Jon Acuff, the writer of the immensely popular “Stuff Christians Like” (which I link to liberally), is doing something I believe to be quite monumental. While usually writing satire on the Christian faith, he sometimes writes seriously on the Christian life. Today is one of those days.
You’ll have to read his latest post for the back story, but he’s essentially harnessing the compassion of the hundreds of thousands of people that read his blog to build an entire Kindergarten school in Vietnam. An entire school. In Vietnam.
He’s set up a partnership with Samaritan’s Purse (the charitable organization headed by Franklin Graham, the son of Billy Graham) to collect donations for this endeavor. Jon wanted to collect the $30,000 needed to build the school by December 31, 2009–the end of this year.
I donated a few bucks this morning, and have been refreshing the page throughout the day. To my utter amazement and satisfaction, the current total, through one day is over $24,000!
In a little over 15 hours, a collection of people from across the globe have harnessed social media to birth a Kindergarten school in the middle of Vietnam. Incredible.
This is a fantastic example of what can happen when Christians all around the world embrace the possibilities of New Media. What a great illustration of how God takes a little from each person and magnifies the total. If you want to be a part of this, click on the link to Jon’s site below.