Y’all hear enough from me. Now, for a message from the “Good Brad” — Brad Smith, the founder of the Souper Bowl of Caring.
That Brad spoke to Rotary today. Although he’s now the senior pastor at Eastminster Presbyterian in Columbia, he still believes strongly in the organization he founded, and headed up full-time for seven years. (To remind you of the story, it all started with a line from a prayer that Brad said on Super Bowl Sunday in 1990: “Lord, even as we enjoy the Super Bowl football game, help us be mindful of those who are without a bowl of soup to eat.” Some kids at his church — Spring Valley Pres at the time — stood outside after services with a cookpot asking folks to give a buck. Then kids at lots of other churches started doing it…)
And he’s got this dream about it. Even though it has grown far beyond anything he could have imagined at the beginning — the Souper Bowl has raised $60 million for charity, and on the most recent Super Bowl Sunday involved 200,000 kids in its good work, and now has the backing of two former presidents (and their First Ladies) and seven NFL team owners — he has a vision of it being even bigger.
His vision is a two-parter: That the president of the United States would decide to highlight the Souper Bowl (as one of the inspiring stories of volunteerism that presidents are always citing in such speeches) in his State of the Union address. And that would inspire enough people to give that during the Super Bowl itself, the Souper Bowl would be mentioned, and the announcer would say that X hundred thousand kids participated, and an amount equal to a dollar for each person (the standard “ask” for Souper Bowl is a dollar) watching the game had been raised.
That would be over a hundred million dollars, which would eclipse what the program has raised in total thus far.
Yes, it’s a reach, but it’s possible, given the right conditions. As Brad (the other one) said today, “Somebody here knows someone who can make that vision come to pass…”
Well, maybe. And if not, then maybe somebody reading this knows somebody who knows somebody who can make it happen.
It’s worth a try, anyway.
Related Posts
Everyone of us knows someonw who can help make it happen. To see this person all one needs to do is look in a mirror.
Time for you to make some calls to Senators Graham, McCain, and Lieberman. I would think they owe you at least a joint letter to the President asking him to consider it.
Took me a minute to get over the image of viral and soup–not talking chicken soup and the flu…
yes, Doug–brilliant! Go get’em, Brad W.
That’s all we need – the communist Muslim Obama who is trying to destroy charity, attaching himself to real charity.
and if President Obama were indeed a communist Muslim (and what is so bad about being a Muslim–or imho, a communist), what would be so bad about his promoting a real charity?
[shakes head]
Obama was raised a communist, and was member of the Socialist Party until a few years ago. Nowhere do I see where he recanted socialism. In fact, his agenda so far is nothing less than a socialist revolution which ignores the Constitution.
Likewise, he has never recanted his Muslim upbringing. He attended a pseudo-Christian church run by “former” Muslim cult figure Jeremiah Wright.
Socialism has no place in America. Socialism opposes individual liberty, including free choice to buy and sell in the market. Socialists don’t believe in private charity, they don’t practice it, and they don’t want others to practice it. Obama has said he wants to restrict charity, to end tax deductions for charity, etc.