we at ys have a very cool new partnership with grace hill media and universal studios, helping to get the word out about a great church program connected with the movie evan almighty (which comes out in june). the program is called ArkALMIGHTY: it’s a good deeds program that matches needs in your church and community with talents, skills and willingness of people in your church. really, you should check it out: go to the website and poke around. you’ll see that each church can create their own craigslist-like website, with easy posting of needs, updates, and places to share stories.

i think this would be a great spring or summer service project for youth groups, really. a great way to help kids “collect” needs in your church and community, then work to meet them.

anyhow, ys is looking for about 45 partner churches who will each get $1,000 of seed-money to help us beta-test this program and populate the site. you’ll be asked to set up an ArkALMIGHTY web page for your church, and to do a large community service project. we need partner churches to help populate the web site before jJune, and to possibly get media coverage for “good deeds” they’re doing or for their big community service project. We’re looking for creative ideas for the project, too…not just “free” car washes. i think it’s pretty cool that universal will be giving each of these churches $1000 to spend on blessing other people! what a kick.

so, if you and your church are interested, go to this page on our website, and and submit the partner church form. we’re looking for a variety of denominations across the country, and we’re looking for creative ideas for community service projects. please run this idea past your church leadership before you submit your form to be sure they’re willing to join the project. You can get more info at the ArkALMIGHTY website also. .

if your church is chosen, you’ll get a response from us within the week. if your church is not chosen, you can totally still be involved and use the website! you just wouldn’t get the 1000 bucks of seed money.

we’re also creating a very cool free kit to go with this. all the partner churches will receive it. but we’re going to make it available to a ton of churches in the very near future. it has a great four-lesson curriculum on kindness and showing god’s love to the world, a bunch of free movie swag (like t-shirts and such), and other stuff.

oh, and you can check out the movie trailer for evan almighty, and get lots of other info about the ArkALMIGHTY thing on our website here.