c. 2008 Religion News Service

DECATUR, Ala. _ Senior 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: The money was to be used to bless someone else. Recipients could not return it to the offering plate. And they had to report what happened.

It was the longest offertory in his career, Ripley said with a laugh.

“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 say. Handing members a visible representation of how dollar bills can become tools to help other people energized his congregation of 1,900, he said.

Some members knew exactly how they would use their money. Others prayed for a week or more. Some found that 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 that she has been sponsoring with her own money.

The testimonies of the adventures of generosity unfurl for page after page on the church’s Web site, http://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 their old neighborhood of fairly expensive homes, “we didn’t have a chance to interact with people who really need anything,” Dara said. “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 doesn’t add up. Reconditioning bikes and buying helmets came to much more than $40.

But God doesn’t balance books the way humans do, Richard 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 hand grips, a new tire, a kick stand, and other improvements was more than repayment for their investment.

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

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

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

(Kay Campbell writes for The Huntsville Times in Huntsville, Ala.)

KRE/DEA END CAMPBELL

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