Last week a little girl from our friend’s church was killed in a tragic car accident in the Seattle area. Her name was Rachel Beckwith and just before she passed, it was her 9th birthday. Instead of gifts and parties, she asked her friends and family to help her reach her goal of raising $300 to help dig wells in Africa for thirsty, dying children. She fell short and “only” raised $220. As she lay in the hospital dying, her fundraising website was reinstated and the remaining $80 was raised to help fulfill her dream.

But then a miracle began. When I clicked the give button, I watched in amazement as it rolled to about $10,000 given! Astounding! Maybe Rachel would get to $30,000 instead of $300. That was about a week ago. Her story hit Facebook, twitter, local news, national news, and international news. People began to give from every continent and as I write this, her charity page is looming close to $700,000. I have no doubt that it will soar pass $1,000,000 and continue climbing over the next few weeks.

As I’ve read the comments from givers and have followed the story, it is as if the entire world has joined together to say, “We know it’s not fair to lose a child, but we want you to know that we care. We care about Rachel and we care about kids in Africa.” So many tragedies unfold everyday and it is as if God is using Rachel’s life to remind everyone in the midst of sadness that the world is not an awful place. That people from every language, religion, and perspective all have a common unity in love.

I have cried many tears in awe of what God is doing through this little girl, mostly because my own 7 year old daughter shares her giving spirit. No amount of money makes it “worth it” or easier to say goodbye to a child, but it shouts loud and clear that our lives matter and specifically, Rachel mattered.

This little girl’s impact will literally change a nation and the best part of it all…it wasn’t done by one big gift, but by a whole lot of people doing a small part out of love. Sometimes we think we can’t make a difference by what’s in our hands, but Rachel shattered that myth. Her life’s testimony is, “Do what you can.” And so do it. Do it now. Give to Rachel, give to your church, give to another cause you believe in, but don’t let another day go by meeting your own needs and not doing anything about someone elses. Love demands sacrifice. Thank you, Rachel, for teaching us all that valuable lesson.

You can give to Rachel’s Wish by clicking HERE. You can also give to my own daughter’s dream by clicking HERE. Or find your own dream and MAKE IT HAPPEN!

A few months ago we began the journey of raising money to purchase some property on Hwy 99, renovate it, open up a Coffeeshop/KidCity Play area, and have a larger area for church, too. So, here’s the best part of stepping out in faith: allowing God to renew, refresh, and revive dreams that have been buried in our hearts for years.

I’ve loved what He has been doing in my own heart through this step of faith. About 10 years ago, a speaker at camp pulled me out of the audience and onto the stage while we were youth pastors. He looked me in the eye and prophecied over my life. (“Prophecied” means that he felt like God wanted to tell me something about the future and he was the voice to do that.) That man didn’t know me at all, but he said, “You are very creative and the ministry that God is giving you is extremely creative. Right now you are just doing busy work, but God has a creative ministry in your future that you can’t imagine yet.”

Knowing what you know about the Coffee Church, you might think that prophecy has come to pass. But I don’t. The picture in my head of what our church should be and will look like hasn’t even begun to take formation. I look at pictures and read about what other churches have created, and while I love them and think it’s so cool, it’s not the picture that I have floating around in my brain. I really do feel like for the last ten years, much of what I’ve done is helping with the busy work of laying the foundation for what God has in store for us.

Our drive to get to the next step is fueled by the picture in our heads of what God has put inside of us. It keeps me awake at night because of the excitement of the “finished” product. (I laugh at the word “finished” because God usually doesn’t finish things. He continues to mold, shape, create, and renovate continually.) I can’t wait for the day when I feel like I’ve stepped into the phase of that prophecy…when the DNA of that dream is birthed into reality!

Happy Birthday to Rachael Yonko on Sunday and Matt Garner on Monday! I love our team and am SO glad to be surrounded by these amazing leaders and friends. We are spoiled!

Lee preached yesterday and did a fabulous job. He shared a little bit about his story of how he met Jesus at our church and is now on our leadership team. His story literally encompasses every dream we had for this church and there he sits at our staff table every Sunday afternoon! Ironically, it makes me feel so small in comparison to our great big God. I am humbled to just be a part of that story.

We had a nice couple who recently moved to Vancouver come and visit us. They used to attend our friend’s church startup in Cosmopolis. We started our churches at the same time, so it’s been a fun journey to go on together!

We are on the most interesting journey with our 19 Cents of Faith campaign. I know I haven’t written anything lately, but it’s because God has been sending us down a couple of paths that we didn’t forsee. I know that’s vague, but welcome to my life… Bottom line: Stepping out in faith is not a declaration of exactly what will happen, but rather the willingness to allow what God wants to happen. Wherever we end up, we would not have arrived there if we had not been obedient to lay it all out on the table. I LOVE IT!

Congrats to Eddie and Rebecca Coleman on the birth of Kylan last week! We celebrate with you and are so excited to have your little guy in our nursery! He’s going to have LOTS of friends!

A little nine year old girl at our friend’s church was in a terrible car accident last week. Ultimately they had to let her go because her injuries were too severe. Just one month ago, on her birthday, she asked for no gifts, but rather to help her raise $300 to help kids in other countries have fresh water. She missed that goal by $80. In the days since the accident, over $100,000 has been given in her honor. That money has not been given in large chunks, but rather thousands of small donations from people who believe in the faith of a child. You can follow her campaign HERE. Would you consider giving to her cause?

I hope you have a great week! Find a way to be generous with your life in the next seven days. You can’t take anything with you, but you can leave a legacy.

Today we removed all of our shiny contemporary chairs from our church and filled it with freshly donated chairs that are well…not as sheek. I stacked our really cool chairs into a corner and thought, “This is so funny!” as I placed the “new” chairs in their places. Aesthetically I probably would have chosen something different, but there was a greater purpose at the forefront of my mind. Why did we do it? Easy…the new chairs fit better in the room and we can accomodate more people without scrunching them any tighter together. And there’s ALOT of them!

If I have to choose between shiny chairs and 20 people able to attend our church, that’s easy for me. I stacked those chairs with a passion and looked around in satisfaction at our newest solution to the best problem a church can have…we need more room.

I know the Great Chair Move of 2011 won’t solve our problems for long, but as for this Sunday, there is a place for you. And your friends. Invite someone! The chairs are sturdy, clean, and there are plenty of them!

It was my birthday yesterday! I got to go to church, have lunch at IHOP (my favorite!), hang out with some of my favorite people at staff meeting, and I even squeezed in a movie last night.

It was the wettest July 17th on record for our area yesterday…I can’t remember a rainy birthday in my whole life, so that was new.

Church was great! Josiah Thalhofer preached. He is a memorization master! His notes would make your head spin because you can’t follow them, but I’ve come to realize they are just a map around his brain and it’s all in order in there somewhere. He doesn’t look at notes and yet it was the same message both services…YIKES! Wonderful message on pain. You’ll be able to catch that online by tomorrow.

I am praying for a video production wizard to come into our church. We do pretty well faking excellence in that department, but I know what a well-trained, creative video editor can do. Especially college-age males who have too much time on their hands!!!!! We need one that is pre-trained, since none of us have any real business training anybody!

We are revamping the kids check in…Phase 1 complete. Now on to some tweaking! If you aren’t checking in or checking out kids, please stay out of that area. It will help make everything much smoother and a much more secure environment!

I’m running out of positive adjectives to describe our worship team. Next week will will have Matt Garner’s CD available for purchase at the coffee bar. Tiffany Wisecarver’s will be coming soon. I look forward to the day when we produce our own worship CD with our team, but we’re not quite to that point, yet…

This week we are moving the sound booth to accomodate more chairs, so the good news that you can come to church and have a seat…for a couple of months anyway. 🙂 We are also getting some new chairs this week from another church which will help a lot!

I’m feeling the need to do a creative project. That usually involves lots of work and pain from a lot of people. Good thing that Josiah just spoke on the value of pain, huh?

Mark went to a community meeting last week and when he was introduced a lady said, “North Creek? As in the Coffee Church? I LOVE what you are doing and I follow you all the time online! I just wished I lived closer!” Shucks…

Maybe this is the week that God will answer some of our prayers for www.19centsoffaith.com. So excited to get going on the next phase of what God is doing at North Creek!