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Tired of materialism stealing the joy of the Gospel at Christmas in your church? Imago Dei's Rick McKinley was. Last year he joined with four other pastors to try to reverse the trend in their churches. And that's exactly what they did. Read their story, and find out how your church can get involved this year.

"It would be nice if the poor were to get even half of the money that is spent in studying them." - Bill Vaughan

"Anyone who has struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor." - James Baldwin

A survey that formed the basis of Thom Rainer's book Surprising Insights of the Unchurched showed that 43 percent of pastors, in what the book termed as effective churches, had relationships that made them accountable for personal evangelism. Only 2 percent of pastors in churches that were not particularly effective had such relationships. - Source: Thom Rainer, Surprising Insights of the Unchurched (Zondervan, 2001)

"Most of the time when we think of church, we think of Sunday. But Sunday is really about Monday. If our job as Christians was simply to get together and worship God, we could do that in Heaven. But our job is more than that: that's why God has us strategically placed right where we are." - John Ortberg, “The Church on Monday Morning” (sermon at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church 3/12/06)

"The great tragedy of life is not unanswered prayer, but unoffered prayer." - F. B. Meyer