catapult magazine

OK, I just received the last commitment ($50) this morning! We have met the goal of $250 for a booth at the CEA conference. That’s awesome, especially on such short notice. This affirms the potential power of this website and its members’ ability to get things done.

Now that we have all the commitments, I encourage you to send your checks ASAP (today, if possible) to:

Culture is not optional
p.o. box 1
Three Rivers, MI 49093

Thanks so much.

Kirstin talked in her editorial a few weeks ago about the need for people to share the burden this year in order for *cino to continue to grow. Here is a perfect opportunity to test the commitment of our members: In two weeks, *cino would like to put up a display at the CEA conference in Milwaukee—that’s the Christian Educators Association conference, Oct. 15-17.

There will be 1700 Christian teachers there, many of whom have not heard about *cino. We have many teachers on the site now and would like to get many more involved in *cino. We staff members of *cino think we can learn how to better serve teachers in and out of the classroom by having a display at the CEA conference in Milwaukee. If you are a teacher and would like to see more teachers involved in *cino, this would be a good way to contribute to that end.

What we need is $250 to put up a display. If 10 people commit to giving *cino $25 by the end of this week, we can set up a booth at the conference. Or if a few people are able to donate a larger portion to it, we can go to the conference. If we can’t find 10 people willing or able to give money for this, we will assume there is not enough interest in it or that our members are not financially free enough to offer such help at this time. And we won’t go to the conference.

So…Who’s in?

I have 1 commitment already tonight! The sooner the better. 9 more to go. As soon as I get 10 commitments or we reach the desired sum, I’ll let everyone know.

if it helps, we can accept credit card or debit card donations, too. just thought i’d throw that out there . . .

thanks!

I just got another $25 commitment. That’s 2. Keep them coming. I need to let CEA know soon whether or not *cino will be able to attend.

I’ll give people two more days to make pledges and then we’ll have to decide what to do about the conference.

If you count my pledge, that’s three commitments of $25. We have seven $25 commitments to go. I would like to have them all by today or tomorrow. Where are all the teachers at?

I got another commitment this morning! Thanks. That’s 4 commitments, totalling $100. We only have $150 to go.

If you want to give $25 for a *cino booth at the CEA conference, feel free to email me at grante@cultureisnotoptional.com

we’re up to 7 commitments! we only need 3 more . . .

This is very encouraging. It would be great to get the three commitments by noon on Friday. Then I could send in the necessary paperwork tomorrow afternoon.

I advised people to wait on sending checks until I could guarantee that we had enough money. But if or when you write a check, please make it out to cultureisnotoptional and send it to:

Culture is not optional
p.o. box 1
Three Rivers, MI 49093

I just wanted to update people on the CEA conference. I went a week and a half ago with our booth, a powerpoint presentation and a bowl of candy. Unfortunately, the price for internet access was too steep ($100 a day), so we couldn’t display the website. That was definitely a handicap for showing people what we’re about. But we did get the “cultureisnotoptional” name out there. And that will be important for when we start promoting cultureVision.

The conference made me aware of how important it is for us to advertise our organization at more conferences, but I am also realizing that going to important conferences can be pretty pricey. I hope we can continue to get the kind of financial support from concerned and committed members of *cino for things like this. We have the Calvin Festival of Faith and Writing and the CCO convention happening in the Spring. Both of them are well-attended and therefore can cost a fairly large sum of money for display space.

We’ll have to consider how to raise the money for these conferences, but in the meantime, *culture is not optional is already going to be present at the Trinity “Faith Engaged” Conference and we have been given money to attend the “IMAGE Journal of Arts and Religion” conference in Seattle in November. *Culture is not optional must continue to attend such conferences so that we can increase our growth in membership. Having more committed kingdom servents as members can only expand our possibilities as an organization.