For those of you who don’t attend Southland, we have a very fun club that only takes a dollar to join, thus its name—the dollar club.

Your church needs to start one. Every week, we challenge everyone in our church family to give an extra dollar. It’s funny how everyone in the U.S. loves to talk about the value of an American dollar, but I’m not so sure everyone really understands just how much good a single dollar can accomplish. So, challenge everyone to pony up an extra buck each week and then give it all away each week.

Here’s how it goes down at Southland…we take our weekly attendance and based on how many people come to church over the course of the weekend, that’s how many dollars we give away the following week. For example, we had 11,200 people this past weekend, so we gave $11,200 to a widow in need this week. Each week we have the joy of surprising a complete stranger in our community with a large sum of money that has absolutely no strings attached. We’ve paid for people’s surgeries, put roofs on houses, helped people purchase a reliable car, pay off debt, keep the bank from foreclosing on their house…on and on we could go. Don’t let all the naysayers and non-generous people tell you all the reasons why it won’t work! Just do it! Because guess what? It really does work! And guess what else? It’s a blast! In a down economy, there is nothing better than being ridiculously generous.