Parishioners turn a Boca church’s $8,000
into $30,000 in donations to others in need
The Munson family, (clockwise from front) Pierce, Emerson, Melinda, Ken and Paula,
hold their bricks. Members of Advent Lutheran Church were given play bricks
containing cash ranging from $20 to $100, with the sole instruction to use it to ‘break down a wall.’
Photo provided
Related story: Parishioners share stories of how they used the money
By Janis Fontaine
In November, the leadership at Advent Lutheran Church in Boca Raton came up with a clever way to shake things up among its congregation.
One Sunday morning, church members and visitors arrived to find a wall of brightly colored cardboard preschool bricks stacked in the sanctuary. During the service, members were invited up to choose a brick. Inside, they found money — cash! — in amounts varying from $20 to $100.
“The pastors told the congregation that $8,000 in benevolence dollars were being handed out to them to do with as they were led by God,” Pastor Andrew Hagen said. “The only rule was that they had to use the money to ‘break down a wall’ that was preventing someone from experiencing the abundant life Jesus came to bring us.
“They could keep the money if they needed it. They could donate the money to their favorite cause, inside or outside the church. Or they could find a way to build it into more money.”
It wasn’t the first time this had happened, but it was the first time at Advent.
“A lot of churches do this,” Hagen said. “We had a pretty good year and our theme for the year was ‘A Church Without Walls.’ We wanted to really get people involved with making the decisions about where the money should go.”
What they did was jump-start an explosion of random acts of kindness.
People immediately began talking about it, Hagen said. “It was like, ‘We’re all in this together.’”
It built a bond among the church members.
Over the next month, the church continued buzzing with people talking about how and when and where to use their dollars. There was a lot of discussion about what “wall-breaking” meant. Families sat down together and debated the best way to use the money.
People behaved very differently toward that free $20 bill than they did with an identical bill out of their wallet, Hagen said. “It was like it was sacred money, and they had to take great care to give it back.”
Some people made the decision quickly, in most cases matching the funds with their own and donating the money to known church charities, including Lutheran World Relief, the Village of Hope in Haiti, and Lutheran Church of South Sudan for its “$40 for 40 Seminarians Campaign.”
Others returned the money to the church, often with an additional donation of their own, because they trusted the pastors to make the best use of the money.
Some people used the money to help people in their own community, while some helped people continents away.
“It’s impossible to assess the total impact of this program,” Hagen said. “But we believe that the $8,000 was multiplied to over $30,000 in donations to this point.”
And some plans haven’t yet come to fruition. That number still could grow.
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