So far, approximately 1,700 people have participated contributing over $237,000! Of these funds, 100% will go directly to fund projects on the ground in country, partnering with Living Water International and World Relief.

By simplifying, learning, and giving we change lives, both locally and globally by providing clean water and empower communities in a in Uganda and Rwanda.

There is still time to GIVE ONLINE or mail in your donation! Please turn in all gifts by July 31st.

How did participating in Spilling Hope transform your life this year? Email us your story!

Today we celebrate . . . the fiftieth day after Easter. Whether this is your first interaction ever with Spilling Hope or if you participated every day during this year’s 50 Day Challenge, it is now a time to respond by generously giving.

Spilling Hope is different than just writing a check to alleviate poverty. Rooted in the reign and hope in Jesus Christ, it’s about breaking down the dividing wall between the rich and poor. If you live in the United States by default, you are rich; meanwhile about 2 billion people in the world live on less than $2 a day.

By choosing to simplify – in a consumer driven culture – we free up time, money, and resources and redirect them. If it’s even saving a mere “$1 a Day,” this too makes a difference. For example, $1 for 50 Days x 2,000 people = $100,000. This is enough to empower communities and provide clean drinking water to THOUSANDS without access. This money will literally go to change and save lives.

We also emphasize learning to better understand issues. If you have not already done so, I recommend:
* checking out the Generous Justice class recordings and other Spilling Hope resources.
* reading through the 50 Day’s of blog posts (see tags in the right-hand margin for further drill-down).
* watching the Spilling Hope videos.

Due to the generous support of a few donors offering to cover all of the costs to produce Spilling Hope, 100% of funds contributed will go directly to projects on the ground in Rwanda and Uganda.

You can contribute by mail, at services at Bethany Community Church, or online here.

Thank you for your participation in this year’s 50 Day Challenge!

I believe in the work that God does through Spilling Hope. I believe in uniting as a community to simplify, learn, and give. I believe that God calls me to open my eyes to the needs of others around me and respond with love.
 
Unfortunately, I also believe in Potbelly sandwiches.
 
The week after Easter, a new Potbelly Sandwich Shop (my guilty pleasure from back when I lived in metro Detroit) began construction near my job downtown. My commitment to forego buying lunch at work during Spilling Hope has been mostly successful, minus a few forgotten sack lunches, but when the store opened last week I consciously began the mental countdown to Celebration Sunday and my joyous reunion with my favorite turkey sandwich.
 
I dislike bringing my lunch to work.  It is easy to submit to the office culture of daily takeout and ditch the extra effort needed to plan, prepare, and carry a lunch. I already draw enough unsolicited attention on the bus by being the little girl with the big bag; must I add to the madness by carrying more? Certainly, God does not NEED me to carry my lunch to work every day. I’ve kept my end of the bargain for the last seven weeks – is that enough? Have I followed God’s command yet?
 
When I fail to look for ways to simplify and grow post-50 days of Spilling Hope, I’m answering God’s call with the influence of culture rather than the spirit of love. Limiting God to working in a 50-day time span is to look at Spilling Hope as part of my agenda rather than a cause through which God is working. The time we’ve spent simplifying our lives to provide clean water and resources for our brothers and sisters in Uganda and Rwanda are not weeks that we have given to God – rather, weeks that God has given to us. During the course of this campaign God has revealed to us ways in which our culture has blinded us – “needs” that are now presented to us in a completely different light. To close our eyes and our hearts to this revelation after Celebration Sunday is to inhibit God from continuing to work through us, to step away from His hope and take back the part of our life that we’ve relinquished to Him. It is saying that we believe that hope and joy is found in our purchases and our wealth instead of in His hands. 
 
I am excited for Celebration Sunday. It is good and wonderful to joyfully recognize the ways in which we are blessed and the avenues through which God is working. If we truly respond in love to God’s call, we will use that celebration to give God space to reveal other places in which He desires to reach into our lives. The opportunity is before us; He waits only for us to let go of another thing in our grasp. A true reason to celebrate.

I have been a Christian my entire life, and I am starting to come to an at least hazy realization that Jesus actually knew what he was doing.

I am not referring to the part where he would have preferred a different path than the cross, or how he had some sort of special understanding of the women at the well or even the foreknowledge of Judas and Peter’s denials. I am talking about his revolutionary conquering of the world through service.

Galatians 2:10: “Do not forget the poor!” Peter says to Paul as they part ways. It is his one piece of advice, but Paul doesn’t need it. His response: “This was the very thing I was eager to do.” Somehow, Peter, the rock of the church, and Paul, the first and probably greatest theologian, understood that service to the poor was mission critical.

What wasn’t said by Peter was, “Do not forget the poor, they really need our help.” Hmmm. I suppose he also didn’t say lots of things . . . but this particular hypothetical is something I have been thinking about. After all, there a lot of poor. A majority of the world’s population land below the international poverty line of $1.25 a day. Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats clearly implies that those who care for the poor are caring for Jesus and are saved, but the very next story in scripture implies that that is not the whole picture. A woman pours expensive perfume over Jesus’ feet, and the disciples remark that it could have gone to feed the poor (They remembered the parable!). But Jesus responds, “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” John 12:8.  Poor disciples . . . they almost had it! Do we get it? Do I get it?

It’s easy to get discouraged or disoriented in our faith; probably because faith requires testing. When we do not face tests, we question the value of faith, and when we question the value of faith we question its surrounding principles. And pretty soon we are in the massive flow of the world’s typical flimsy wisdom.

I haven’t fully grasped scripture’s implication that Christ is seen clearest among the poor. It is all over God’s Word. So when Jesus’ own example was one of service, we find an unconventional, revolutionary worldview of service.

“Do not forget the poor!” Peter got it, and so did Paul. So, put your faith to the test. Step out and see if God’s hand will transform. We could see this with the rich, but it is cloudy; credit could always go to their network, their resources, their education. The poor are clearer. In their stories God receives full credit, and the presence of His hand is unmistakable.

So when Jesus proclaims that he has come to set the captives free, and then washes the feet of a “nobody,” we have to stop and acknowledge that this is an eternal wisdom at play. As we serve and care for the poor, we encounter God; and we will find that in it all, our own poverty is revealed and WE are made new.

Jesus knew what he was doing.

Note: Chris Gough is a worship leader at Bethany Community Church and taken a lead role in creating the Spilling Hope Compilation Volume 2, available for FREE download here: http://www.spillinghope.org/compilation-2. So check it out! Also, Spilling Hope Compilation Volume 2 artists will be performing a variety of live shows around Seattle in the coming weeks. Seryn will be at Sunset Tavern next Wedneday June 15 (http://www.serynsound.com/), Jubilee will be playing TONIGHT (Friday) at Skylark (http://livejubilee.org/calendar/), and Cahalen Morrison and Eli West will be at The Tractor Tavern Sunday, June 12 (http://cahalenandeli.com/).

photos by Matt Gebhart (www.mattgebhart.com)

How far did you walk to get a drink of water today? For many of us here in Seattle, sources of clean drinking water are so plentiful that we would never even think to ask ourselves this question. Yet when roughly 1 in 8 people throughout the world do not have access to safe, clean drinking water, it truly is a question worth asking. This is exactly what a group from Bethany Community Church did at last Sunday’s Spilling Hope water walk. Together, we carried bright blue jerry cans down to Green Lake, filled them with lake water, and carried them around the lake in order to symbolically walk in the footsteps of those without easy access to clean water. Yet this experience went far beyond mere symbolism. We entered into a story; envisioning ourselves as young children around the age of 6 whose job was to gather water to bring back home to our family.

Our walk was relatively short, half a mile each way, compared to the average 2 ½ miles many children in Rwanda and Uganda have to endure multiple times a day in order to reach water. What’s worse is that these children are going to such great lengths to bring back unclean, disease-infested water, which often leads to illness and missed school days. I was shocked to hear that fully filled jerry cans can weigh up to 50 pounds, as I began to quickly fatigue after carrying my half-filled jerry can for a few minutes. We were lucky enough to pass along our jerry can to the next water-walker once the weight became too much to bear, and the inevitable question “Should we empty it out a little?” eventually crept into conversation. Out of all the questions we were encouraged to reflect on — What can I do to conserve water? What do I do already? Do I leave the faucet on when I brush my teeth? – it was this question “Should we empty it out a little” that struck my heart. With tired feet and sore arms I thought to myself, this is their lives. When the average household in Uganda spends 660 hours per year collecting water, they don’t have the option of emptying out a little water to make the burden lighter. That burden permeates their lives.

Taking part in the water walk was incredibly convicting for me as I realized how much I actually take for granted each day. While my daily dilemmas might consist of debating between local coffee shops then deciding between drip coffee or a latte, there are children in Rwanda and Uganda living in constant fear, wondering if the water that they have worked so hard to collect is going to make them sick, or worse. The good news is that there is hope. Spilling Hope is changing lives and through simplifying the ways in which we live, learning about issues surrounding water and poverty, and giving generously, we can help spread this hope to those who need it.