Dear Sunday Afternoon Nap,
You are so beautiful.
I want to write you haikus.
I want to petition Yankee Candle to make you into a scented votive.
I want to get you one of those greeting cards that plays music when you open it.
Mine would play “Lady in Red” by Chris de Burgh. Why? Cause at the end he whispers “I love you.” And I do, Sunday Afternoon Nap, I do love you.
A few years ago on this blog, I told you what my daughter L.E. said the first time she saw a photo of a starving child in a book about weather and famines:
“That’s not real though. That’s pretend, right?”
She reacted that way because a 5 year old who has grown up eating three meals a day her entire life can’t fathom that other 5 year olds don’t. That conversation set a lot of things in motion for me. And one of them was the idea of making poverty “unreal.” Could I, could we, could the planet one day make poverty and starvation unreal. “Pretend,” like L.E. mentioned.
Fast forward a few years and a friend of mine connected me to a group called Live 58 that wanted to sponsor Stuff Christians Like. Their message was one that really challenged my concept of making poverty unreal.
They believe our generation can end extreme poverty. That’s a bold statement, but then they shared a statistic with me:
“Extreme poverty is ending. In just 25 years the percentage of people living in extreme poverty has been cut in half. (52% to 26%)”
That is crazy to me. I honestly had no idea.
So then I watched their trailer and checked out their facebook page:
And they put forth a pretty compelling argument in the trailer and the full film on their site.
So today, I thought it might be good to do a 1-question brainstorm in the comments of this post about this topic.
Here it is:
“What do you think it would take to end extreme poverty?”
(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s one from SCL favorite John Crist. He is a brilliant writer and standup comedian. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how.)
Praying for Your Future Spouse – by John Crist
My dad was always trying to prepare me for life. He was always trying to teach me skills I would need to survive in the real world.
“John, help me carry this washer up the stairs!”
“Dad, I’m six!”
I don’t threaten God often. I know that’s surprising to you given how muscular I’ve been getting lately with all the working out and my increased acai berry consumption. (It really is a miracle berry and made me taller and balanced my checkbook while I slept.)
But despite the fast and slow twitch muscle increases I’ve been making lately, I don’t make it a habit to tell God what he should do. I very rarely scribble down a plan, throw it in a prayer and threaten him if it doesn’t come true. Buy shoes for mama cause she’s about to meet Jesus? I do that ALL DAY. Threaten God? Not so much.
Recently though, I caught myself doing that and it all came to a head at our neighborhood pool.
Last week, someone on Twitter told me they bought a bunch of copies of my new book Quitter at a bookstore. As a thank you, I signed a copy of my second book and put it in the mail.
That was a fun one off thing to do, and made me think, “What if I could do that for everyone?”
And thus, “The Quitter Barnes & Noble Gazellextravaganza.”
If you buy two copies of Quitter at your local Barnes & Noble store and email me your address with a copy of your receipt, I’ll mail you a free autographed copy of my book, “Gazelles, Baby Steps and 37 Other Things Dave Ramsey Taught Me about Debt
If your Barnes & Noble is out, just order two more from the store, have them print out a copy of the order and email me that.
If you already bought two copies of Quitter at Barnes & Noble, send me your receipt and I’ll hook you up.
Here’s a jpg example of what the receipt will look like:
Let’s do this until Friday, July 29th. If you buy 2 copies of Quitter at a Barnes & Noble store before midnight on July 29th and email me the receipt, I’ll send you a free copy of my second book.
Thanks for helping me get Quitter in bookstores and helping me keep it there by supporting it.
Jon
If you follow me on Twitter, then you know that I was out of town last week. My family went on an epic adventure that found us driving from Nashville, TN to Blowing Rock, NC and then eventually Tybee Island, GA.
Along the way, we drove by something I’d never seen before. I’m not talking about “the world’s largest fireworks store.” I’ve seen roughly 26 of those, every fireworks store is the world’s largest. Nope, this was something I saw on a church sign.
And I took a picture to show you. Here it is:
I can probably build a better fort than you.
I’m not talking about a pillow fort. The average orangutan can throw one of those things together with enough couch pillows. I’m talking about in the woods, with sticks and leaves and acorns to throw at people. You don’t throw acorns at people? You’re missing out on half the fun of having a fort.
On May 27, 2008, I posted a mission trip fundraising letter that people could use as a template. Here is how it started:
Dear _______,
I never write you letters.
That’s a weird way to open a mission trip letter. My youth minister/pastor gave me a form letter to follow but that felt even weirder. The truth is that I don’t write anyone letters and if I opened up this letter by pretending this is just the latest in a long chain of correspondence we’ve kept up oh these many years, that would feel as fake as when people run out of things to say and ask you questions like, “hot enough for you?”
On the downside, my letter rambled a bit, but on the plus side it did not include the “Pretend You Don’t Care about the Money Line.” You know the one, it’s what I wrapped up a dozen fundraising letters with in the seventh grade:
“Whether or not you are able to support the trip, I would greatly appreciate your prayers.”
Asking for money is awkward. It changes your intimacy level with someone. That’s why even pastors do the tithing disclaimer when they preach about money, “I never normally talk about money…except today.” And asking for money feels hard sometimes.
I wrote that post three years ago as a satirical way to say, “Is there a different way to do mission trip fundraising?” Despite the clear awesomeness of the solution I provided, after talking to Razoo about this sponsored post, I think they might have something better to offer you than I did.
Here’s a quick look at what Razoo does:
Here are what I think are the coolest things you can do with Razoo:
1. Receive donations securely from your donors.
2. Keep track of each team member’s progress.
3. Save time and headaches by eliminating all the paperwork.
4. Focus on the trip, not the fundraising of the trip.
Here’s basically how you do it:
1. You set up a page.
Your team leader sets up a team page on Razoo. Then he/she invites other team members to set up their own personalized fundraising pages. You can easily add photos and videos to your page to tell the story of the trip. (It is very difficult to add a video to a traditional paper-based fundraising letter.)
2. You launch the promotion.
We live in a social media world. You’re going to share your photos and your stories about the trip via Facebook, Twitter and blogs. Why wouldn’t we use those same tools to raise money for the trip? That’s why Razoo provides everything you need to promote your page. Each Razoo page is built to share on Facebook, Twitter, and email, making it easier for fundraisers like you to connect with your circle of family and friends.
3. You laugh at the paperwork you used to do.
That’s not technically a step, but you’ll probably still want to do it because Razoo handles all the annoying record-keeping you used to do. Razoo takes care of the tax-deductible receipts, sending a receipt to each donor’s inbox immediately after they donate. They also hook you up with an Excel spreadsheet telling you where every dollar you raised came from and what page it came through.
If you’ve got mission trips coming up later this summer or fall or whenever, give Razoo a try. My attempt to fix the mission trip fundraising letter dilemma was inelegant and prone to result in $0 raised for you. Razoo, on the other hand, is a great solution.
Question:
Have you ever gone on a mission trip?
(It’s guest post Friday! Here’s one from Kyle Porter who writes a blog with his wife called Our Marriage Project. If you want to write a guest post for SCL, here’s how.)
The 4 Types of Christian Newlyweds (and 1 bonus couple) – By Kyle Porter
Hi my name is Kyle. I have a marriage blog where I (along with my wife) tell stories. We do our best to give people advice and tips on how to have a successful marriage or relationship. I’ve been married four months, and I have no idea what I’m talking about, so said advice should be taken with a bucket of salt. In my 120+ days of marriage, my wife and I have encountered some interesting couples, but none more interesting than these four (plus a bonus). Continue Reading…
Stuff Christians Like is written by
Jonathan Acuff.
It was started on March 21, 2008.
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