What is Seeds & Needs?

[Stuart]

Seeds & Needs is a great outreach event that was dreamed up in an exciting church Sheri and I planted in Wichita Falls, Texas — Lighthouse Prayer Center. The idea was the brain child of several of the lay leaders in the church, and we did two or three of these events each year (including Christmas and back-to-school).

The concept is simple — and powerful: match a resource of someone who no longer needs it with a person who does need it. In ourfirst Seeds & Needs service, Sheri and I gave away a range. We had been blessed with a range that had closed burners, which left us with a perfectly good one to give away. The neighborhood drunk came in and said he needed that stove. I'm sure that the stove was not the reason, but that man kept coming to our church, was radically saved, and later went through the Heartland School of Ministry.

We want to begin sharing resources and blessing churches and groups in this way. Too often churches will order something like a VBS curriculum and only use it one time. That same curriculum could be given (or at least loaned) to another church — either later in the same summer or the next year. The stuff sitting in your church's closet could provide more useful ministry in the hands of another church. Another example is churches upgrading to new computers. There are still churches in our conference that do not have a computer yet.

So it's simple. If you have something you no longer use in ministry, post it as a seed! If you need something that you think another church may have, post it as a need!