything on earth! People just don't have access to clean water. 5,000 children die every day because they don't have water to drink! That's 1 child dying every 15 seconds because they don't have something we take for granted. That does something in my soul. That makes me outraged and devastated all at the same time.
Jesus SAID that if we see someone thirsty and give them water it's just like we gave the water to Him! And if we don't give them water it's like we refuse to give water to Jesus when He's thirsty. not cool. (Matthew 25:31-46)
It would cost $10 billion to give everyone on earth clean water... & just in America we spend $450 billion on Christmas crap every year!!! Something is jacked up with that & you know Jesus agrees.
So, last year I jumped in on this advent conspiracy. For my birthday (december 3rd) & Christmas all I asked for was for people to take the $ they would have spent on buying me a gift AND GIVE IT TO ADVENT CONSPIRACY, so that Living Water International could use it to build wells so people could have clean water! People did it and almost $1,000 was given to build a well! It went to rebuild a well in Nicaragua and over 450 people in the San Rafael village of Leon now have clean water! - All because of this little Christmas rebellion!

So, this year I'm doing it again. I'm feeling really rebellious. I also invited all of my friends in Student Impact (our student ministry at Ridge Church). Everyone talks about how "rebellious" teenagers are right? well, here's their chance.
Our goal is to bring in $3,000 through our Advent Conspiracy so we can send it to Living Water International and they can build a well for a whole village!!! It would be so awesome for us as a student ministry to say in a couple months - "Because we did Christmas differently this year, we helped a whole village have clean water!"
I know... that's a pretty audacious goal for a handful of broke middle school and high school students. But I think we're up to the challenge!
& that's advent conspiracy in a nutshell.

*So, let me be clear (this is my open letter to all of you) - I do not want anyone to buy me birthday or Christmas presents! The only gift I want is for you to give money for Advent Conspiracy so that Living Water International can build a well with it! SO THAT people can drink clean water and stop dying from dirty water.
You can click here and donate or you can give it to me & I will add it to our water cooler in Student Impact to help us meet our goal of $3K.

In case you missed it at the top, below are 4 articles I wrote last year about advent conspiracy. check them out!
ADVENT CONSIRACY
double advent conspiracy
happy advent
best Christmas EVER!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I just wonder how much of that clean water is going to cleanse their eternal soul. Our contemporary society is so concerned about feeding the poor and helping out, but very little is being said out the part of that man that will never die. He is going to spend eternity somewhere forever.

patrick mitchell said...

I don't know about our contemporary society, but I do know that JESUS said a lot about "feeding the poor and helping out."

& with Advent Conspiracy & "Living Water" International there is definitely NOT "little being said about the part of that man that will never die." That's why they are named "Living Water" because that's what they tell the people about in the villages they are building wells in. maybe you should watch this video = http://www.water.cc/news/videos/?clip_id=7173006

without a HOLISTIC view of the person we will always be OFF on the gospel like much of "our contemporary society" is.
And I've never been able to figure out why the fact that someone "is going to spend eternity somewhere forever" means that we can just let them die and get to that "eternity" faster? How could this possibly mean that we shouldn't save people who are dying physically?

And I think Jesus was pretty clear in Matthew 25 = if you don't give water to the thirsty it's like you're refusing to give Jesus water when He is thirsty! and from the description of what happens to THOSE people in eternity... the people who don't give water to the thirsty (and to Jesus)... it sounds like they're screwed. i'm just sayin'

I'm also curious why the people who leave comments like this (which honestly, i have yet to figure out the point of the comment) are always named "Anonymous"?

besides, I love those people. I love the people in that village that doesn't have water to drink. I love those kids who are dying because they have no clean water. And I guess when you love someone you want & try to help them.

musicman said...

dead kids can't know Christ...clean water...its a providing a chance to preach the gospel to living kids. I am so sick and tired of Christmas and the entire holiday season...it is all about spending, debt, gluttony and pleasure in this country. I am praying that God will show my family how we might truly Worship the King this Season.

patrick mitchell said...

Bob - I'm with you totally! seriously check out adventconspiracy.org
we're doing the series with Students @ Ridge & this sunday is all about "WORSHIP FULLY"
that's what we want to be all about.