Community Exchange

What is the Community Exchange?

My family has been attending Jacob's Well from the very beginning, and we have been blessed to be a part of the extended community of Trinity and Town Point since then as well. Now, here is where I must confess, that as blessed as we feel, that doesn't always translate into us giving as generously as we should. With three teenage boys to feed and one in college, moneys always seems to be an issue in our house.

Recently though, some things have occurred that have brought an idea that was wandering around in the back of my mind to the surface. One of the things that happened is that our youngest son Mark needs to build a bat house for his Mammal Study merit badge. Secondly, we have spent an enormous amount of money on car repairs over the last few months. Thirdly, we recently received some estimates on having the interior of our home painted with the ridiculous idea that we might be able to afford to have that done.

Now you may be asking yourself - what do a bat house, car repairs and painting have in common? Well, I didn't know either until our middle son Tyler said something. Now, first you need to understand Tyler. Tyler is fifteen, but sometimes wise beyond his years. Tyler is also the best babysitter you could ever hope to meet. Over the recent holidays, Tyler earned $25 babysitting one evening. As I wa commenting to him about what a great job he had done, Tyler said, "Well, Mom, everybody has something they're good at."

And there it was - the idea! What if, as a community, we could share our talents and hae the church benefit as well? I don't know the first thing about building a bat house, or repairing my car, or even how to paint my house the right way - but I bet someone in our extended community does!

As much a I would like to give more financially to the church, I'm guessing that there a lot of folks like me who feel like they could give up some time easier than they could give up some money.

So here's my 'brainstorm' - it occurred to me that the $25 that Tyler earned for babysitting was pretty pricey for a young couple to have an evening out. But if Tyler was willing to donate a few hours a week or a month (and he is!) to share his child cre talent, with the idea that the person receiving the service would give 10% of the value of his service to the church, everybody benefits! Tyler benefits by glorifying God in sharing his talents (or, in Tyler's words "that warm fuzzy feeling"), the person receiving the service benefits - $2.50 for an evening out - a bargain! - and the church benefits by receiving ten percent of the value of his services.

Of course, there needs to be a way to publicize our various talents. And... one of my husband's talents is web design. He is enthusiastic about creating a web site to coordinate talents with needs and needs with talents. Since it's highly unlikely that someone will post building bat houses as one of their talents, the site would also be designed to allow individuals to post services requested. I post my son's need for a bat house, the talented individual contacts me, we agree on what would be a reasonable commercial rate for the time involved (I, of course, would pay for materials), my son has a fabulous bat house, and I donate ten percent of that rate to the church.