{"id":976,"date":"2009-11-18T11:58:52","date_gmt":"2009-11-18T11:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html"},"modified":"2009-11-18T11:58:52","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T11:58:52","slug":"matthew-west-encourages-fans-t","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html","title":{"rendered":"Matthew West encourages fans to give this Christmas away"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"MatthewWestChristmas.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/118\/import\/MatthewWestChristmas.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"185\" class=\"mt-image-right\" style=\"float: right;margin: 0 0 20px 20px\" \/><\/span>Matthew West is kicking off this holiday season with a mission: to remind others of the true reason for the season wih his &#8220;Give This Christmas Away&#8221; campaign.<br \/>\nWest was inspired by the song &#8220;Give This Christmas Away,&#8221; which he wrote and recorded in conjunction with VeggieTales for its new DVD release, &#8220;Saint Nicholas&#8211;A Story of Joyful Giving.&#8221; The campaign calls attention to practical ways we can reach out to those in need around us.<br \/>\nWest explains in a press release, &#8220;What it means to me to &#8216;give this Christmas away&#8217; is to pause long enough to look at the world from a perspective of &#8216;How can I help? How can I give? How can God use me to help meet the needs of somebody else this Christmas instead of just checking off the list of everything I want?'&#8221;<br \/>\nIn keeping with that sentiment, West, spokesperson for Operation Christmas Child, a division of the international relief organization Samaritan&#8217;s Purse, is asking fans who attend his fall tour to donate shoe box gifts for children in need this holiday season. The collection will continue on West&#8217;s &#8220;Give This Christmas Away&#8221; Christmas tour, kicking off late November.<br \/>\nFurthermore, West offers additional ideas for living out the Christmas spirit via a book release, <em>101 Ways to Give This Christmas Away<\/em>, to be published by Tyndale Publishers. The book, along with a <em>Something to Say Christmas Edition<\/em> featuring the song &#8220;Give This Christmas Away&#8221; and three new acoustic recordings, will be available in retail stores this month.<br \/>\nOperation Christmas Child is a really fun way to get your entire family involved in sharing hte gospel with a child somewhere in the world. It&#8217;s easy: you fill a shoebox with toys and other items a child in need might use (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.samaritanspurse.org\/index.php\/OCC\/EZ_Give_Donations\/\" target=\"_blank\">the OPC site gives you a list of suggestions<\/a>). Then you bring the shoebox to a local collection site &#8211; this is collection week! &#8211; and your box is delivered to a child somewhere around the globe. This year, you can also track your box to find out which country it ends up in.<br \/>\nYou can learn more about <a href=\"http:\/\/matthewwest.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Matthew West on his website.<\/a><br \/>\nYou can learn more about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.samaritanspurse.org\/index.php\/OCC\/EZ_Give_Donations\/\" target=\"_blank\">Operation Christmas Child on the Samaritan&#8217;s Purse website.<\/a><br \/>\n<i>Got a gospel or Christian music news tip? <a href=\"mailto:joanne@joannebrokaw.com\">Send me an email!<\/a><\/i><br \/>\n<i><a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=GospelSoundcheck&amp;loc=en_US\">Click here to subscribe to Gospel Soundcheck by email <\/a>and have the Gospel Soundcheck headlines delivered daily to your email inbox. And don&#8217;t forget to <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/joannebrokaw\" target=\"_blank\">follow me on Twitter!<\/a><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Matthew West is kicking off this holiday season with a mission: to remind others of the true reason for the season wih his &#8220;Give This Christmas Away&#8221; campaign. West was inspired by the song &#8220;Give This Christmas Away,&#8221; which he wrote and recorded in conjunction with VeggieTales for its new DVD release, &#8220;Saint Nicholas&#8211;A Story&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":132,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christians-involved-in-social-justice","category-christmas-music"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Matthew West encourages fans to give this Christmas away - Gospel Soundcheck<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Matthew West encourages fans to give this Christmas away - Gospel Soundcheck\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Matthew West is kicking off this holiday season with a mission: to remind others of the true reason for the season wih his &#8220;Give This Christmas Away&#8221; campaign. West was inspired by the song &#8220;Give This Christmas Away,&#8221; which he wrote and recorded in conjunction with VeggieTales for its new DVD release, &#8220;Saint Nicholas&#8211;A Story&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Gospel Soundcheck\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-11-18T11:58:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/files\/import\/MatthewWestChristmas.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Joanne Brokaw\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Matthew West encourages fans to give this Christmas away - Gospel Soundcheck","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Matthew West encourages fans to give this Christmas away - Gospel Soundcheck","og_description":"Matthew West is kicking off this holiday season with a mission: to remind others of the true reason for the season wih his &#8220;Give This Christmas Away&#8221; campaign. West was inspired by the song &#8220;Give This Christmas Away,&#8221; which he wrote and recorded in conjunction with VeggieTales for its new DVD release, &#8220;Saint Nicholas&#8211;A Story&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html","og_site_name":"Gospel Soundcheck","article_published_time":"2009-11-18T11:58:52+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/files\/import\/MatthewWestChristmas.jpg"}],"author":"Joanne Brokaw","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html","name":"Matthew West encourages fans to give this Christmas away - Gospel Soundcheck","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/files\/import\/MatthewWestChristmas.jpg","datePublished":"2009-11-18T11:58:52+00:00","dateModified":"2009-11-18T11:58:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/#\/schema\/person\/80efa9662d1538af82f15e223a742cad"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/files\/import\/MatthewWestChristmas.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/files\/import\/MatthewWestChristmas.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/2009\/11\/matthew-west-encourages-fans-t.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Matthew West encourages fans to give this Christmas away"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/gospelsoundcheck\/","name":"Gospel Soundcheck","description":"Beliefnet Voices - 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