When Jesus healed the paralytic (found in Mark 2:12), people left exclaiming "We've never seen anything like this before!" I've been saying that a lot the last few days.

Experience Worship has been raising money for our first resource project, a book titled "Perspectives on Worship: 52 stories, thoughts and insights." This book was written by 26 authors discussing different aspects of worship. Our purpose is to help people expand their thoughts and definition of worship so that worship becomes an attainable, practical, not-just-musical part of their everyday lives. This book helps create dialogue in small group discussions and will be the first of many resources we create. I am very excited and proud to release it. It’s not just ok; it’s really good!

For weeks now I’ve been brainstorming about how to raise the necessary funds to finish the book; we needed about $12,000 more than we had. We’re a relatively young organization and so far we’ve operated on next to nothing financially. The planning committee for our Face to Face evenings decided that our objective this time should be raising the money we need to complete the book. We decided on a highly interactive method: handing out ten dollar bills to everyone in attendance who was willing to participate with the goal to multiply every $10 bill as many times as possible in six weeks.

About 2 weeks prior to the June Face to Face, I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream. As crazy as it sounds, in my dream I was standing in front of the Friday night group explaining ways to multiply their $10 bill. I had given several ideas when I walked over to someone in my dream and asked if they would consider multiplying my $10 bill. The person (in my dream) responded that they would multiply it by 10,000, which I realized was $100,000.

I instantly woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. I thought surely it was pizza or caffeine. Something! But my day before had been just like any other, and I don’t ever have dreams that I remember – especially not dreams where Experience Worship is given $100,000! I didn't tell anyone about the "crazy" dream until Wednesday morning, two days before our event. I told my wife and she looked at me from across the kitchen and just said, "Regi?!?" It was in that "are you crazy?" tone of voice, but a nice tone nonetheless.

I went on to the office carrying my dream with me and wondering what was up. I received a call that afternoon from a gentleman who called to tell me he wanted to partner with us at Experience Worship. I told him about the fundraising project we were about to undertake that Friday and I explained what it was for. He offered to match anything we raised for the next 6 weeks up to $12,500.

I was stunned. That would completely pay for the book – even if we only raised half of it. In my excitement, I told him my dream; then I told him that I knew it sounded crazy and that I thought my wife figured the same. His response was to raise his match to $50,000.

I ran out the back door of the office and stood in the parking lot where I cried for a while. Like the people in Mark 2:12, I was exclaiming "I can't believe what I'm hearing!" I have truly never had anything like this happen before. That would pay for so much more than the book! That could launch Experience Worship ahead to the point where I thought we might be in 3 or 5 years. Our big plans and dreams could actually be attainable – and soon. It was so different from how I had been thinking, so much more than what I had even been hoping for. And I determined to do whatever I could to be sure this opportunity wasn’t wasted.

So now, we have 6 weeks – until July 25 – to raise $50,000. While I’m working on this with everything I’ve got, I can’t raise $50,000 in 6 weeks by myself. Assuming you’re interested (since you’re still reading), we want your help!

No one is profiting financially from these funds. Every dollar given to Experience Worship is used for educating believers to understand worship as a regular attainable, not-just-musical part of their lives, then equipping them to put their worship into action.

Billy Graham said that the highest form of worship is Christian service. Sometimes that’s giving a pair of shoes in Jesus’ name. Other times it may be an air conditioner. Sometimes it's a box of food for a hungry family or an artistic scholarship to enable a child to discover and experience their natural gifts. Sometimes it’s spending time with someone who is lonely. The action of giving the shoes or the air conditioner or the food or the scholarship or the time is not meant to just be charity. It’s meant to be worship. Worship is so much more than songs we sing during church services. Worship is being who we really are, and sharing every moment of our lives with God. Worship happens when we are being silly with our family or walking alone on the beach in silence. If we learn to live every day of our lives as worship, there will be no problem feeding the hungry, helping the poor, and befriending those who are alone. When that’s how we live, we won’t have to ask “what would Jesus do” in a particular situation. Living like Him will be the natural expression of our lives because we are close to Him; our lives will be our most natural expressions of worship.

If you have any questions, feel free to email me directly: regi@experienceworship.com. And if you believe in the mission of Experience Worship, please contribute whatever you have. Opportunities like this don’t happen often. We don’t want to come up short!

Will you join us?

~ Regi Stone, founder & president