Four weeks now into our Ignite Initiative here at Central and I am so proud of and so grateful for our church’s great generosity and faith in what our God is doing in us and through us for his Kingdom. The early response has been almost overwhelming — the Lord has blessed us with a ton of money up front! And that has allowed us to start immediately with our top priority ministry partnerships.

This week we are spending a little more than $20,000 to purchase some much needed equipment and supplies for Bivins Elementary School. We are providing twenty desks for special needs students, replacing worn out or missing equipment for the Music and P.E. departments, upgrading the school’s computer lab, and creating a “Maker Space” for interactive learning.

In addition, we’re looking for a few volunteers to commit to spending one or two hours per week at Bivins from now through the end of the school year in May. If you can help kids cross the street, open up a juice box, or supervise a game of freeze-tag, we need you.

That volunteer component is really the most important part of what we’re doing with Ignite. It’s much easier to write checks than to commit the time and energy necessary to do incarnational ministry — we need both. All five of these local ministry organizations are telling us they need people to be a Gospel presence for the people they’re serving. They need our members to be part of the fabric of their support. The kids at Bivins, those ladies at Martha’s home and Gratitude House, the families at CareNet, and the men and women at The PARC — most of them have never experienced the love and encouragement and support that you and I probably take for granted. That’s what they need the most.

This is exciting! Bivins Elementary is giving us access to their kids and families we’ve never had before. It may be unprecedented for a school to give a church this kind of leeway. It might be illegal! How fun is this?!?

If you want more details on what we’re doing together with Bivins Elementary, click here.

The idea is to change lives in the name and manner of Jesus, to make a deep and significant impact on the families all around us, to change the trajectory of generations of men and women in our city. If they think buying a glockenspiel will positively impact the children at Bivins, then we’re going to buy four! Two large and two small glockenspiels! Done!

Peace,

Allan