Thank you to those who attended our 10 Year Anniversary CELEBRATION OF GENEROSITY FUNDRAISING EVENT on October 20, 2023

Thank you to MadisonChristians.com for the wonderful article they published about the event:

“It’s truly beautiful to see what God is doing in this city,” said Lighthouse Church pastor Marcio Sierra, the keynote speaker at the Madison Christian Giving Fund (MCGF) Tenth Anniversary Celebration of Generosity. The celebration was held Friday, October 20, 2023 in the Micah Center at High Point Church.

As a pastor, Sierra is used to seeing God at work in his congregation, and perhaps in the congregations of other pastors that he knows. But he said he got a greater perspective through his involvement with MCGF.

His involvement has been as a grant recipient for Lighthouse Church and School, but also as a volunteer who helped evaluate grant applications for a number of years. “The most beautiful part of this is learning about all of these organizations, learning about these ministries that are active in Madison,” he said.

Over the past decade, MCGF has channeled over $1 million to a growing number of Christian organizations that are not eligible for funding from other local sources due to their Christian allegiance. “We are about as low overhead as you can get,” said attorney Tom Hoffner, one of the founders of MCGF. “Whatever comes in goes out.”

This year MCGF has received grant applications from 54 ministries that are working in the local area. That’s a significant increase over the 40-application average of the most recent years; 20 are from organizations that are applying for the first time. To fund all of the applications will take almost $400,000.

Sierra based his talk on Jeremiah 29:7 where God tells the exiles in Babylon to “seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you.” Sierra said he knows that many churches pray for the city of Madison, but it’s important to do more than pray.

“God is calling us to be invested in Madison,” Sierra said. “We can invest in an organization like MCGF that invests in organizations that spread the gospel.”

Up until MCGF got started, Sierra said the only alternative funding source for his church and Christian school were car washes and tamale sales. Not that there weren’t people who wanted to financially support the work but only if they downplayed their Christian faith. “They loved what we were doing but they couldn’t give to us because we were religious,” he said.

With the help of MCGF, Lighthouse Christian school has flourished. Sierra noted that in the last year 22 students were baptized in Lighthouse chapel services. He said more students than that were baptized, but they were in the home churches of those other students.

These 22 came to Lighthouse with no church background, their parents may not have been Christian. “They’re telling their parents about Jesus,” he said.

To find out more about investing in Madison through MCGF, go to https://www.madisongiving.org/.

(Full disclosure, MadisonChristians.com is a past MCGF grant recipient.)