Friday, 13 November 2009

• Stuff Christians Like: Raising Money to Build Kindergartens in Vietnam

  The blogosphere is a surprisingly powerful thing. Celebrities are made, rumors are spread, and people are united all in one abstract, digitally existent universe. Revelife is a part of this world, and there are many other more popular Christian blogs out there. One such blog is called Stuff Christians Like.

  Written by the young and vibrant Jon Acuff, Stuff Christians Like is a site dedicated to explaining—and sometimes poking fun at—the things that some might consider characteristic of Christians. Here are some of my favorites:

  #106. The Side Hug
  #129. Chick-Fil-A
  #254. Secretly wanting to name your son “Aragorn” or your daughter “Arwen.”
  #476. Facebook friend suggesting Jesus.
  

  These examples are all humorous, but Acuff also hits upon some serious issues. Recently, he discussed the plight of starving children in third world countries. After feeling the weight of the issue on his shoulders, he contacted Samaritan's Purse and asked them how he could help. They responded by telling him about a kindergarten that needed to be built in Vietnam.

  “It costs $30,000,” Jon wrote in his blog on November 9th. “I’d like to raise it by December 31, 2009.”

  It only took 18 hours to raise the money. Rather than simply rejoicing and going back to life as usual, Jon raised the bar: he decided to go for two. In the last four days, Jon and his readers have raised almost enough money to build two kindergartens in Vietnam, and from the looks of things, there's no end in sight.

  “What blows me away about this whole thing,” writes fellow blogger Scott McClellan of Collide Magazine, “is that it’s an awesome example of how God can use people and potentially trivial media such as blogs and Twitter to change the world. Sure, you can keep blogging about your cat and tweeting about your Starbucks order if you want to, or you could set your sights a little higher.”

  It's so easy to write blogs off as inconsequential; it's so easy to write Revelife off as nothing more than a place where some of us get to write posts and everyone else gets to criticize them. What Jon has proven through the example of his blog is that there is something much bigger going on here. We have the ability to do something huge with this site, and it makes me wonder...

  What do you think Revelife could do if we all banded together? Who would you like to see Revelife help, and in what way?

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