How I Got Into This...

Get ready for a little rambling.

It's going to start out slowly, but I promise there is a point.

First, a little background info -

My name is Paul Quin, and I am a husband and father of a 5 year old daughter and a 6 month old baby boy. I live and work in the Houston area and am a member of Grace Presbyterian Church.

For over 40 years, Grace Presbyterian has been reaching out to the community and challenging people to step outside of their comfort zones and give a little help to those in need.

This outreach takes many forms and occurs every day in the Houston area, throughout the United States and all over the world.

If you are interested in more information about Grace Presbyterian Church and the great work they are doing, visit http://www.houstonsgrace.org/.

Okay.

Now that the background info is out of the way, we can get to the good part.

The Kingdom Assignment

On January 24th, 2010, Grace continued its history of outreach by offering a special challenge to its members.

During the middle of last Sunday's service, our pastor challenged everyone in the pews to take $100 and simply do something with it that helps someone else. They called it "The Kingdom Assignment."

The church would just give the $100 to anyone who accepted the challenge. No strings attached and no real rules. Just use it in some way to make life better for someone else and then share your story by April 11th.

It could simply be given directly to someone who needed it or multiplied in any way that could be imagined by the person accepting the challenge.

Here is a short video that describes "The Kingdom Assignment" and gives a few examples of what some amazing people have accomplished.



Here we go...

Well, as you probably guessed, I accepted that challenge.

Before I had too much time to think about what I was getting into, I stood up, kept my eyes forward and met my fate.

I can barely remember being handed the $100 bill, and I was a complete mess for the rest of the service as I tried to think of what I could do that was worthy of the trust put in me.

I thought about all of the absolutely amazing things that had been done before. I thought about the message of generosity, trust and faith that were part of the sermon that day and how "The Kingdom Assignment" embodied all of those things...

...and then it hit me...

...there might be a way to put generosity, faith and trust in motion.

A way for people to be generous and have that generosity multiplied.

A way to show not only my faith in God, but in the people around me.

A way to give and receive the trust of my friends, my coworkers and maybe even people that I'll never see face-to-face.