Can’t tell you much more yet, but I have 3 great things to tell you about our Easter Sunday Celebration @ Courageous Church…
1. We’re just having one service @ 10am!
2. We’re moving back here.
3. We’re giving EVERY SINGLE DIME we receive in our offering to aHomeInHaiti.org
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I love Quest Community Church. It is a role model church for Courageous Church. It is one of the fastest growing, most creative, vibrant, loving, unselfish communities I know of in the world. Over 10,000 people have come to follow Jesus in the past 10 years through the work of Quest!
The pastor, Pete Hise, is one of my 10 favorite leaders in the country and I learn a TON from him just by observing him and the great team that he leads there @ Quest. Pete – if you see this – You Da Man :-)
Over 500 leaders from all around the world have already signed up to join Pete, Perry Noble, Pete Wilson, myself, and the amazing Quest team (for real – the staff there at Quest has to be one of the best staffs in the world) for a one day leadership experience called The Uprising!
I want to meet you there! In addition to leading a session, I hope to be able to connect with you, pray for your team, and answer any questions you may have. Over 500 people have already registered and I am going to be giving away 5 pairs of tickets today & tomorrow! That’s about a $150 value.
1. The first 4 people to buy a tent @ aHomeInHaiti.org will each get a pair of tickets. After you made your purchase, here’s what you need to do. Email me your receipt to shaunking@courageous.tv and tweet the following:
I’m going to http://TheUprising.net w/ @PeteHise @PerryNoble @PWilson @ShaunKing & the team @QuestCommunity -YOU SHOULD TOO!
2. I will also randomly pick one person that tweets the above statement over the next 24 hours to get a free pair of tickets!
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Go for it! If you don’t win, I really hope you and your team can register and come. I am bring a team from Courageous Church and am already praying that God uses this time to rock our world!
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My friends @ YELE Haiti are running a great feeding program on the ground in Haiti, but they need more HUGE stock pots to cook food in bulk. Here are the details. Let’s BE THE SOLUTION:
Need: 100 90 HUGE Stock Pots (a great church just bought the first 10)
Size: 100-200 Quarts
Material: Stainless Steel or Strong Aluminum
These pots can be NEW or USED. Yele does an amazing job making sure supplies get to Haiti – we just need to get them these pots!
Send them to:
Wyclef Jean
YELE Haiti
2 South Orange Avenue
South Orange, NJ 07079-1702
If you do not have used ones to send, please buy new ones for just $69 here for 100 quart pots or great deals here or here or here or here and send them to the address above. Let me know in the comments section if you have questions or if you send some!
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1. Financial Peace University begins tomorrow! We are offering it @ 11am & 1pm! Be there! All of you that signed up already, your kits are ready for pickup!
2. I have hooked up a VERY SPECIAL surprise. It will change your life. You’ll have to be there to find out. No gimmicks (like a Snuggie)! Just trust me – you don’t wanna miss it.
Be Courageous!
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Please go to aHomeInHaiti.org and make a difference today!
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While over $300 million in donations made for Haiti sits in banks and large aid organizations bicker over how to best provide shelter to ailing Haitians, YOU have helped us BE THE SOLUTION with aHomeInHaiti.org! It has now rained nearly 10 different days since the earthquake hit. Hurricane season is coming and our little upstart has now sent:
1588 tents for 7,930 people! We have now sent more tents to Haiti than any government in the world outside of the United States!
The AP & MSNBC just reported on our efforts, but, as you will see, the experts continue to tell us to stay away. Foolishness!
See the article on MSNBC here or read it below! I put the section about our work in bold.
DIY efforts bring aid to Haiti
Individuals, frustrated at international response, take own initiative
The Associated Press
updated 4:18 p.m. ET, Wed., March. 3, 2010
PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – The Miami property developer, volunteering after Haiti’s earthquake, was horrified to see children sleeping in the dirt under makeshift tents of bed sheets propped up on sticks. A global, billion-dollar aid effort should be able to do better, he thought.
He decided he could do better himself.
Michael Capponi flew home, collected donated tents, flew them back to Haiti and persuaded a mayor to let him build a proper camp for hundreds of families on the soccer field of a gated community of luxury villas. It took him three days and less than $5,000.
“I didn’t put this together to get a pat on the back, but to show the world it can be done rather quickly, and with limited funds,” said Capponi, 37.
Haiti has two relief campaigns under way: a massive, lumbering international operation comprising U.N. agencies, foreign military and hundreds of private aid organizations; and the collective efforts of individuals acting on their own in frustration at what they see as shortcomings in the international response.
The do-it-yourself aid workers say the bigger operation is inefficient and confused, and brag about their ability to get things done quickly, on the cheap. Officials with governments and more established relief groups applaud the smaller operations, but say such efforts will never be enough to meet Haiti’s enormous needs.
The story of shelter is a case in point.
Desperately seeking shelter
The United Nations says nearly 1.3 million people — 762,708 of them in metropolitan Port-au-Prince, the devastated capital — don’t have anywhere to live, and officials have said for weeks that shelter is their most urgent priority as the rainy season approaches.
But seven weeks after the Jan. 12 catastrophe, the international rescue operation has managed to distribute 23,000 tents and 131,000 tarps, reaching just a third of those in need.
Capponi, who came to Haiti after the quake as a volunteer with the University of Miami-affiliated Project Medishare, could not understand what was so difficult about getting tents to people in need.
First he called ShelterBoxUSA, the American affiliate of a British-based private aid group that the Haitian government has designated as the lead agency for tents, and which has distributed 8,200 tents in Haiti. Capponi was startled to hear that a tent kit for a 10-member family costs $1,000.
Capponi found a Miami company offering a waterproof tent for five, the average size of a family in Haiti, for $90 including ground sheets, poles and mosquito nets. Then he found another that asked $37.05 per tent — including shipping to Haiti — if he’d buy 50,000 of them.
Veronica Miller, president of ShelterBoxUSA, said their kit includes a multipurpose blanket, water purification kit, stove and cooking pots — as well as the cost of securing permission to use land and coordinating who gets help first.
She said ShelterBox tents are designed to last for years.
“Other tents that are out there may help for a few months, but then what?” she asked. “The weather and elements that they endure will leave them without shelter and they are back to the same situation.”
Size and scale
GuideStar USA, which monitors nonprofit organizations, said the magnitude of Haiti’s crisis and the logistical difficulties involved in getting the aid to the people who need it most means it’s a job for established organizations.
“I respect and appreciate people’s passion and enthusiasm and energy,” GuideStar President Bob Ottenhoff said. “But this is one of those moments where, in order to do this on a massive scale, I think we have to rely on the experts.”
Many independent operators disagree.
Shaun King, lead pastor of The Courageous Church in Atlanta, set up a Web site for people to donate money and tents priced from $55 to $800. Working with 200 volunteers, Haitian orphanages and a makeshift camp in Port-au-Prince, King has collected 1,505 tents to shelter 7,525 people and $24,185.
“We pledge that 100 percent of the funds we raise will go directly (and only) to tents,” the Web site promises, a swipe at the overhead costs at big humanitarian organizations.
While Red Cross shelter experts were “working against the clock” to finish a blueprint for a temporary wood-frame house, a Latin American charity already had volunteers busy with nails and hammers showing homeless Haitians how to build them themselves.
The Chile-based group, Un Techo Para Mi Pais — “a roof for my country” — worked with 150 foreign volunteers to erect 20 wood cabins with corrugated metal roofs in three days, said project leader Luis Bonilla of El Salvador.
“I’m going back to the Dominican Republic to buy more wood, and we will have 100 more houses up in two weeks,” Bonilla said. He said the longer-term goal is to build 10,000 houses in Haiti.
Follow the money
Capponi, meanwhile, took two days to set up a camp of 70 tents with two water tanks and two portable toilets that is sheltering hundreds of families.
He went back to Miami to buy and beg more tents, and returned this week with enough tents to give decent shelter to 1,500 of the people camping on a soccer field in Port-au-Prince’s posh Belleville neighborhood. (Another $10,000 worth of tents disappeared at the Port-au-Prince airport, he said.)
Capponi, who didn’t want to single out any aid group to avoid making enemies, questioned why relief workers need all the new white SUVs that have suddenly appeared in Port-au-Prince.
“People need to learn to be efficient with funds here,” he said. “I have seen too many big NGOs (non-governmental organizations) waste too much money and I am fed up.”
Capponi recalled the joy with which people receive their tents.
“People started chanting and praying. One woman was so overjoyed, she kissed the flap of her tent,” he said.
One the front of one tent, a grateful family has written “Dieu est grand” — “God is great.”
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Soon after the earthquake hit Haiti, I noticed something that surprised me. I studied things on the ground for a few more days before I commented because I wanted to be sure that my observation was correct. When I mentioned my observation on Twitter, the liberal backlash was fierce and I actually started getting hate mail, harassing phone calls, and more.
80% of the people on the ground that left the United States to bring help and hope to Haiti were conservative, evangelical Christians. They weren’t passing out bibles either. They were doing HARSH, horrific work. Unmentionable stuff in the early days and the hardest work around in the first few weeks.
I didn’t make this observation to brag. I am not a part of this group. I am a part of the shrinking minority that still loves President Obama :-) The observation surprised me. The American organizations on the ground that were getting stuff done ALMOST ALWAYS had evangelical roots -i.e. World Vision, Samaritan’s Purse, Compassion, etc.
One of my heroes, Nicholas Kristof (a beloved liberal journalist) just wrote about this same observation all around the world in the NY Times. In it, he offers some surprising observations and solutions for both sides. Here’s the article. It is a must read!
Learning From the Sin of Sodom
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
For most of the last century, save-the-worlders were primarily Democrats and liberals. In contrast, many Republicans and religious conservatives denounced government aid programs, with Senator Jesse Helms calling them “money down a rat hole.”
Over the last decade, however, that divide has dissolved, in ways that many Americans haven’t noticed or appreciated. Evangelicals have become the new internationalists, pushing successfully for new American programs against AIDS and malaria, and doing superb work on issues from human trafficking in India to mass rape in Congo.
A pop quiz: What’s the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization?
It’s not Save the Children, and it’s not CARE — both terrific secular organizations. Rather, it’s World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian organization (with strong evangelical roots) whose budget has roughly tripled over the last decade.
World Vision now has 40,000 staff members in nearly 100 countries. That’s more staff members than CARE, Save the Children and the worldwide operations of the United States Agency for International Development — combined.
A growing number of conservative Christians are explicitly and self-critically acknowledging that to be “pro-life” must mean more than opposing abortion. The head of World Vision in the United States, Richard Stearns, begins his fascinating book, “The Hole in Our Gospel,” with an account of a visit a decade ago to Uganda, where he met a 13-year-old AIDS orphan who was raising his younger brothers by himself.
“What sickened me most was this question: where was the Church?” he writes. “Where were the followers of Jesus Christ in the midst of perhaps the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time? Surely the Church should have been caring for these ‘orphans and widows in their distress.’ (James 1:27). Shouldn’t the pulpits across America have flamed with exhortations to rush to the front lines of compassion?
“How have we missed it so tragically, when even rock stars and Hollywood actors seem to understand?”
Mr. Stearns argues that evangelicals were often so focused on sexual morality and a personal relationship with God that they ignored the needy. He writes laceratingly about “a Church that had the wealth to build great sanctuaries but lacked the will to build schools, hospitals, and clinics.”
In one striking passage, Mr. Stearns quotes the prophet Ezekiel as saying that the great sin of the people of Sodom wasn’t so much that they were promiscuous or gay as that they were “arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy.” (Ezekiel 16:49.)
Hmm. Imagine if sodomy laws could be used to punish the stingy, unconcerned rich!
The American view of evangelicals is still shaped by preening television blowhards and hypocrites who seem obsessed with gays and fetuses. One study cited in the book found that even among churchgoers ages 16 to 29, the descriptions most associated with Christianity were “antihomosexual,” “judgmental,” “too involved in politics,” and “hypocritical.”
Some conservative Christians reinforced the worst view of themselves by inspiring Ugandan homophobes who backed a bill that would punish gays with life imprisonment or execution. Ditto for the Vatican, whose hostility to condoms contributes to the AIDS epidemic. But there’s more to the picture: I’ve also seen many Catholic nuns and priests heroically caring for AIDS patients — even quietly handing out condoms.
One of the most inspiring figures I’ve met while covering Congo’s brutal civil war is a determined Polish nun in the terrifying hinterland, feeding orphans, standing up to drunken soldiers and comforting survivors — all in a war zone. I came back and decided: I want to grow up and become a Polish nun.
Some Americans assume that religious groups offer aid to entice converts. That’s incorrect. Today, groups like World Vision ban the use of aid to lure anyone into a religious conversation.
Some liberals are pushing to end the longtime practice (it’s a myth that this started with President George W. Bush) of channeling American aid through faith-based organizations. That change would be a catastrophe. In Haiti, more than half of food distributions go through religious groups like World Vision that have indispensable networks on the ground. We mustn’t make Haitians the casualties in our cultural wars.
A root problem is a liberal snobbishness toward faith-based organizations. Those doing the sneering typically give away far less money than evangelicals. They’re also less likely to spend vacations volunteering at, say, a school or a clinic in Rwanda.
If secular liberals can give up some of their snootiness, and if evangelicals can retire some of their sanctimony, then we all might succeed together in making greater progress against common enemies of humanity, like illiteracy, human trafficking and maternal mortality.
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Thanks to my friends @ Victory World Church for filming this and partnering with us on the ground in Haiti!
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A big shout out to my friends Milan Ford & Eddie Velez for making this possible.
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Hey!
I hope that you are doing amazingly well! We wanna knock out 3 birds with this 1 blog post and are excited to see YOU follow up right away!
1. REGISTER NOW FOR OUR VERY FIRST SMALL GROUPS!!!
We are wanting you to sign up now to be a part of one of our very first small groups!!! You DO NOT have to a member of Courageous Church (or even a Christian) and we encourage you to invite as many of your friends and family as you want to join a group. Anyone can be a part of a group, but you MUST register.
Each group is free and will provide a place for you to build relationships, learn timeless truths to help guide you through life, and ultimately complete a courageous project together! Can you tell I am excited??? :-)
We are having a special kick-off service this Sunday and some groups will begin meeting as early as Monday.
NEW UPDATE: The teen small group is now meeting @ 1pm instead of 5pm here in the Courageous Church offices. This way you can come to the 11am service, then go to Financial Peace University @ 1pm, and then have your teens meet with their small group. Encourage your teen to register and encourage their friends to register too. It’s going to be the bomb (is that still cool to say?)!
2. Sign up NOW for Financial Peace University! It will change your life!
NEW UPDATE: FPU begins on Sunday, March 7th and is offered @ 11am & 1pm every Sunday for 13 weeks.
A few VERY IMPORTANT details:
3. We need more volunteers in the office every day of the week to help with our efforts in Haiti, manage our daily operations, and so much more. We’re growing and need you to help carry the load, OK? Sign up now! Thanks!
BE COURAGEOUS!
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Launching Courageous Church has been the most exciting, challenging, rewarding endeavor of my life. I am not an expert though. I regularly guess and experiment. Sometimes I guess correctly.
Here are my 10 favorite correct guesses :-)
I have made a gazillion mistakes since we launched though (I list 10 here).
In the spirit of keeping it real, I laid out some brutally honest facts about our church here.
Church planting has been way harder than I expected. A few months ago I wrote about 10 of those difficulties.
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All of that said, I think we’ve learned a few transferable strategies on how a church can have a big launch (or grand opening) in large cities. Understand this, everything that we’ve done is not transferable. You must find your own voice/expression/strengths in your own context. Too often, church planters, with a genuine heart to grow a church, end up wrongly mimicking every detail of something they saw at their favorite church -and were SHOCKED when it didn’t work for them.
God does not desire that you simply be a carbon copy of what He is doing all around the world! Some programs or principles may transfer, but I urge you to first listen to the voice of God and get His heart for the people you are serving before trying any of what I am about to share.
Here are 3 practical strategies we used to launch Courageous Church that helped us have over 700 people at our first service (and have helped us throughout our first 13 months). I will be posting more details about these 3 strategies on Wednesday after I teach both of my sessions @ #cp10.
1. Pray Hard – PUSH HARD.
Breaking through the SKEPTICISM and noise and clutter and bright lights of the city is not easy. I regularly worked 24 hour days leading up to launching Courageous Church and we pushed hard. I mean like our lives depended on it. Strategies that work in the suburbs can easily cause church planters in the city to fall flat on their face and ultimately wonder cause a great deal of self-doubt. People in the city, more than the suburbs, don’t simply accept that churches are needed and it is going to take hard work to secure your place in the city.
2. Do so much good that it makes the news…a lot.
Leading up to the grand opening of Courageous Church, our 500toys initiative was covered extensively by several local news stations, the radio, The Today Show, Wall-Street Journal, was picked up by the AP, and ultimately covered in dozens of newspapers in countries all around the world. This was HUGE for us. It branded us as the church that loved kids and showed it in tangible ways.
Since this, including yesterday and today, our church has been covered by the local news media for GOOD news for six different initiatives and we have been featured on the official Facebook blog, WIRED magazine, in many church publications, and much more.
3. Make real connections via Twitter & Facebook (including effective Facebook ad campaigns).
Over half of the people (80 % if you include 2nd generation) that attend Courageous Church learned about us on Facebook and Twitter. However, our Facebook and Twitter campaigns DO NOT STAND ALONE. They are CLOSELY CONNECTED to #1 & #2 above. More details soon!
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We never aim to be on the local news, but it’s great when it happens – particularly if it helps our cause! Here we are on the local NBC affiliate -11 Alive News. Keep spreading the word about aHomeInHaiti.org and we’ll keep pushing hard!
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Hey!
I hope that you are doing very well! We are soooo excited to announce that Small Groups for Courageous Church will begin on March 1st, 2010!!! Space is limited for each group and we hope that you will register online RIGHT AWAY! It’s easy! Register HERE!
You do not need to be a member of our church (or any church) to be a part of our small groups, but you must register now.
Each small group is designed to do 3 things:
1. Help you build strong relationships with great people.
2. Foster an intimate and encouraging learning environment.
3. Produce PROVE-IT projects in Atlanta and around the world.
Get any materials you need here.
See you soon!
Shaun
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This is about Haiti.
I am going to cut to the chase and tell you why afterwards.
I need large donors that can purchase up between $2,000 – $500,000 worth of tents directly from the largest tent manufacturer in the United States to contact me. This tent manufacturer is privately offering us tents @ below wholesale costs (65% off of retail) and only has about 1,750 waterproof tents remaining.
Here is the tent. It normally costs $109 (and we have paid that much for it) and is being offered to us in bulk for $42. It has a full rain fly. It can fit a family of 4. It is wind-resistant and very portable. I will personally arrange for you to purchase these tents from the manufacturer.
We have launched a full-project for this effort at aHomeInHaiti.org and hope that you can help there in some way if you cannot help with this request. On this website we explain why we need tents, show you how to buy and send them, and much more.
We are now partnering with great, reliable shipping & distribution partners but cannot do this without you.
If you can help, please email me @ shaunking@courageous.tv at your earliest convenience.
Be Courageous!
Your Friend!
Shaun
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Hey Everybody!
As you may have heard me say recently, we are VERY EXCITED to be offering Financial Peace University at Courageous Church. This is an intense 13 week program designed for YOU to be educated and empowered to be in full control of your financial health & future. It begins on Sunday, February 28th and you now have just 10 days to sign up and order the required materials.
I’m taking it. I’m 30 years old, I have tons of student loans, more debt than I want, and need to make sure that my financial future is stronger than my past. Can I get a witness? :-)
Seriously though, we are expecting a ton of you to jump on board and cannot wait to share this experience with you. Do you have peace financially? Let’s get some!
We will share more info about FPU over the next 10 days, but watching these videos will give you a great sample of what to expect!
A few VERY IMPORTANT details:
Cannot wait to go through this with you all! Sign up now to reserve your place!
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Beautiful baby Landina is just 3 months old. Both of her parents were killed in the Haitian earthquake. She had to have her little arm amputated and is in URGENT need of a major brain surgery within the next few days or she will die. She has a terrible, painful skull fracture.
The problem is that the doctors cannot receive flight clearance to get her out of Haiti and into the UK or US to be operated on. Her surgery is too complicated for the facilities there and she must receive clearance right away.
I am working now with many others to help make this happen. If you by chance know anyone that can help our cause, please let me know and email me directly @ shaunking@courageous.tv
In the absence of that, please watch her in this gut-wrenching video and PRAY! Pray for her. Pray she hangs in there until we can get her to a proper hospital. Pray that her pain is eased. Pray that she is cared for with meticulous love. Ask your kids to pray for her. PRAY! I just believe in my heart that this case will break for her! Join your faith with mine and let’s believe that doors will open very soon! Feel free to write out your prayers and thoughts in my comment section after viewing the video.
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UPDATE: We have secured free, reliable shipping directly to Haiti over the next 10 days.
Dozens of people from Atlanta (and around the world) are working with us to make sure that every person in Haiti has temporary waterproof shelter before the rainy season/hurricane season hits. When this happens, disaster will strike if the 700,000+ people that are still living under sheets with sticks don’t have something stronger.
Yes. Homes need to be rebuilt. We are working on that. This will take months and years to complete and we have to make sure that people have shelter NOW before the rains come in just a few weeks. A few very quick points:
BUY ANY TENTS from this Amazon.com wishlist (they are approved, waterproof tents) and send them directly to us @
Shaun King, Courageous Church
1330 West Peachtree Street
Suite 560
Atlanta, GA 30309
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I need your vote. So does my friend Carel Pedre. We are finalists for different categories in the Shorty Awards – which are for the best Twitter Users in the world.
Believe it or not, I don’t feel great about shameless self-promotion. However, my concerns about shameless self-promotion are outweighed by my desire to help bring hope and solutions to people that need them both.
You don’t get money when you win the Shorty Award. They don’t even pay for your trip to the Awards Ceremony. However, I feel like the influence we will get from the platform provided is worth lobbying for. Carel & I are using Twitter in every way we know how to save & improve lives in Haiti.
In my non-profit category and in his innovation category, we are the only finalists focusing on Haiti and we will both use any attention or influence we receive to continue to bring HOPE!
Here are 5 quick points:
1. You must leave a REASON when you vote or it will not count.
2. If you have voted for us already, you don’t have to vote again, but can tell your friends/followers to vote.
3. Voting Ends @ 12pm EST today (FRIDAY)
4. Vote here for me in the NON PROFIT CATEGORY
5. Vote here for my friend Carel Pedre in the Innovation Category
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