Coffee for Christ

Dear Donor, please take 5 minutes to read through this message, I believe it will be well worth your time.

My name is True Tamplin and I am a student at Biola University. During my experience as a Younglife leader for 5 years, president of Fellowship of Christian Athletes at Newport Harbor, overseas mission trips and other local ministries, I finally found something extremely effective. A couple years back, I witnessed an innovative Younglife donor purchase Visa gift cards for leaders to take students out to coffee for genuine conversation. The result? Younglife Newport Harbor's attendance exploded and I witnessed the most potent donation dollar I have ever seen.

While my evangelizing team at Biola recognizes that the Holy Spirit does the actual converting, we take responsibility by offering simple yet humble responses to difficult questions, doing our best to be examples of Jesus Christ, creating compelling content such as music or videos, but most importantly earning the right to be heard in other people's lives.

Because we are college students, we lack the ability to earn the right to be heard by physically blessing people.

Here is the two-part plan:

First, I am looking to equip 100 warriors for Christ with 20, $5 Starbucks giftcards. The Starbucks cards will be used as a barrier-breaking kind gesture of buying the other person's drink, an excuse to meet up ("Hey, let me buy you a coffee!"), or even a reconciliation tool for someone that was offended by the conversation or by "The Church." The effectiveness of our ministry would be greatly enhanced by being able to buy someone's drink before sharing Jesus with them.

Second, I am working with professors at Biola to create a crash course on how to most effectively evangelize (how to win souls, not arguments + simple yet humble responses to difficult questions). Students using the Starbucks cards will be required to take the course and be accountable for each of their card uses which you, the donor, will have access to.

My goal is $10,000 by March 30, 2016 of which I have raised $2,000. Although spending $10,000 on Starbucks cards may sound like a lot, your donations will directly be used to further the Kingdom of God.
These 2,000 Starbucks cards will generate ~2,000 hours of barrier-free conversation between someone who is equipped to share the gospel and someone who does not know Christ.
These Starbucks cards are a necessary component to training my team of Biola students. Students participating in this ministry will be transformed by the evangelism course and real-life experience for the rest of their lives.
Compared to short-term mission trips, the impact on both the local community and each student is considerably greater at a much lower cost of $100/student.
____________________________

If you cannot financially support us at this time, please pray for those we have conversations with!

Here is a list of those we have conversations with: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uOMNlEg7pdGg75nZUsVYMgg2wnZl4lye4eBlHi925hc/edit?ts=56961a5e#gid=0
If you do donate, please send me your preferred means of contact and the amount you donated to [email redacted]. Either way, we will be sharing the love of Jesus and would like to keep you updated on how the conversations and training that you helped create are going.

Thank you so much for your consideration.

In Christ,

True Tamplin