Church finds a surplus and gives it away

DECATUR, Ala. (RNS) —Pastor Doug Ripley looked at Decatur Baptist Church’s books and quickly realized the annual budget was totally out of whack.

But he knew exactly what to do next. He gave away $10,000.

“August and September were two of our biggest financial months,” said Ripley. “We were $13,000 over.”

So, he packaged $10,000 in envelopes of $5, $10, $20 and a few $100 bills and put the piles of envelopes into the offering baskets. He included directions: Use the money to bless someone else.

Richard and Dara Cobb took the money they received from Decatur Baptist Church and pooled it with others to fix a neighborhood boy’s bike. (RNS PHOTO/Kay Campbell/The Huntsville Times)

Recipients could not return it to the offering plate. And they had to report what happened. It was a lengthy offeratory.

“People felt so uncomfortable, reaching into the same basket they put money in,” Ripley said. “And you multiply that moment of hesitation by every person, and it took several minutes to pass out.”

Decatur Baptist is known for its mission work, both locally and around the world. Traveling to places of deep poverty in the world has changed the hearts of the members, church leaders stressed.

Handing members a visible representation of how dollar bills can become tools to help other people energized the church, Ripley said.

Some members knew exactly how they would use their money. Others prayed for a week or more. Some found a simple gesture, such as taking flowers to an elderly woman, put them into a situation of helping with their time and presence in other ways.

Many members pooled their money with family members to make one big gesture—helping someone with medical bills, buying baskets of groceries for the community food pantry, sending a gift directly to missionaries, helping a teacher buy workbooks or school supplies for a poor child.

And most recipients added dollars to the money they’d received in their envelopes. One teenager went house-to-house to begin a collection to help buy a cow for a girl in Africa whom she has been sponsoring with her own money.

The testimonies of the adventures of generosity fill page after page on the church’s website, www.DecaturBaptist.org.

“For most, the money in that envelope was a drop in the bucket,” Ripley said.

Richard and Dara Cobb are among the Decatur Baptist members who took their envelopes home to pray over. Home for the Cobbs is in one of the economically mixed areas of Decatur—a place they intentionally chose when they married a few years ago because they wanted to live near people who needed their help.

In the area where they lived previously, Mrs. Cobb said: “We didn’t have a chance to interact with people who really need anything. Here, there are some people struggling. There are drug dealers, prostitutes. This is a safe house.”

When the Cobbs opened their envelopes, they each found $5. And they each had the same idea: They would fix a bike for a neighborhood boy.

But if they fixed the boy’s bike, they realized they would need to fix his brother’s, too. Some friends heard about their plan and contributed their money so the boys could each have a safety helmet.

Still, even with the addition, the math didn’t add up. Reconditioning bikes and buying helmets came to much more than $40. But God doesn’t balance books the way humans do, Cobb said. “When you give, it comes back to you,” he said.

His wife added: “Brother Doug is always telling us, ‘God will give more through you than to you.’”

The joy she saw on the boy’s face when he examined his bicycle once it had new handgrips, a new tire, a kickstand, and other improvements was more than repayment for their investment.

“Why would your church do this for my brother and me?” he asked Mrs. Cobb. “I love your church.”

Spreading love is what Christians are supposed to do, Ripley said. Human beings are meant to be a channel, not a reservoir, of divine grace.

“When we give, it unleashes God to prove how great he is—that he will open the windows of heaven and pour out his blessings,” he said.