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Recently the folks in the Mission Education and Promotion area
went looking for the best ideas they could find for promoting
and interpreting One Great Hour of Sharing. We’ve selected
just a few of the many great ideas they found to share with
you here. For more, go to our Web site: www.pcusa.org/oghs.
Plymouth (Minnesota) Presbyterian Church has made its challenge
something people live rather than just see. “We create
One Great Hour of Sharing Day on the Monday before Easter. We
encourage people to go to work that day thinking of it as a
sharing day. It affects our attitude about work if we think
of that day as shared with others. We encourage everyone to
share that day’s earnings on Easter Sunday. If you can’t
do the whole day, do half a day, or an hour, but do something
on this day that has ‘sharing’ in its nature, and
then share the proceeds. Our offerings are now typically four
to five times what they were before.”
Nellie Drevna of the Ellsworth (Ohio) Presbyterian Church reports
that her church decided to make a quilt the focus of its OGHS
offering. “I laid out the quilt from the fifteen pictures
on the OGHS children’s stickers, and two ladies sewed it
for us. With a goal of $1,200, we added a block to the quilt
whenever $80 came in. On Easter Sunday, anyone could place a
silent bid on the quilt, and we added the top bidder’s
$282 to our offering, making a total of $1,557.26 for our little
church of 150 members.”
At Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church in Alexandria, Virginia,
a mock earthquake rumbled through worship. The congregation
became immersed in the havoc a disaster creates in a family’s
life and watched as a Church World Service team sponsored by
One Great Hour of Sharing provided immediate assistance. The
congregation learned that even those of us who are accustomed
to giving to the offering from positions of relative comfort
can suddenly become desperate for help. Six months later, this
lesson was tragically underlined by the nearby attack on the
Pentagon.
| Do you have an idea you would like to
share with other congregations? Write to us at IDEAS! magazine,
Room 1415, 100 Witherspoon Street, Louisville KY 40202.
You may send a fax to (502) 569-5990 or contact us by e-mail
from our Web site. |
For additional resources about One Great Hour
of Sharing, contact Alan Krome at (888) 728-7228, ext. 5168,
or send e-mail to akrome@ctr.pcusa.org.
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