If you live in America and celebrate Christmas there is one thing I can promise you. You’re gonna get OR give a gift this year that has been regifted!

Don’t be ashamed. We all do it. It’s part of the American celebration of Christmas. Here’s when you’ll know it’s time to brush off the regifting skills, and as your pastor I want to make sure you are fully equipped! Here are the steps to regifting.

1. You remember at the last minute that you need to give someone a gift, but you don’t have time to go shopping for them.
2. Don’t panic.
3. Pull out that sweater you never wear, or the box of candy you never ate, or the Justin Bieber CD that’s propping up your kitchen table to keep it from rocking.
4. Brush off the gift above, making it look as new as possible (make sure no personal notes are left behind from the person who gave it to you).
5. Rewrap it.
6. Regift it.

Then sit back and enjoy no longer having that clutter in your house while making the day of someone else! Simple!

There’s also another way I want to encourage you to consider regifting this year. Each year at Christmastime, OneLife Church collects our one-and-only special offering of the year. We call it the Big Regift because just like we all do from time to time with our Christmas presents, we believe it’s time to give back to God something that’s already been gifted to us: our finances!

We believe that everything we have comes from God (James 1:17). He owns it all (Psalm 50:9-12)! Even everything I have is because HE gave me the ability to earn and enjoy it (Deuteronomy 8:18). So each year we come together as a church and “regift” to God what is already his in the first place.

I challenge each OneLife to join me and my family in giving your biggest gift this Christmas back to Jesus through the Big Regift Christmas Offering. This year the offering will specifically help our church finish paying for our move to Jubilee (which has helped us grow by an average of 120 people per week in just 2 months!) and to focus on three strategic ministry partners in 2012: Angelic Homeless Ministries, Ignite Church Planting Network, and Powell Schools (elementary, middle, and high).

This Sunday, December 11 is the official day of the Big Regift. We’ve set a goal of $25,000 for this year’s offering, and already more than $10,000 has been given! But to get to our goal, we need each person and family to do their part. If you are like me and prefer online giving, you can do that even now at www.onelifeknox.com/give by selecting “Christmas Offering”.

I’m praying that you will spend time this week asking God what you should give in addition to your regular tithes and offerings to help us make this happen. And then I can’t wait to celebrate all that we’ve come together to “regift” this Christmas!

October was Pastor Appreciation Month and my family at OneLife Church did not disappoint. We received so many cards, notes, and gifts that it blew our minds! It was such an encouragement to read about how so many lives have been changed and impacted by the local church. To be the leader of that for the past two years and read how much it has made a difference in so many lives was unbelievably humbling.

I wish I had time to personally thank each person who gave us a card or a gift, but we received so many that I literally wouldn’t have time to thank everyone individually! So I pass on my sincere thanks from me and the rest of my family to each of you who loved and honored us so well throughout the past month. We love you!

The blog has been silent for a couple weeks because things at the OneLife office have been crazy! But crazy in an incredible way. There are so many stories of changed lives that I could fill an entire novel with them. On top of that, we are gearing up for a summer that will impact our community and get us ready for the fall (yeah, we’re already thinking about the fall!).

One thing we are doing for the summer is getting into the 21st Century with online giving. If conversations at your house are at all like mine, some of the most used words are “Where’s the debit card?!” because we never have cash and “Have we paid that bill yet?” because only one or two aren’t paid automatically each month. So when it comes to our generosity to the church, why should we expect things to be much different?

So we are making a push to encourage anyone who calls OneLife their home to Automate the Important. If generosity is important to you – and I sure hope it is since Jesus said our heart and treasure will be in the same place – then I encourage you to automate it! Our tech team has done an amazing job developing a system that is easy to use and will allow you to set recurring gifts weekly, monthly, or semi-monthly. Just like you do it for bills and mortgage payments – do it for church!

I encourage you to take just a minute (because that’s all it will take!) and set up your generosity to be automated. You won’t have to remember cash or checks on Sunday mornings or feel guilty if you forget (and trust me, it’s even happened to us!). Harrison and I have automated our giving to be automatically given each month, and it is a great feeling to know that our generosity will continue to impact many lives without me having to remember each week.

See for yourself how easy this is at www.onelifeknox.com/give and set up your online giving account today so you can Automate the Important!

When generosity increases in a church, does it accomplish more than just padding a bank account or raising salaries? I’ve learned the answer is a big, fat YES!

A few short months ago, our 13-month old church was struggling financially. Attendance and ministry need had outgrown giving in a big way. The words “spending freeze” had become so common around our office that we actually started wondering if this was a church or the dang Weather Channel.

After a couple months of just hoping it would miraculously turn around, I decided we just needed to work on it. So we did. First up was a Christmas offering that we dreamed of reaching $10,000 (considering last year’s brought in a whopping $800, this was quite a stretch!). Lots of prayer and tons of hard work later we shattered our goal of $10,000 and topped $16,000!

Let the party begin. We had arrived!

That is, until January rolled around, our foot came off the gas, and we successfully had the worst financial month in our now 17-month history.

At that point we could just continue our spending freeze and hope for change to happen, or we could get intentional and strategic. So back to work we went, being intentional and strategic about creating a culture of generosity in our church. Vision casting, teaching, follow-ups, and online giving got our full attention. And the results have been nothing short of the miracle I was hoping for months ago.

Over the past three weeks we have seen the highest attendance, highest giving, and – most importantly – the most people to come to Christ in a three-week time period since our church began. Is it a coincidence that as generosity has increased so, too, has life-change and attendance? Not a chance.

When OneLifers become generous, spiritual maturity increases and they are more bought in to the vision. When spiritual maturity and buy-in increases, momentum increases. People don’t miss as many Sundays. They invite more friends. They pray for their church. The Gospel is spread, and lives are changed.

Creating a culture of generosity is about much more than numbers and dollar signs. It is truly about life-change and spreading the Gospel. But it takes work – work that’s definitely worth it in the end.

Thank you, OneLifers, for working to be a generous church!

* Special thanks to Casey Graham and The Change Group for helping me so much over the past few months to grow in this area! If you are a pastor or church leader, definitely check him out.

If you’ve been a Christian for any amount of time, you’ve probably had an experience where God completely proved you wrong and proved how He is the One in control.

That happened to me this weekend.

This past Sunday we took up our annual Christmas offering called “The Big [re]Gift.” A few weeks ago our staff met and set a huge goal for this offering. It was one that would take an outpouring of God-like generosity to meet. Honestly, I was skeptical if we would really meet it. Then consider the fact that there was snow forecast for Knoxville. That’s like kryptonite for churches around here! Everyone stocks up on bread and milk while waiting for our blizzard of two inches of snow to hit (sarcasm MAJORLY implied!). And sure enough, on a snowy Sunday that kept around 1/3 of our regular attenders away, I thought that surely meant we wouldn’t even get close to reaching our goal.

I was wrong.

As of this morning, we are at 80% of our huge goal we set! Why is this a big deal? It means our church is going to be helping other new churches, an orphanage in Haiti, ministries at UT and in our community, people in our community who need us to show them Jesus, and people within our church who are in need. This pumps me up!

I am so unbelievably humbled and thankful to serve such a generous group of people. I’m still keeping the goal secret to not discourage anyone from giving what God leads them to give one way or the other. But on January 2 as we kick off 2011, I am going to share that goal with you and you will be blown away, too.

If you missed this past Sunday because of the weather or didn’t come prepared to give to The Big [re]Gift, you still can do so at any of our services in December. Just use the blue envelope that will be in your hand out. Or use our new online giving system that you can find at www.onelifeknox.com/give.

Thank you, OneLifers, for re-giving what God has already given to you and for modeling God-like generosity. It is truly making a difference and will continue to make a difference for so many lives!