Pennies for Heaven

November 20, 2002
by Dan Van Veen

NICHOLSON, Pa. – On Sunday, November 10, 2002, visitors attending the final service of the Trinity Assembly of God missions convention here may have been a bit surprised by a most unique offering experience.

After the usual preliminaries of greetings and announcements, Pastor John M. Lanza stated with some deep satisfaction that it was now time for the missions offering. But instead of ushers coming with offering plates, wheelbarrows were rolled down the aisle.

Then the church, 80 strong, started bringing their offerings forward. They came carrying piggy banks, Tupperware bowls, coffee cans and buckets. They came with pillowcases, cookie jars, boxes and money bags. And as they came to the wheelbarrows, they collectively poured out tens of thousands of pennies!

Each year, for the past 15 or so years, Trinity Assembly of God has established a missions goal and the congregation spends the rest of the year trying to raise the funds. This year, along with their regular faith promises pledges for missions, they were trying to raise $1,000 (100,000 pennies) to assist Pastor Brian and Debbie Knorr with a new home missions church plant in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania. This year they exceeded their goal by 7,664 pennies!

"I need to give the credit to Tony Baker, the former pastor here [at Trinity]," Lanza said. "He developed the missions program here and was very missions minded." Lanza, who has been senior pastor at Trinity for seven years now, added, "We continue to find the value in a penny."

Along with making a big impact on the church, as the "pennies for heaven" collection helps add a level of excitement to the annual missions convention, Lanza said the event also touches the community.

"Our local bank is used to this now and holds back $50 bags of pennies for us every year," Lanza said.

"The bank employees get excited about this event – anxious to see how many pennies this little church has collected for missions this year," added Diane Norton, church secretary.

Fortunately, the bank owns an automatic change counter and roller, so they don't have to count the pennies by hand, but it's still a lot of work. "After the collection, that evening we have the youth help bag up all the pennies and I take them to the bank," Lanza said. "I couldn't even begin to fathom how much they all weigh, all I know is it's heavy!"

As an appreciation to the bank for all its help, every year the church sends the bank a very large gift basket of fruit and card. "They [the bank employees] really enjoy being a part of this," Norton said.

"The benefit that a missions convention offers to a church . . . . It just adds the favor of God," Lanza explained. "We can struggle in so many areas, but our missions has always been strong – God has always made a way and it's a blessing to the church."

And the congregation? They've already started saving their pennies for next year's missions offering!

AG-NEWS: The Assemblies of God News & Information Service, (c) 2002