Support Your Local Starving Messianic

Religious Jews have massive annual fundraisers. Televised fundraisers with dancing Chasidic children singing Shlomo Carlebach and Yosef Karduner songs.
Christians pass the plate every Sunday. Trinity Broadcasting Network brings on famous old-tyme gospel singers and raises enough money to pay for golden chandeliers at TBN headquarters.
With Messianics … we don’t do so much. Certainly not as aggressively, I’d say.
Many Messianic ministries are in a difficult position. They can’t pass a virtual plate around. They don’t hold annual fundraisers. They rely on our donations. Many rely on us purchasing their materials.
And because many Messianic ministries are more interested in advancing the Kingdom than making money, they’ll often give away materials for free.

• A number of Messianic music ministries have sent me their music and chords and song sheets free of charge.
  
• First Fruits of Zion have sent me several books, teaching CDs, video DVDs, and some nice Messianic t-shirt swag on their dime.
  
• Some Messianic and Christian book publishers have sent their materials at no cost to me.
  
• TnnOnline and Outreach Israel Ministries has sent me several booklets at their expense. (And apparently give away 90% of their material free!)

Their graciousness and generosity is wonderful, yet in this Age of Free, we’ve almost come to expect free. Software is free, information is free, and music/video media is cheap (or free if you wear an eye-patch). We’ve come to expect it.
Making things worse is, the reliably-donating few individuals, having suffered in the US economic downturn themselves, have scaled back their donations to Messianic ministries.
This has resulted in some tough financial times for some of my favorite ministries:
FFOZ had to lay off some folks last year, and FFOZ head Boaz Michael has said recent shifts have caused a staggering blow to their finances.

The financial impact already promises to be significant. Not meaning to sound alarmist, but this single theological shift could actually financially sink our ministry because we already operate on a shoestring with little margin.
-Boaz Michael

Outreach Israel Ministries has stated donations have dropped significantly in the last few months due to the economic downturn:

Supporting Outreach Israel is very important in the current economic climate. Over the past four to five months, our offerings and contributions have dropped off between 30-50%. This shortfall needs to be made up, especially given our new YouTube video podcasts and printing projects.
-J.K. McKee

Other Messianic music ministries I follow have said essentially the same thing: help!

Can you spare some coin?

I know, we’re all dirt poor and are eating Ramen noodles for dinner every night. I hear you.

Mmmmm…25 cent dinner-in-a-bag.

Me? I’m currently working a full-time job and a part-time job to support my family. I have a 9 month old in diapers and a 9 year old in private school. That gets expensive.
But you know what? I stopped at the gas station this morning and I bought a $2.00 bottle of caffeinated goodness. A little wake-me-up. Do that 5 days a week, and you’re up to $10.00 already. Or if you go to your local ubiquitous in-vogue yuppie hipster coffee shop, you probably spend $4-6/day on bean-flavored water.
Here’s what I’m going to do, fine blog readers. 1 week every month, I’m skipping my caffeine fix. Yes, I’ll be groggy and irritable that whole week. I’ll probably take it out on you fine blog readers. Then I’m going to take that money and send the measly $10.00 savings onto one of my favorite Messianic ministries via nice and easy PayPal online.
What Messianic ministry do you benefit from, fine blog reader? Would you consider donating a small chunk of change to them today? Even a measly 5 bucks would help. Please give. Or I’ll be forced to send this guy to your doorstep and beg for your pennies with ShamWow® towels.
In all seriousness, give what you can to support the folks that sacrifice their comfortable lives to advance God’s Kingdom.
p.s. Those Google ads you see after every post here on the Kineti blog? Every time you click them, Google sends me a few nickels. When it accumulates, I donate 100% of the proceeds to a Messianic ministry of my choice.