How long can you plank for?

As Christians living in a time of lockdown, we are all facing new and difficult challenges. This has caused us at Cornerstone to think more about the greater hardships our brothers and sisters face in persecution around the world. Particularly now. We have therefore launched a simple social media challenge in partnership with Open Doors, to raise money to help our fellow Christians in dire need.

A challenge for persecuted Christians

Across the world, the spread of coronavirus is having a devastating effect. Lockdown means that many Christians no longer have income and can’t buy food.
On top of this, Christians are often ignored when official aid is distributed.

They desperately need our help today and we’d like to help in this by supporting the Open Doors charity in their work especially at this time.

Founded by a young dutchman who became known as Brother Andrew, Open Doors is a Christian charity active for over 50years working in areas of the world where Christians are persecuted and unable to practice their faith or have access to Bibles and training.

This has developed into providing literacy training and, in 1998, Open Doors launched its first major relief project – ‘Operation Daily Bread’ – to fly in food and supplies to remote areas of war-torn southern Sudan.

Today Open Doors provides relief aid, livelihood support and community development projects for hundreds of thousands of Christians around the world. If you’d like to find out more here’s a link to the Open Doors website https://www.opendoorsuk.org

Here are a couple of quotes about how the current crisis is affecting thousands and in particular Christian communities because they are often discriminated against in many societies:

“Most church members are daily wage labourers,” says Rahul*, an Open Doors partner in India. “No work for the day means no food for the day. We have a plan to reach out to those who are truly starving. Can Open Doors please help?”

Open Doors is reaching some of those affected, but much, much more needs to be done.

“I saw men, women and children crying of hunger; it’s tragic,” says an Open Doors partner in Syria. “We’re in dire need of funds to support a larger number of families. We’ve helped 80 families, but the number of needy families is much higher.”

These verses from 1 Corinthians 12 are used by Open Doors almost as a mission statement and they are the basis for our challenge hashtag #1suffersallsuffer

1 Corinthians 12:26-27 “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it. Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

So our challenge Hashtag is #1suffersallsuffer

What’s the challenge for us?

We’re living through a viral pandemic so let’s try to go viral with a social media challenge.

If it doesn’t cause a bit of pain then it’s not worth the hashtag.

So, we challenge you to:

1. Donate £3 to our #1suffersallsuffer Just Giving page which will go direct to Open Doors;
2. Plank for as long as you can in whatever plank position you choose;
3. Record your time and take a photo;
4. Post on social media including;
• #1suffersallsuffer
• Link to the JustGiving page https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/1suffersallsuffer
• Link to this blog explaining the challenge
• Tag and challenge 3 friends to see if they can beat your time, donate, post and tag 3 of their friends.

You only give £3 but you tag 3 who give £3 and they tag £3 who give £3 and they tag 3 (you’ve now reached 40 people) who give £3 and by association you’ve raised £120.

Let’s go nationwide and global with this challenge.