Bottom of the Target receipt... "Today you saved $700+" !!!

So I've been searching for, struggling with, and swimming through what "church" is, and what it is intended to be. I've had conversations with a few people about this, and especially how this relates to my college education and career path. However, I am proud to say, that within the last 24 hours I have seen the "church" in action... here's how it goes...

The church that I work at as an intern (Pascack Bible Church) was motivated to reach out to our local community during the holiday season, and so we got in touch with the town nurse and social worker. With their help, and the generous donations of our congregants, we were able to provide complete Thanksgiving dinner baskets to over twenty low-income families in the two towns bordering our church property! So cool!

This was great, but only an opener for the main event.... let me tell you about it...

For Christmas, we were clued in to over 60 teenagers in the immediate area, who again are from low-income background. These teens are facing the reality that Christmas is coming and yet their parents have no money to buy them presents. This is a huge downer for any American teenager, but on top of this is a whole social dynamic that weighs heavy on their hearts and minds. Living in the affluent communities of northern New Jersey (suburban New York), getting no presents for Christmas equates to having the plague, in the context of teen culture. So PBC took a Thanksgiving offering, and pooled together a LARGE portion of money with the specific intention of giving Christmas gifts to these 60-some teenagers in our community.

Last night, our high school youth group went on a shopping spree to Target, literally buying Christmas for 60 anonymous teens who they potentially pass in the hallway at school every day. Our students set out with note cards telling them the age and sizes of 64 of their peers. Shirts, pants, scarves, hoodies, hats, notebooks, pencils, footballs, make up, board games... all listed on the purchase slip (the receipt printed out to be about 5 feet long!). We filled the entire enclosed bed of a pickup truck with Target bags full of gift items!

At the same time, our middle school students were hard at work in our student center stuffing 64 bags with tootsie roll canisters, giant boxes of nerds, candy canes, other assorted candies, chap sticks, pencils, erasers, and other stocking stuffers. The idea behind this was that each of the teens that our gifts were going to would get a stocking as well!!

In total, I think we spent well over $5,000 last night... all of which was donated by families in our church congregation. The bottom of the Target receipt says "today you saved $700+"... how awesome is that?!

This is one example of what happens when students and adults partner together to bless those around them! Our prayer is that as each of these 64 teens receives a gift bundle from our church, including a English/Spanish Bible, that they will want to know why people who don't even know them would care enough to spend thousands of dollars on making sure they had a great Christmas. I think for once, the "church" got it right! Wahooo!