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Outside the coffee cup


It’s started.

I made a goal to do at least one personal servant evangelism project a month in 2007 (in addition to the monthly ones VCW does). This stuff has to come out of overflow so I want it to be a habit for me too in my ordinary day-to-day life.

My first experiment starts today. I’d called the manager of my local Starbucks. (He knew me already.) I told him our church likes to do out-of-the-box community service projects thinking people have heard enough words about the love of God but don’t get to see it in action much. He already knew of some of the projects we’d done.

I asked him if I could put $50 on a gift card and leave it for the baristas to randomly buy people’s orders. And I asked him if they’d hand the person a VCW connection card. The card says “This is a practical way for us to say that God loves you” and gives our information.

He was totally open to it!

So I bought it today. I explained to the lead barista (who I know too!) what the manager and I had discussed. “Basically you get to randomly bless people throughout the day!” She seems excited.

Please join me in praying that this will be a powerful way to shine God’s love into the lives of lots of people!

I’ll let you know how it goes!

[Update, 1/24: People have been blessed. But they found out they weren’t allowed to give out the cards inside the store. So they stopped until they could talk to me. I told them “go for it anyway.” They’d be happy to say the order is paid by the Vineyard Church of Waterville.]

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Marc A. Pitman

Marc A. Pitman helps leaders lead their teams with more effectiveness and less stress. The author of "Ask Without Fear!®," he is the founder of The Concord Leadership Group and FundraisingCoach.com. He's also the executive director of TheNonprofitAcademy.com and an Advisory Panel member of Rogare, a prestigious international fundraising think tank. He is the husband to his best friend and the father of three amazing kids. And if you drive by him on the road, he’ll be singing 80’s tunes loud enough to embarrass his family! You can connect with him on Google+, on Twitter @marcapitman, and like "Ask Without Fear!" on Facebook. To get his free ebook on 21 ways to get board members engaged with fundraising, go to http://thenonprofitacademy.com/21waysebook

This Post Has 8 Comments

  1. jon January 19, 2007

    This is so cool. To give them the opportunity to bless someone is a wonderful blessing for them. There is something cool about being able to give away something without it costing you anything (really, that sounds familar somehow). I will pray. I will be curious.

  2. Rich January 19, 2007

    what the @#$ is a Barista?!
    Is that charbuks lingo for “counter doode”?

  3. Lukas January 19, 2007

    Typical type-A leader…Job one in doing your personal servant evangelism is to…delegate it to other people to actually do it, while you plan and resource them!

    Cool, man. Let me know how it goes.

  5. Lukas January 19, 2007

    Hawesome.

  6. Jon January 25, 2007

    (after update) But don’t you see? Now it’s not some awkward *here take this card*. A voice gets to say, *someone did this for you*. A voice. A possible conversation *Yeah, I don’t understand what they’re doing, but this guy came in and…*

    Better and better without planning.

  7. Marc January 25, 2007

    Jon, I TOTALLY agree. This is pretty cool!

  8. Mary Ellen January 27, 2007

    I think it is cool too…leaves a good “starbucks taste” in peoples mouth for VCW!

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