A new way of helping church planters?

Hmmmmm... a thought is going around in my head.

What if...

Hmmm.
Have you seen Kiva? It's a very, very cool way of using Paypal and small micro loans to help people in Africa start up small businesses and improve their lives. I think you should give me $.99 out of your Starbucks money, but give them a bit more than $.99 out of what you tithe.

At any rate, it's a great model, using a lot of small amounts from many people to make a difference for various individuals.

What if...

What if we did this for church planters? You know, not $250,000 to fund three years and 6 full time staff, but maybe when someone like The Evergreen Community is starting out, or Vox, or Phos Hilaron, they could ask for enough to buy a projector, get a laptop, a piece of equipment they might need or some stuff for children's ministry...

Especially for those of us who launch out without any denominational support and no big backers, this could be a very cool idea...
And it would give small churches and individuals the opportunity to invest in church planting, even before they are able to plant churches on their own.

Huh.

Is this a good idea, or a crazy one?

Comments

[rick]

Bob,

Thanks for visiting my blog. I left my comment there.

I like this idea. I've always thought that it would be cool just to get folks to donate their pennies and loose change that collects dust in jars.
Imagine the support that could be raised.

[david]

bob,
i love that this is working. and i like your idea...

but rather than asking people to give less to their own churches, the thing is to get our more traditional churches thinking more kingdomly missional...

i know we are committed to church planting here, but the time, personnell, resources, etc. hasn't been right yet. (remember, ocean liners take longer to turn around than canoes) but maybe we could start getting our people thinking planterish if we started supporting more non-denom plants like yours...

just another way to look at it.

[Jamie Arpin-Ricci]

I think it is a great idea. Friends recently set us up on PayPal to help support us in our inner city ministry, so far working towards saving us from serious financial crisis. Utilizing such technology in this way is clever.

Peace,
Jamie