LOVE the Advent Conspiracy

For the last two years I have written a LENGTHY article for our church newspaper about gifts to give students. It's a good idea. If parents are going to be spending hundreds of dollars on thier kids for Christmas, maybe they could invest in thier Christian journey.

So I write this article with lots of gift ideas and pictures so parents can buy gifts that will help thier kids.

I'm seriously considering abandoning that idea for this: The Advent Conspiracy.

I love thier tagline "Restoring the scandal of Christmas by substituting compassion for consumption."

Two years ago my sweet wife (man, she is going to kill me for blogging about this) decided that for Christmas, she didn't want any gifts. She wanted whatever money that was going to be spent on her to be used to buy food for children starving in Ethiopia. She figured that she had everything she needed and didn't want anything.

this was a TERRIBLE idea! She was going to ruin Christmas for the whole family!!!! So now am I going to have to forego any presents or gift certificates that I don't need, but really want? Am I now going to not get any tools?!!!

Yes, I'm kidding. It was such an amazing moment.

so last year, instead of spending $5-$10 on gifts to our friends and co-workers, we bought a share of a clean water well and gave people a card that said something like, "The gift of clean water was given in your name. Because of you, x amount of kids will have clean water for the first time in thier lives." I wasn't sure if this would go over like the Human Fund or what, but it was received really well (no pun intended).

So this year, I'm considering writing another article...only this time, I'm going to encourage parents to teach their teens about what really matters and to take whatever money they would spend on them for Christmas, and do something amazing with it.

I'm not sure our students who are really wanting Rock Band 2 or the Wii will really appreciate it, but I'm okay with it.

check this out for more info:



ht to JG.