Florida Church’s Mystery Offering Finds its Purpose

Congregants raised over $1.8 million with no stated cause — then war broke out in Ukraine.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is part of our occasional series Generous Living, where we highlight creative ways in which people, families, and churches have walked out radical generosity.

Relief work in Eastern Europe / Video screenshot @Generous Giving

Months before Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine, a Florida congregation was already being prepared to answer a need they didn’t yet know existed.

“I had never been part of anything where God so obviously poured himself out in a specific way or for a specific purpose,” said David Swanson, senior pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Orlando, where he’s served for the last 22 years.

Members of First Presbyterian Church in Orlando gave more than $1.86 million to an offering with no stated purpose — money that would later fund emergency relief, including rice, baby formula and vans, for refugees fleeing across the Poland-Ukraine border. Church leaders say the timing can be explained only by God’s providence: He was preparing them to meet a need before anyone knew it existed.

Generosity can be a loaded topic for pastors. While at a leadership retreat, Swanson and those rotating onto the elder board watched a video titled “Handful of Rice,” produced by Generous Giving, about a group of women in a small village in India who set aside a handful of rice from each evening meal as an offering to the Lord. The rice was then collected and sold to fund missions work. The video showed how the small, consistent sacrifices had an outsized impact on the missionaries it helped support.

“I was preaching on generosity about a month later,” Swanson continued. “Watching the video started to stir the waters of what the Spirit of God was going to do in our body.”

Turns out, the Lord was preparing to answer a need before the church even knew what it was.

“I felt pretty good about the message, gave the closing prayer, and then went to my office before the second service,” Swanson recalled. “In the first service, I had mentioned that no one had ever pleaded with me to be part of an offering. But I got a text message: A group of men said they were ‘pleading’ to be part of a special offering and pledged a $250,000 matching fund.”

There was no vision or pressing need behind the request — just generosity.

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At the second service, the humbled pastor explained what had happened after the first. Following the closing prayer, congregants began coming forward to give.

“I started receiving notes with checks asking if they were too late to participate,” Swanson said. “One woman, whose husband had recently passed away, added an envelope with a small stack of $5 bills” — money the couple had set aside earlier in the year for their Christmas gifts to each other.

In the weeks that followed, the “Cup of Rice” campaign “took on a life of its own,” said Swanson, and raised more than $1.86 million.

“We knew the Lord must be doing something,” said Alexa Holcomb, associate pastor of missions.

Prepared for a Purpose

Just days after Swanson and the church leadership team prayed for direction, they had an answer.

Swanson’s friend Andrzej Turkanik (pronounced AHN-jay), founder and executive director of the Quo Vadis Institute in Eastern Europe, organized a prayer call to address the pressing needs created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Andrzej was helping equip and encourage ministry leaders with sound theological material and training,” Swanson said in a follow-up interview with MinistryWatch. “I was very interested in what they were doing in Eastern Europe.”

Turkanik wasn’t a relief worker and felt ill-equipped to help his brother, a pastor in the small town of Medyka, Poland, which borders Ukraine, where thousands of refugees crossed to escape the war.

“I will never forget that call, just a few weeks after the war started,” Swanson continued. “Andrzej was shocked, exhausted and desperate to find resources for those displaced by the war. ‘How can we help you?’ I asked him ‘I’ll do anything we can. What do you need?'”

The pastor replied in a matter-of-fact tone: “Well, what I need more than anything else right now is rice.”

Swanson paused, emotion still fresh in his voice, and composed himself.

“I had no idea who came up with the name ‘Cup of Rice’ for the fund we had just collected,” Swanson said. “I replied, ‘Andrzej, I’ve got your rice right here.'”

The following day, almost half the funds were sent, with the rest to follow. The church also sent rice, baby formula and blankets, along with five 8-passenger vans that could navigate small villages the Red Cross had deemed too dangerous to reach, delivering desperately needed supplies.

Thousands of miles apart — and before the invasion ever splashed across news screens around the world — a church in the middle of Florida had already answered the call to be generous.

“Locking arms in a project that brought relief to many and united Christians was the beauty in all of it,” Turkanik said. “It wasn’t just an effort by one person; nobody could do that [alone]. But together, there is a beautiful patchwork that was orchestrated and brings glory to God.”

Those fleeing devastation with what they could carry were not the only ones blessed by the unexpected and radical generosity.

“It was just as wondrous for us as it was for them,” Swanson said. “For me to stand in front of our congregation and share what God did through their generosity — even though we didn’t know why, God did. He was preparing a gift for something that hadn’t even happened yet. That’s the same God who’s at work in your life.”

Watch the video, produced by Generous Giving, with the story of First Presbyterian Church Orlando’s “Cup of Rice” campaign.

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