Sunday morning during Worship Service at South Lansing Christian Church, I got on stage and introduced Blessing Buckets to the congregation. Let me tell you how we developed the program, how it will work and how it felt to make an announcement from the stage.
Bucket History
About 10 months ago, Frank Weller came to me with an idea he called Deacon Dollars. He had just come back from Andy Stanley's Catalyst conference and wanted the deacons to have a renewed focus on benevolence with dedicated money in a separate fund to use at our discretion. That program was meant to start in January, but it didn't. In May, I started getting information about Imagine (as part of the video production team), and Frank soon asked me to incorporate the Deacon Dollars idea, now known as Generous Bucket, into Imagine. I introduced the idea to my full team at our July meeting and asked them to brainstorm the various ways we hold random blessing events (similar to the Pass It On Project the church participated in the previous fall). In our August meeting, we put a lot of great ideas of various scales up on the board, and one particular idea resonated with the whole team: "Be specific." Random blessings might address some people's real needs, but could be written off as just a nice thing to do by people who aren't really in need. We decided to introduce a request form at the bucket, and I spent the remainder of August designing that form, building the buckets, and tweaking the name to the simpler and alliterative Blessing Buckets.
How it Works
We've asked each person to slip a dollar in the bucket and let their kids do the same. We will turn those dollars directly into blessings in our community. We will do some random blessing events like bus passes for students, blankets for homeless people, and winter coats for school children. However, we want to directly bless real neighbors, real coworkers, and real classmates. So at each bucket is a pad. If someone knows of a need in their corner of the world, we've encouraged them to write it on the slip and drop it in the bucket with their dollar. For example, John Q. Public works in the cubicle next to me. He complains about getting a ticket for having a headlight out and how he is broke until the payday at the end of the month. So I'd write it on the slip with a way to contact me and drop it in the bucket. If we have enough dollars, we’ll gladly help fix the headlight. We might not get to every request, but one dollar per person per week can add up to some significant blessings!
Making the Announcement
I was a little less than confident when I took the stage. I am typically a behind-the-scenes guy and that is where I'm comfortable and effective. I'd just as soon leave the on stage stuff to others with a passion for it. But as my close friend Ben Cohoon reminded me, I had an intimate responsibility to the program as the leader of the deacons and as the program's champion therein. So I wrote out the announcement and asked for the stage time. Then the nerves kicked in. Frank wanted to review my announcement, and ended up editing a bit of it, so I felt less familiar with the words I was presenting. People started filing in for worship and I realized how much had changed since the last time I spoke in front of the church. That was ten years ago, when I was an 18-year old "cool nerd," weeks away from high school graduation, offering unrefined reflection before communion, with my peers filling the stage. Since then, the congregation has moved to a larger building and swelled in size by roughly two hundred members, and that is before applying Frank's fun fact that "the Sunday after Labor Day is the third most attended service" behind only Christmas and Easter. Three and a half songs into service and it was time to cross the auditorium. The song ended and Frank led me on stage and introduced me while I fumbled to take the mic. My hands trembled, one hardly holding the microphone steady, the other barely holding my cellphone which was open to the announcement on Google Docs. I couldn't see the people with the bright, hot theater lights pointed at me, and I wondered if they could even hear me with the way the mic danced in front of my face. And then it was over. I had read the last line of my announcement and exited the stage. Frank was confidently reiterating the points I had made while I quickly retreated to the safety of familiar duties.The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. It seems like people are genuinely excited about the Blessing Buckets. It feels like all the planning has paid off, but it is time for the real work to begin. I believe my team and I are ready to thrive in our new responsibilities and effectively bless people immeasurably more than all we could ask or imagine.
