Ever wonder where your dollars go when you give to CCC? Here’s a glimpse of the outreach, connection, and transformation you support with every gift.
Centennial Family,
I’ve been reflecting on something recently that is a bit morbid. Though, it is certainly a topic worthy of attention, not a distraction or diversion. If anything, it could be a wakeup call. Here’s the topic,
I’ve been thinking about the number of people who die every year trying to climb Mount Everest.
I know, not necessarily what you expect in the “Financial Blurb” section of my weekly email. Hang with me a second.
When I was in seminary, I had a good friend and mentor named Jim Doenges. Jim was a Jesus follower, a mountaineer, and a man passionately committed to Christ and his Kingdom. Something Jim told me about from his firsthand experience was the deterioration of the pristine environments on most of the world’s highest summits. Mount Everest is one of the worst of them all. If you were to climb Everest today, here is what you would see. You would see frozen human fecal matter spread everywhere along the route. You would pass hundreds of frozen corpses, left there over the years by climbing parties incapable or unwilling to bring these people home, and you could see thousands of pounds of trash left there carelessly, indiscriminately. Why do I share this morbid picture.
Because more people than ever are applying to climb Everest every year.
People are lining up for the chance to potentially die. More people than ever want to go to a place where the chances of death are high, the environment is continually deteriorating and degraded, and few people are interested in helping keep it the beautiful place it was made to be. Frankly, the story about the deterioration of Everest seems to be a profound contrast.
Everest is – in many ways – the opposite of God’s vision for His Kingdom.
In the kingdom, the good of others is placed ahead of the needs of self. In God’s kingdom, provision for the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable are priorities, not afterthoughts. In God’s Kingdom the “immigrant, orphan, and widow” (to quote a Biblical theme) are the priority. Clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, and housing the homeless are central values.
That is what we are trying to do at Centennial Covenant Church.
Let’s be honest. We don’t do it perfectly. Heck, I’m sure our worst moments could be just as far from the ideal as some of the worst stories of Everest. And yet, that remains our mission and vision. We exist to glorify God by following Jesus on a shared journey of transformation in his mission to our broken world. In short, we exist for the sake of Christ, his Kingdom, and his Righteousness.
Every dollar given to Centennial Covenant is given in service of the Kingdom.
We have many teams involved in managing the expenditures, layers of redundancy in assuring monies are appropriately spent, and a shared commitment to use all we have in the way God leads.
On Everest, people pass the dead to reach their personal summit. In the Church, people give up their summit to help those who have fallen. May that be so for each of us and for all of us.
Here is a snapshot of the current finances of CCC. We are just one month into our new fiscal year. Thank you for your generosity. May we all give consistently, proportionally, and faithfully throughout the year.
Grace and peace,
Karl Helvig, Lead Pastor, Centennial Covenant Church.
Click Here for a snapshot of our current finances.
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