New Life Daily

Simplicity is a spiritual rhythm that involves much more than a simple decluttering of your house. The simplicity of speech, schedule, clothing, technology, and action also form us to be more like Jesus, who lived a life of simplicity in order to stay focused on his Father and his mission.

During our NEW LIFE series, we want to challenge everyone to take a step toward this rhythm of simplicity, specifically at the crossroads of simplicity and stuff. The average American has over 300,000 items (not a typo) in their home. These are oftentimes things we don’t need, things we don’t use, things we purchase to impress others, things that others could use (but can’t because they’re collecting dust in our homes), things that take time and money to maintain, and things that ultimately don’t make us as happy as the marketers promise. Read more mind-boggling stats about our stuff.

For this week’s spiritual practice, we encourage you to go ahead and take a step of simplicity. As you get rid of some of your possessions, please consider donating your things or giving them to someone in need rather than throwing them away. 

-If you need a place to donate, consider Wheeler Mission, one of our mission partners. They have a place to drop off donations in Fishers (8640 E. 96th Street, Fishers), so you don’t need to travel downtown to donate.
-Another option is joining your local Buy Nothing Facebook group and giving away your stuff there. 

Here are some suggestions on how to start:

Crawl: Go through your house and get rid of seven items that you don’t need (one for each day of the week). 

Walk: Do a shortened version of the Minimalism Challenge for one week. Each day, you find one more item to give away than you did the day before. Day One - give away one item; Day Two - give away two items, etc.

Run: Run the full Minimalism Challenge for an entire month.

"Pure, holy simplicity confounds all the wisdom of this world and the wisdom of the flesh." - Saint Francis of Assisi

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Jake Harp

Jake is a native of Illinois where he first learned about ministry by watching his dad work in the church. He has earned degrees from Missouri Southern State University and Lincoln Christian University. Prior to starting at Venture during the summer of 2022, he served as a Small Groups Minister in Southwestern Missouri. While in Missouri, he and his wife began growing their family and moved to Hamilton County with three kids and one on the way. Jake also has a love for ax throwing which caused him to open up his own mobile ax-throwing business.