The Power Of Online Community To Save Lives

Jon Acuff, founder of Stuff Christians Like is back at it leveraging the power of online community to save lives.

This time the challenge he’s set before the community of Christians who like stuff is:

Can they raise enough money in 24 hours to provide 1,000 people in the Nakaseke District of Uganda with a malaria net?

The project is in partnership with SafeWorld Nexus,  a non-profit that serves the people of Uganda and Haiti to promote community health, clean water, and protecting children.

You can follow the project’s progress on:

• the ...

Open letter to the readers of Stuff Christians Like

Dear Fellow SCL Reader:

As you may know, I’m a big fan of Jon Acuff… Big – but not too big. I mean I think he’s great and all but it’s not like he’s all I think about all the time. Wow, that sounds crazy.

I’m being serious though, I’m not some crazy Jay-Cuff super-fan all foaming at the mouth, flipping through my notebook of drawings I’ve done of Jon side-hugging a unicorn or anything like that. That’d be weird.

I can prove that’s not me: one time I gave Jon a ride to a Starbucks and I didn’t try to kidnap him or anything….

I mean I totally could have. But didn’t.

See, not crazy.

But I digress. As I was saying, I am a fan of Jon and I appreciate his writing at Stuff Christians Like...

A Six Year Old’s Sense of Injustice and the Power of an Online Community

Holy crap. Jon Acuff and the Stuff Christians Like blog community totally hijacked my day. Here’s the recap:

• Jon Acuff of StuffChristiansLike.net is inspired by his 6 year old daughter’s sense of injustice that there are hungry children around the world;
• Jon, still reeling from how many people have come to enjoy and support SCL gets an idea: leverage the power of the community to do something big for a charity;
• Jon reaches out to the community for inspiration as to what charity to work with;
• Jon settles on Samaritan’s Purse and works with them to coordinate the building of a kindergarten in rural Vietnam… all Jon needs is to raise $30,000.

Which brings us to today. This morning ...

Update on Stuff Christians Like Building a Kindergarten in Vietnam

I’ve often thought that if you compare Christian culture to a high school, then the Christian blogosphere is the hallways of that high school. It’s where you congregate with your friends. You get to see who likes who. People goof off, talk about inane things. The jocks beat up on the nerds. The nerds talk in secret about how when Jesus comes back those jocks will get theirs.

For me, high school was the first time I ever witnessed a fight. I’d seen fights on TV and in movies but in high school I actually experienced a number of fights close up. I remember vividly how I felt every time I witnessed a fight. I felt scared. I felt kind of sick. I’ve talked before how violence is unnatural and it affects us profoundly whenever we are exposed to it. That is what I experienced those times I was around when a fight would break out.

Well done, good and faithful servant!

I met Jon Acuff at the Christian Web Conference earlier this year. I got to talk to him a bit, primarily about the tremendous responsibility that comes with being funny (I think that’s what we talked about, it’s all a blur now). I saw him again at the Cultivate conference in Chicago and got to spend a little more time with him. Jon Acuff is a good guy.