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GiveSendGo FeaturesShadrach, Meshach and Abednego: the Three Who Would Not Bow — and the Fourth Man in the Fire
Posted by Alex Shipley. Interview by Elijah Snider. on Aug 11, 2026
If you've spent any time in church (or watched VeggieTales as a kid), the story of the fiery furnace probably already rings a bell. It's one of those stories taught early and often enough that we assume we already know it, but the stories we think we know best from Sunday school are usually the ones where we've missed the most important, most overlooked details. This is one of those. Strip away the felt board and what's left is a story of real faith in the middle of real adversity, where life or death actually hung on the answer three men gave a proud, furious king. This story is now a major motion picture, Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, in theaters September 18. Through the movie's Pay It Forward fundraiser on GiveSendGo, just $15 sends someone who couldn't otherwise afford it to see it too. Sponsor a seat. Who Were Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? Before they had those names, they were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah - three young Hebrew men taken to Babylon along with Daniel after King Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem. Like Daniel, they were given new Babylonian names in the king's court: Daniel became Belteshazzar, and his three friends became Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They appear alongside Daniel early in the book, refusing the king's food and wine to stay faithful to their convictions. The food had likely been dedicated to Babylonian gods before it ever reached the table, and eating it would have meant honoring those gods along with the king. Daniel and his three friends chose not to defile themselves that way, wanting to stay fully faithful to the one true God, even in something as ordinary as a meal (Daniel 1:8-9). They trusted that their obedience would be met with God's own faithfulness, and it was: after ten days of eating nothing but vegetables and water, they looked healthier than everyone else in the king's training program (Daniel 1:12-16). God, pleased with their obedience, gave all four of them wisdom and understanding beyond their years, and gave Daniel specifically the ability to interpret visions and dreams (Daniel 1:17). It's worth remembering: these were likely very young men. The Kooman brothers, the filmmakers behind Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, made the same observation while researching this story for their film: "They were likely teenagers, young adults when they got to Babylon." These weren't seasoned men who'd faced down kings before. It's a story about people asked to make a decision most teenagers never have to: one that could cost them their lives. By the time Nebuchadnezzar's golden statue goes up, all four men hold real positions in the Babylonian government. We may know Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego mostly as Daniel's friends, but they weren't minor characters. Nebuchadnezzar himself said he'd found no one to compare to them in his entire kingdom. The Golden Statue and Nebuchadnezzar's Command Daniel 3 opens with Nebuchadnezzar building a gold statue about ninety feet tall on the plain of Dura, in the province of Babylon, and commanding that everyone bow to it the moment the royal music played. Refusal meant immediate death in a blazing furnace. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego didn't bow. Certain Chaldeans, probably priests, who may have resented their standing, reported them to the king. Given one more chance to comply, the three men gave the answer that's become the center of the whole story: their God was able to deliver them from the furnace, and He would deliver them from the king's hand. "But even if he does not," they told the king, they still would not serve his gods or worship the statue he had set up (Daniel 3:16-18, NIV). Why Wasn't Daniel in the Fiery Furnace With Them? This is the question people ask more than almost any other, and the text actually gives a straightforward answer, even though it's easy to miss. Earlier in the book, after Daniel interpreted the king's dream, he asked Nebuchadnezzar to appoint his three friends over the administration of the province of Babylon, while Daniel himself remained at the royal court (Daniel 2:49). He simply held a different post, in a different place, by that point in the story. But while Daniel most likely was elsewhere when this happened, we don't know for certain, and that uncertainty is part of why the filmmakers built some of the film's own tension around it. In their own words: "Because in the story with the three guys, they go into the fire and there's nothing really said about Daniel... But we know that if he was there with the guys, he would have bowed. That's something that we would have heard about, right? So he didn't bow, but why didn't he bow?" When asked if Daniel makes an appearance in this scene, one brother said, "I can't answer exactly what happens because I want you to check out what happens in the movie." Into the Furnace If there's a pattern to Nebuchadnezzar in this story, it's anger paired with urgency. His fury was moving faster than his judgment, burning about as untamed and wild as the fire he was about to command into being. Because of the young men's refusal to bow down, Scripture says he had the furnace heated seven times hotter than usual. Whether that's a literal measurement or just the ancient world's way of saying "as hot as I can make it," the point is the same: this was a decision made in fury at the God they wouldn't abandon. That same hasty judgment is what led to what came next: his strongest soldiers bound the three men, fully dressed, and threw them in. The furnace was so hot that the soldiers who threw them in were killed by the heat on their way out (Daniel 3:19-22). So Who Is the Fourth Man in the Fire? Then Nebuchadnezzar sees something that stops him mid-sentence. He asks his advisors whether they'd thrown three men into the fire, bound, because he can now see four men, unbound, walking around in the flames completely unharmed. The fourth, he says, looks like "a son of the gods" (Daniel 3:24-25). In other words, even he recognized this person as some kind of supernatural being. Bible readers have debated exactly who that fourth figure was for centuries. Some see an angel sent to protect the other three. But the view most widely held is that this was a pre-incarnate appearance of Christ Himself. That reading leans on a pattern that shows up elsewhere in the Old Testament: the same figure many read as Jesus appears in human or angelic form and is treated as God Himself - the commander who accepts worship at Jericho (Joshua 5:13-15), and the Angel who appears to Gideon and is addressed as "the LORD" a few verses later (Judges 6:11-24). Only Nebuchadnezzar didn't have the theological vocabulary to know what he was looking at. He only had his own polytheistic frame of reference to describe what he saw. But what he saw was still real: someone else was in the furnace with them. They Came Out Without Even the Smell of Smoke When the king called them out and his officials examined them, they found the fire hadn't touched them at all: not a hair singed, not a robe scorched, and no smell of fire on them (Daniel 3:27). Anyone who's stood near a bonfire for ten minutes knows that smell clings to your clothes and even your hair for the rest of the day. These three men walked through a furnace heated past the point of no return, and came out without a trace of it. Nebuchadnezzar made a decree that day that no one could speak against their God. But he wasn't ready to call Him the one true God, just another god worth adding to his collection, and it would take a much harder season for him personally before he finally acknowledged the God of Daniel as the one true King of heaven (Daniel 4:34-37). Still, that day he saw the fourth man in the fire may have been the beginning of his heart changing. That's exactly why the Kooman brothers encourage you to invite your friends and family to watch Daniel and the Fiery Furnace with you. They hope many have this same heart and soul changing moment: "It gives me chills. I literally have chills right now to think about, what if the people that you bring to this movie experience what King Nebuchadnezzar experienced when they look into the furnace? What if they have that transformative life moment, or the beginnings of that, in their own life?" The Significance of the Fiery Furnace, and How It Ties Into Daniel and the Lions' Den God didn't stop the decree or keep Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego out of the fire. He let them walk all the way into it, so He could walk with them through it, and that's the promise for you too: whatever you walk through, you don't walk through it alone. Decades later, Daniel himself faced his own version of that same choice. Under a different king, Darius the Mede, he kept praying to God three times a day despite a decree forbidding it, and was thrown into a den of lions for it. He came out unharmed the next morning, having trusted, in his words, that his God had sent an angel to shut the lions' mouths (Daniel 6:22). The men who'd conspired against him were thrown in instead, and Darius, like Nebuchadnezzar before him, issued a decree honoring Daniel's God. Two kings, two impossible death sentences, two moments where faithful people had no idea how it would end. It's worth wondering whether Daniel carried something into that lions' den that his three friends had given him decades earlier: not certainty that God would rescue him the same way again, but confidence that God was still the same God, and still good, either way. A Lesson for All of Us "There's an ongoing battle for the soul of each person. There is a battle for whether you're going to choose faith over fear," the Kooman brothers said. "There will come a time where your beliefs will be challenged. And there'll be a time where you may face your own version of, say, the fiery furnace." Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego committed to faithfulness before they knew the outcome. "Even if he does not," they said, and meant it. Their obedience was never conditional on being rescued. Most of us treat God like a vending machine without meaning to: put in the right amount of faith, expect the outcome we want to come out the other side. They never made that trade. Whatever furnace you're facing, that's the faith worth asking God for: obedience and trust that is steadfast, and doesn't come with a return policy. "Our prayer has always been that people would open the Bible because of this movie," the Kooman brothers have said. For anyone reading this who doesn't yet know the Lord, or hasn't placed their trust in Him, that's exactly the door this story is meant to open. "The way to a future in eternity," they said, "is through the fourth man in the fire." Seeing It On Screen This story is now the center of Daniel and the Fiery Furnace, opening in theaters September 18, 2026. Mena Massoud (Disney's live-action Aladdin) plays Daniel, and Elijah Alexander (Atticus in The Chosen) plays Nebuchadnezzar. GiveSendGo is an Executive Producer on this film. Through the Pay It Forward fundraiser on GiveSendGo, $15 sponsors a seat for someone who couldn't otherwise afford to go. Through your generosity, you can make sure the price of a ticket doesn't have to decide who gets to see this story told. Sponsor a seat and learn more. Pastors and church leaders planning a group screening can find advance-screening details here.
GiveSendGo FeaturesNew Christian Movies in Theaters: What’s Worth Seeing in 2026
Posted by Alex Shipley. Interview by Elijah Snider. on Aug 11, 2026
More faith-based films are reaching real theaters than we've seen in a while, and most weren't backed by a studio with an unlimited budget. They were funded by audiences who wanted more stories that point back to God badly enough to pay for it themselves. From Bible stories come to life, to modern stories of faith, to testimonies in history worth remembering. Here's what's still ahead in 2026, what's already released for your enjoyment, and an honest read on each one. Still Hope (February 5) Still Hope follows a teenage girl abducted into sex trafficking and her long road toward freedom and healing, inspired by true stories. It's a hard watch by design, and reviews have been split. Some found the second half's message-heavy approach worked against the story it was trying to tell, while plenty of viewers described it as one of the more affecting films they'd seen on the subject. Worth knowing going in: this isn't a family movie night pick. It's a serious film for older teens and adults, best watched with people you can talk to afterward. I Can Only Imagine 2 (February 20) The sequel to 2018's I Can Only Imagine follows MercyMe's Bart Millard as success starts to cost him the relationships that matter most, especially with his son. Critics were mixed on whether it earns its own place next to the original, but audiences responded warmly to its themes of fatherhood, forgiveness, and finding God in hard seasons. A solid pick for families who loved the first one. He Calls Me Daughter (March 17-18) This documentary from director Rick Altizer sits down with women carrying what the film calls a "father wound," the lasting impact of an absent, distant, or difficult father, and traces how that wound shapes identity, relationships, and even how a person sees God. It's earned strong, personal reactions from audiences, particularly women. This one's better suited to a small group or a mother-daughter watch than a full family movie night, given how personal the subject matter gets. A Great Awakening (April 3) This historical drama traces the real friendship between evangelist George Whitefield and Benjamin Franklin during America's First Great Awakening. Some critics found the preaching a little heavy-handed for a feature film; audiences disagreed, giving it a rare A+ CinemaScore. If your family enjoys history with real substance behind it, this one delivers. Just know it leans talky and runs over two hours, so it plays better for older kids and up. Young Washington (July 3) From director Jon Erwin (Jesus Revolution, American Underdog), this one follows a young George Washington through the war years that shaped him before he ever led a nation. It's rated PG-13 for real battlefield violence, so it plays better for older kids and teens than little ones. A solid pick for families who want their history with some weight to it. Elijah Peel (August 14) Elijah Peel follows a stadium-filling rock star whose addiction catches up to him in the form of a near-fatal heart attack, and the unexpected friendship with a young girl facing her own terminal illness that starts to break through years of walls he's built up. Kevin Sorbo plays his longtime manager, and the film is executive produced by Willie and Korie Robertson (Duck Dynasty). Inspired by a true story, and squarely aimed at anyone who's watched fame cost someone everything that actually mattered. Daniel: The Fiery Furnace (September 18) The one we're most looking forward to. Daniel and the Fiery Furnace brings the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to the screen: three men who refuse to bow to King Nebuchadnezzar's golden statue and are sentenced to death in a blazing furnace for it, only to experience God's deliverance in a miraculous way. Mena Massoud (Disney's live-action Aladdin) stars as Daniel, and Elijah Alexander (The Chosen) plays Nebuchadnezzar. GiveSendGo is an Executive Producer on this one, and we think it's shaping up to be exactly the kind of film the whole family can enjoy: a story that builds faith instead of borrowing it for a subplot. The Kooman brothers, who wrote and directed the film, say the response to their crowdfund proved something bigger than the movie itself. "People want biblical stories," they said. "People want to be inspired by scripture." Their supporters consistently told them, "I've waited my whole life for this." When their own fundraising hit a wall partway through, someone pointed them toward GiveSendGo, and within 24 hours they'd connected with GiveSendGo's founders over a shared love for the book of Daniel. In their words, it "felt like instant family." Daniel and the Fiery Furnace opens in theaters September 18, 2026. Through the movie's Pay It Forward fundraiser on GiveSendGo, you can give just $15 to make sure someone gets to see Daniel for free, someone who couldn't otherwise afford to go. Sponsor a seat today. Zero A.D. (December 25) Angel Studios closes out the year with this biblical epic retelling the nativity story from Mary's side of it, including the danger her family faced from Herod's massacre of the innocents. The cast includes Jim Caviezel, Sam Worthington, and Ben Mendelsohn, from the director behind Sound of Freedom. It's easily one of the most-anticipated titles on this list for a Christmas release. Honorable Mention: LarryBoy (Date TBA) Animation fans have been waiting years for this one: the first-ever LarryBoy feature film, bringing VeggieTales' plunger-eared superhero to the big screen for the first time. It's been in development for a while, and as of this writing the studio hasn't locked a firm 2026 release date. But if your kids grew up on VeggieTales, or you did, it's worth keeping on your radar. Header image from Daniel and the Fiery Furnace.
GiveSendGo FeaturesIs Daniel and the Fiery Furnace OK for Kids? An Honest Parent's Guide
Posted by Alex Shipley. Interview by Elijah Snider. on Aug 11, 2026
As a parent, you've probably been waiting for a biblical film worth watching as a whole family. One you don't have to brace for and leads you closer to Christ, not further away. You've probably come to this page hoping Daniel and the Fiery Furnace is just that movie. This guide covers what the movie's about, its rating, and what your family should know going in, so you can feel confident buying tickets. And through the movie's Pay It Forward fundraiser on GiveSendGo, $15 sends someone who couldn't otherwise afford it to see Daniel too. Give today to generously sponsor a seat. What Is Daniel and the Fiery Furnace About? Daniel and the Fiery Furnace brings one of the Bible's most well-known stories to the screen: three men who refuse to bow to a king's golden statue and are sentenced to death in a blazing furnace for it. Mena Massoud (Disney's live-action Aladdin) stars as Daniel, and Elijah Alexander (The Chosen) plays King Nebuchadnezzar. The film was shot in India, using real palaces and converted military compounds to bring ancient Babylon to life, and comes from brothers Daniel and Matthew Kooman, twenty years into making films together. Content & Themes This is a story about faith and conviction that doesn't bend under pressure. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego face a real death sentence for staying faithful to God. Their answer to the king is the emotional center of the whole film: He's able to save them, but even if He doesn't, they still won't bow. For families, it's a rare chance to talk together about what it costs to stay faithful when it isn't easy, and what it looks like when God shows up in the middle of the hard thing instead of removing it altogether. The Kooman brothers have also said a Hebrew scholar who reviewed the script called it the most accurate faith film he'd evaluated - a real point of trust for parents who already know this story well themselves and want to see it told right. Is There an Official Rating Yet? Not yet. As of this writing, Daniel and the Fiery Furnace hasn't received an official rating. The filmmakers themselves expect it will land somewhere around PG-13 once that process is finished. We'll update this page the moment it is. We asked the Kooman brothers directly what parents should know. "There's no language or sexual content or any of those elements," they said. The intensity comes from real peril, not content you'd usually need to screen for. On age, they didn't give a hard cutoff so much as a range: "I think 10 plus, 9 plus, something in there is a really accurate guide," as they put it. Here's how that breaks down further: 8 and under: This is the age where real caution matters most. A brief battle scene, King Nebuchadnezzar's rage, and the furnace may be frightening or overwhelming, even with a good outcome. If you bring a child this age, sit with them, and talk through the story first so they know how it ends before it's on screen. 9-12: This lines up with the filmmakers' own guidance, and it's where most kids can sit with real tension and a real resolution, especially with a parent close by. This is where the story tends to actually land instead of just entertain, though you know your own child's sensitivity to peril better than any guide can. 13 and up: There's nothing here that should give you pause. Many teens already half-know this story from church and are curious to see it done well on screen. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were likely teenagers or young adults themselves when they faced all of this. As the filmmakers put it: "Would a 16-year-old be able to withstand what these guys faced?" It's worth talking about together afterward: what can we learn from their example? How do you think they must have felt, having their faith tested even in the face of life and death? What Parents Should Know When we asked the Kooman brothers directly what parents should know, they named one scene specifically. Beyond that, the story itself carries two more real sources of intensity worth knowing about before you go: An army entering Jerusalem. Earlier in the film, an army takes the city and swords are drawn. In the filmmakers' own words, this alludes to the trauma of that invasion without showing the full violence Scripture describes. It's brief, they've said, but present, and worth knowing about. King Nebuchadnezzar. He isn't confined to one scene. He's a presence through much of the film, a furious, powerful king who demands to be worshipped and isn't used to being told no. His anger at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego's refusal, and the real threat he represents throughout, may be intimidating for younger kids well before the furnace itself arrives. The furnace. The film's central scene is exactly what the title promises: three men sentenced to death by fire for refusing to worship a golden statue. It's a moment of genuine peril, what looks like hopelessness before it becomes a moment of deliverance. In Scripture, the soldiers who threw Daniel's friends in the fire don't survive the heat of the furnace themselves, though it's unlikely the film will show this in any graphic detail. Younger kids may feel the tension in that buildup, and stress during the scene itself, even knowing how the story ends. None of these are there purely for shock value. All three are faithful to the text, and part of why this story has mattered to people for thousands of years: real faith, held under a real threat. That threat still feels real to a kid watching it, though, which is exactly why it's worth knowing ahead of time, not discovering mid-movie. How to Prepare or Discuss After The best way to experience this story as a family is to read Daniel together before you go, then talk through it again once you've seen it come to life on screen. What surprised you. What the movie changed or added. What stood out to each of you. One worth asking directly, especially with an older kid or teen: if you'd been standing where Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were, would you have made the same choice? [Read the full story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego here], including why Daniel himself wasn't in the furnace with his three friends, and who the mysterious fourth figure in the fire was. However you decide to see this one, you'll be walking in with your eyes open, which is really all any of this is meant to give you. Daniel and the Fiery Furnace opens in theaters September 18, 2026. Through their Pay It Forward fundraiser on GiveSendGo, $15 sponsors a movie ticket for someone who couldn't otherwise afford to go. Sponsor a seat today. Header image from Daniel and the Fiery Furnace.
GiveSendGo FeaturesDaniel and the Fiery Furnace — the Kooman Brothers on the Fire, the Fourth Man, and September 18
Posted by Alex Shipley. Interview by Elijah Snider on Aug 11, 2026
Quotes are trimmed for length; but the words are the brothers' own. Watch the Kooman brothers' full interview here. What if the Bible came to life on screen, not because of a major studio, but because of people just like you? That's the story of how Daniel and the Fiery Furnace came to be, and you can still be part of it. Read on to learn how. No studio greenlit this film. Thousands of ordinary people paid for it, one generous gift at a time. And when their need changed, GiveSendGo stepped in as an Executive Producer, and became the platform they'd finish the race on. The same generosity that got this film made is the same generosity it needs to be seen widely. A film like this opens in about 1,000 theaters on September 18, and enough advance ticket sales can take it to 1,500. The tickets bought before opening day decide which cities get a screen at all, which means a church that fills one theater changes the map for every other church in its region. One way to be part of it right now is through the movie's Pay It Forward fundraiser on GiveSendGo. Just $15 sends someone who couldn't otherwise afford it to see Daniel and the Fiery Furnace too. Sponsor a seat. We hopped on a video call with the two brothers who made this film, to ask them the questions a pastor, a small group leader, and a parent would actually ask before they see it. What is Daniel: The Fiery Furnace about? In Daniel 3, three Hebrew men refuse to bow to a king's ninety-foot golden statue, and a proud, furious Nebuchadnezzar sentences them to burn for it. Then a fourth figure shows up in the fire with them, changing everything. Mena Massoud, of Disney's live-action Aladdin, plays Daniel. Elijah Alexander, who played Atticus in The Chosen, plays Nebuchadnezzar. They shot Daniel and the Fiery Furnace in India using real palaces and converted military compounds, including a sunrise cavalry charge inside a nine-hundred-year-old fort that people still live in today. Why tell this story now? "There's an ongoing battle for the soul of each person. There is a battle for whether you're going to choose faith over fear," they said. "There will come a time where your beliefs will be challenged. And there'll be a time where you may face your own version of, say, the fiery furnace." Knowing God and His Word, and passing that on to our children, has never mattered more. Kids are more capable of understanding this than we often give them credit for, and stories like this one are exactly how that understanding takes root. While they were researching, one detail changed how the brothers saw the whole story. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego weren't seasoned elders or warriors. They were kids. "They were likely teenagers, young adults when they got to Babylon... Would a 16-year-old, a 19-year-old, a 22-year-old be able to withstand some of the pressures that these guys had at this moment?" That's a question worth putting in front of a youth group. And how does their example change the way you think about faith? Could it help you stand more courageously when your own beliefs and convictions are tested? Where was Daniel when his friends went into the fire? This is the question their audience asks more than any other, and the brothers asked it too, early on when creating the film. "One of the biggest questions we asked was, where was Daniel? Because in the story with the three guys, they go into the fire and there's nothing really said about Daniel..." Scripture says plainly in Daniel 2:49 that Daniel held a different position than his three friends, and likely was elsewhere when the furnace was fired up. You can read the full breakdown of that [here]. But we don't know for certain. Was he there to see his friends thrown in? Maybe. Maybe not. "But we know that if he was there with the guys, he would have bowed. That's something that we would have heard about, right? So he didn't bow, but why didn't he bow?" We asked how the film handles this question. They wouldn't say. "I can't answer exactly what happens because I want you to check out what happens in the movie." Did you change anything to make it work on screen? "Why would we change any of that? So there was no desire to even do that... But why change any of these amazing things in the Bible for entertainment's sake? It doesn't even make any sense. It's so exciting and everybody knows it." This isn't a story that needed embellishing. It's the story people say they've waited their whole lives to see done right, told as faithfully as possible, carrying the same message God intended it to carry. The greatest story ever told needs no additions. They say a Hebrew scholar who reviewed the script called it the most accurate faith film he'd evaluated. For anyone who already knows Daniel 3 well and has been burned before by a loose adaptation, that's the answer to the question you're carrying. Was there a moment on set you didn't plan? They were filming the interpretation of the king's dream in a wide-open courtyard when something incredible happened. "As Daniel is standing in this amazing location, declaring the word-for-word verbatim scripture from Daniel chapter two to the king... the place like erupted. I mean there's not much other way to put it, like a wind blew in that had not come on the entirety of thirty days previous." Tents went flying across the set. Nobody had told the actors it was coming, so the reactions you see in the finished film are real, and so is the wind moving through their clothes and hair. "Having an actor in a costume declaring the prophecy of 2,600 years ago, and then God shows up. I mean, that's how alive and powerful it was." Not every unplanned moment on this shoot was quite so awe-filled. One morning, nobody had put horseshoes on the horses for a scene, and the field turned out to have more gravel than anyone realized. A language barrier between the brothers and the local wranglers meant nobody caught it in time. What should have been one shoot day turned into three, finishing at midnight and starting again at 4am. They also told us they lost their originally cast Jeremiah to a visa refusal partway through production. "We literally didn't make that plan," one of them said, "but God found a way to weave some amazing magic into the film." They didn't just shoot a movie together, either. For most of production, cast and crew lived out of the same hotel in India, eating meals together, and praying together. Not everyone who worked on this film started out as a believer. But by the power and the grace of God, by the time it wrapped, several of them were saved. How does a movie like this get funded? By real people. Through two rounds of crowdfunding, the filmmakers say they raised more than $1.7 million from everyday givers rather than a studio. "It basically proved that people want biblical stories. People want to be inspired by scripture. We had so many people going, 'I've waited my whole life for this.'" That's proof of something bigger than one movie. Audiences are hungry for stories that point back to God, hungry enough to fund that themselves when nobody else will. Partway through, the site they were raising on failed. "Someone reached out to us and they were like, 'Why are you not using GiveSendGo? Like these guys, they have everything together, like you should be working with them.' And we, within 24 hours, we met Jacob Wells and Heather Wilson and connected on just the book of Daniel." "We were like, wait, are we like brothers and sisters? Like, are we related? This is crazy. And we just felt like instant family." What can a church or a small group actually do? The Kooman brothers shared three suggestions. Take a whole screen. Thirty people is the number. "If you have a church group, you can sign up. You can even rent out theaters with your church. That's a really powerful way to do it as well. That shows immediate interest to the theaters, and they'll definitely take us up on a buyout of a theater if a church group wants to do that. So we're making that available for churches and groups." "Youth groups or anything like that would be a great way to see it, especially with your friends or family or church community. I think it's thirty is kind of the number that if you have thirty people together you can buy out screens." Thirty is one small group with a few friends invited, or one youth group on a Friday night. Every seat bought early also tells the theaters to open more screens in more cities, so a group in a smaller market is doing two jobs at once. Sponsor seats for people who can't buy their own. The filmmakers keep a real list of them, and $15 covers one. "That might be a $15 that's not in their weekly or monthly budget, or maybe they want to bring their family and they need two free tickets and they pay for two." Thirty sponsored seats fills a theater with people who were never going to be able to come. Get to an advance screening. There are about 40 of them for pastors and church leaders before September 18, and they're already three-quarters booked. The brothers have sat in those rooms themselves. "People that are in the church and advance screenings are just like weeping in the seats... we've seen the movie hundreds of times and it still cuts to the heart, because it's scripture. You hear those lines of scripture come to life and you see those characters responding, and it grips you." Is Daniel: The Fiery Furnace OK for kids? There's no official rating yet, and the brothers expect that to change once the process finishes. What they told us directly: "There's no language or sexual content or any of those elements." The intensity felt throughout the film is real peril rather than the content you'd normally screen for. An army takes Jerusalem with swords drawn. Nebuchadnezzar is a threatening presence through much of the movie. And then there's the furnace. On age, they gave a general range instead of a cutoff. "I think 10 plus, 9 plus, something in there is a really accurate [guide]." But parents know their own child and their maturity best. They're the ones equipped to make that call. We wrote a full parents' guide that goes age by age and scene by scene. If you're deciding about an eight-year-old, start there. What are you praying for on September 18? "I want people to take it in, in a theater with friends and family or church members and then tell others about it so that people will open the book, read it, and become more familiar with the story and with all the parts that are around the story of Daniel." Then one of them stopped mid-answer. "It gives me chills. I literally have chills right now to think about, what if the people that you bring to this movie experience what King Nebuchadnezzar experienced when they look into the furnace? What if they have that transformative life moment, or the beginnings of that, in their own life?" Nebuchadnezzar worshipped many false gods, which is exactly why he sentenced Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to the furnace for staying faithful to the one true God instead. When he peered into the fiery furnace, he didn't fully understand what, or more so who, he'd seen, other than it was no ordinary man, but it was the moment his life changed. His full conversion doesn't come until later in the book, but it's hard not to see that day as where it started. You can read more about who that fourth figure was here, but what the Kooman brothers really want people to take away is this: "The way to a future in eternity is through the fourth man in the fire." Someone who sits down to see this movie may have their own Nebuchadnezzar moment. "Our prayer has always been that people would open the Bible because of this movie." Bring someone with you So don't go alone. Take a friend. Take family. Take that person you've been meaning to reach out to, or a group from your church. Read Daniel before you go, watch the movie together, then talk it over afterward. Trust that Jesus can meet them right where they are, through this movie, and through you being the one who brought them. Daniel and the Fiery Furnace opens in theaters September 18, 2026. Sponsor a seat for $15. One person who couldn't buy a ticket gets to go. Thirty seats fills a screen. Give here. Bring your group. Thirty people can take a whole theater, and every advance ticket helps open more screens in your region. Plan a group night. Pastors and church leaders: advance screenings are running now and are three-quarters booked. Request one. Stories like this are rare, and they matter more than any one box office weekend. Every seat filled, every seat sponsored, every person invited is a chance to make His name known a little further and share His hope with someone who needed it. That mission of hope is what GiveSendGo and this movie are all about. Keep reading [Is Daniel: The Fiery Furnace OK for Kids? An Honest Parent's Guide] - the expected rating, the three scenes worth knowing about, and what the filmmakers told us about what ages should see this movie. [Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego: the Three Who Would Not Bow - and the Fourth Man in the Fire] - the full story, why Daniel may or may not have been there during the fiery furnace, and who the fourth man in the fire was. [New Christian Movies in Theaters: What's Worth Seeing in 2026] - the faith films reaching theaters this year, and an honest read on each one. Header image from Daniel and the Fiery Furnace.
GiveSendGo FeaturesStill Seen: Lesa’s Story
Posted by Alex Shipley on Aug 1, 2026
Watch Lesa's story here. Lesa Frantz picks up the phone expecting nothing new. It's been that kind of season, quiet, alone, waiting on surgeries she can't afford to recover from. It's someone from GiveSendGo's Hope Team, calling to pray with her. "It was a very important phone call for me," she said, "because it was like God heard me. He heard me. And in that call for prayer, it was him saying: I see you, and I hear you." A Fall She Never Fully Recovered From Lesa is 64, living alone on Social Security. In February 2022, a fall damaged her hip, her hand, and her shoulder, the same shoulder she'd already had two prior surgeries on. Four years later, she's still paying for it. Her wrist has been through four failed surgeries, and her bones simply won't heal around it. Her hand is painfully deformed. Her thumb won't bend. Several fingers can't fully extend. By the end of last year, her surgeon had a plan: a fifth attempt at the wrist, a shoulder rebuild that might turn into a full replacement once he was able to see the damage firsthand, and two knee replacements. Four surgeries in one year, starting January 22nd. "This is a lot for one year," she wrote on the fundraiser she started that December, "but I must improve the quality of my life that I've endured since falling." The Cost of Recovery Lesa didn't ask for much, and what she asked for was specific. A toilet riser and rails. A knee slide exerciser. An ankle rest for sleeping. A slide sheet, so she could get in and out of cars and beds without help. An adaptive equipment kit, a shoe horn, a reacher, a dressing aid, since her hand still won't fully close around ordinary things. A used electric recliner, because her couch sat lower than her surgeon said was safe, and pushing herself up out of it with one working hand would be nearly impossible. All of it came to $500. "I have no friends or family to help me," she wrote, "I have been a shut-in since all this began." She'd found exactly one person willing to get her to her first surgery and bring her home. After that, she was on her own. Not a Single Prayer For months, her fundraiser sat there. Nobody gave. Nobody prayed. "I felt like God didn't see me anymore," Lesa said. "I didn't get a single prayer or donation to my fundraiser. That was pretty hard on me, at a time when I was already feeling unseen." She didn't take the page down, not out of hope, she was honest about that too. "I didn't cancel my fundraiser because I simply didn't think about it." A Prayer Partner on GiveSendGo's Hope Team named Louise would eventually leave this on her page: "Father, I ask that you guide Lesa through her recovery from surgery. Remove any fear and bring strength and healing. Draw her near and cover her with your peace." But that came later. For a long stretch, there was nothing there at all. The Hope Team's Prayer Call GiveSendGo's Hope Team is something no other crowdfunding platform has: a department dedicated to calling and praying for every fundraiser that comes through the platform. Lesa's call came a few weeks after she launched hers that December, but it didn't stay routine for long. Once the team heard what Lesa was facing, four surgeries in one year, no family nearby, a $500 need that had sat untouched for months, they decided hers was exactly the kind of need the Outrageous Generosity Initiative exists for. The team had planned to give her $250. By the time the gift landed, it had become $500, matching her goal exactly, with this note left alongside it: "From the GiveSendGo Hope Team through our Outrageous Generosity initiative - may these funds be a blessing to you and bring encouragement, provision, and hope in this season. You are seen, cared for, and lifted up in prayer. Shine brightly." Beyond the Goal They didn't stop at the goal. The team placed an Amazon order for her equipment directly, so Lesa wouldn't have to shop and carry boxes with one working hand. That freed up her $500 for something else entirely, a pair of glasses, to replace the ones she'd lost off the roof of her car three months earlier, and enough groceries to prep and freeze meals ahead of surgery, since cooking one-handed is its own is a challenge. "I want to say thank you, GiveSendGo," Lesa said. "I am so thankful. I have my equipment, and you went even beyond that." Just Like Daniel A few days later, Lesa wrote to the team again, this time about something more than her physical needs. "Honestly, I haven't understood God's purpose in such a long season of struggles that seem never ending," she wrote. "That's why the timing of your help, coming out of the blue at such a time, has an impact that goes far deeper than the financial help. It showed me that God is with me in my lowest and hears my prayers since I first spoke them, just as He did with Daniel." Lesa's fundraiser never went viral. It sat quiet for months, started by a woman with no one left to ask. Then an ordinary prayer call turned into an extraordinary one. GiveSendGo loves being generous, and in this case that meant stepping in directly. Money met a genuine need for Lesa. But what she needed even more than the equipment was what the call gave her first: hope, the kind that comes from being prayed for, encouraged, and shown up for by people who didn't have to. There's probably a Lesa in your life right now, someone quietly carrying more than they've told anyone, with no one they think to ask. Don't let them go unseen. Start a fundraiser for them, tell their story, and be the person who steps in. It might be exactly what turns their silence into a story like hers. You can also watch Lesa's full story here.
GiveSendGo FeaturesGiveSendGo FAQ: Fees, Payouts, Safety & Common Questions
Posted by Alex Shipley on Jul 29, 2026
You probably landed here chasing one specific answer, maybe how long a transfer takes, whether GiveSendGo is safe, or what that fee at checkout actually covers. Good news: that answer, and every other question people ask most, is right here, answered plainly, all in one place. Starting and Managing a Fundraiser How do I start a fundraiser? Create a free account, then click Start a GiveSendGo and follow the guided steps: country, goal, category, story, photos or video. Video has to link from YouTube, Vimeo, or Rumble, not a direct upload. (Get your country right the first time, it locks in once your fundraiser's created.) How do I edit my fundraiser? Sign in, go to My Fundraisers, then click Edit Fundraiser on your dashboard. Update your goal, title, category, story, or images any time, and raise your goal as often as you need to. How do I share my fundraiser? Sharing tools live right on your fundraiser page: copy the link, post straight to social, generate a QR code for print, or embed a donation button on your own site. Consistent sharing is what keeps donations coming. Most fundraisers stall not because the need went away, but because the organizer stopped talking about it. (More on what to do in the first three days of launching your fundraiser here.) How do I publish or unpublish my fundraiser? Both live in My Fundraisers, right on your fundraiser's header card. Publishing makes the page live and searchable. Be careful unpublishing, it cancels every active recurring donation right away, for good, and republishing won't bring them back. Which countries does GiveSendGo support? Anyone, anywhere can give. Where you can receive funds depends on the recipient's country, which determines transfer eligibility and currency. See the current list here. (Remember, a fundraiser's country locks in the moment it's created.) Verification What happens during verification, and how long does it take? Three things get checked: the fundraiser content, the recipient's identity, and the bank account. Most fundraisers are reviewed within 1 to 2 business days of whichever comes later, the recipient's ID upload or the fundraiser's first donation. That second part catches people off guard: review doesn't start until that first donation lands, so sharing your fundraiser right away actually speeds things up. If more documentation gets requested, answering it quickly keeps things moving. I'm raising money for someone else. How do they get the funds? Add them as your recipient. They'll get an invite, set up or sign into their own account, verify their identity, and connect their bank. Funds go straight to the verified recipient, always, that's part of what keeps giving trustworthy. Recipients How do I change my fundraiser's recipient? If the invitation's still pending, you can update the recipient yourself right from your dashboard. Once they've accepted, contact support and they'll make the change directly. Either way, there's no need to delete your fundraiser to do this, deleting only slows things down. How do I change the name shown as receiving the funds? Contact support once the recipient's finished identity verification and connected their bank account, and they can update the display name. It has to accurately reflect the actual person, business, or organization involved, a legal name change, a safety concern, or a professional pseudonym are all valid reasons. If you're fundraising as a business or organization, connect a business bank account instead, the legal name shows automatically and no name change is needed. Getting Your Funds When can I access the money, and how do transfers work? Your first donation becomes available 5 days after it comes in, then it's a 3-day rolling basis after that. Set transfers to go out automatically (weekly, biweekly, monthly), or request one manually with a 24-hour wait between requests. Once a transfer's processed, expect it in your bank within 2 to 3 business days. There's no extra fee no matter how often you transfer. How do I connect a bank account? Once you're the recipient, connect your bank account either on the recipient information form or by clicking Connect a Bank Account after you accept the invite. Verification finishes once your ID's uploaded, your bank's connected, and the fundraiser's gotten its first donation. After that, move funds from the Transfers tab. How do I update my bank account? Contact support to unlock that option, then it'll show up in your Transfers tab. One catch: you can't change it while a transfer's actively processing, that has to finish or fail first. What do the transfer statuses mean? There are three of them. Processing means it's moving and details are locked. Paused means something needs your attention, you'll get an email explaining what, and once it's resolved the transfer picks back up on its own. Transferred means it's on its way to your bank, usually landing in 1 to 2 business days depending on your bank's own schedule. Giving How do I cancel a recurring donation? Sign in, go to My Impact, then My Donations. Find the subscription, click Cancel Subscription, and type STOP to confirm. Nothing more gets charged. If you only need to update the card, there's no need to cancel: click Manage Recurring Donation on the subscription card, update the payment method, and save. Can I get a refund on my donation? Donations are generally final, but if something's off, contact support with your donation number from your receipt email and they'll take a look. What's the tip at checkout, and is it required? It's optional, and it's what keeps GiveSendGo running. Adjust it at checkout. Set it to $0, and no tip gets charged. Your Account I can't sign in. What do I do? Use Forgot Password on the sign-in page. If you're locked out from too many tries, a timer shows when you can try again, and once it's up you're back in, no reset needed. If the reset email never shows up, check spam first, or if the lockout won't budge, contact support and they'll get you back in. How do I manage or stop email notifications? Go to My Fundraisers, open your fundraiser, click Settings on the dashboard, then Notification Settings. Toggle what you want and click Update. Donations still show up in your Donations tab even with notifications off. Our emails come from givesendgo.info, worth adding to your safe senders if things go missing. How do I delete my fundraiser, or my account? Deleting a fundraiser is permanent, so unpublish first if you just want it offline, that's reversible. To fully delete, your balance has to be at zero, then contact support with your name, email, fundraiser link, the reason, and a clear request to delete it. Deleting your account works the same way: any remaining funds get resolved first, then contact support with your name and a clear deletion request. Have a question that isn't covered here? Our Help Center has step-by-step guides for all of this and more, and our support team responds within one business day.
GiversHe Makes All Things New: Steve Mathews’ Story
Posted by Alex Shipley on Jul 28, 2026
Watch Steve and Dawn's story here. Pastor Steve Mathews doesn't remember the last three weeks of December 2025. The last thing he does remember is a mask being lowered over his face, early one cool December morning. He didn't open his eyes again until the end of December, to a dark hospital room, a television counting down to the New Year's Eve ball drop. Only now, Steve's arm and both his feet were gone. Steve pastors United Baptist Church in Valdese, North Carolina, and serves as Chaplain for the North Carolina Wing of Civil Air Patrol. He and his wife, Dawn, have spent thirty years in ministry together, giving sacrificially of their time, home, and gifts, loved deeply by the community they've served. Not a Virus It started one ordinary Saturday night, when Steve and Dawn returned home from a date and Steve began to feel sick. He chalked it up to a stomach bug and agreed to see a doctor in the morning. Only, by morning, Steve was so confused and disoriented he couldn't get to the car. Dawn immediately called an ambulance. Paramedics said Steve's blood pressure had dropped so low they couldn't risk the drive to a larger hospital further away. They had to take him to the closest one. "If we hit lights and sirens, don't follow us fast," the ambulance crew told Dawn. "We have to get there quickly. Just drive and come to the emergency room, and they'll take you back to him." Dawn followed. Alone. Not knowing whether her husband was alive or dead. Necrotizing Fasciitis At the hospital, doctors informed Dawn that Steve didn't have a stomach bug at all, but rather the onset of septic shock. Then they told her his diagnosis, one she'd only heard of on TV: necrotizing fasciitis. Flesh-eating bacteria. Steve was admitted on December 7th and taken straight into emergency surgery. What was supposed to be a two-hour procedure stretched into five. Surgeons removed 70 percent of the skin and fascia from his arm, trying to stay ahead of an infection that kept spreading. The next day, they went back in, removing more skin from his hand and palm. By the third day, doctors told Dawn it still wasn't enough. Steve's arm would have to be amputated above the elbow. Doctors said they were a little shocked by how quickly Dawn signed the consent forms. Most family members, they told her, don't want to be the one to decide to take a loved one's limbs. "I don't care if you get my husband back in bits and pieces," she told them. "I just want him back." A Shower, a Prayer, and a Promise On the second night, alone, Dawn stood in the shower and watched the water go down the drain. She prayed, recalling how God had called her and Steve into ministry, onto the mission field, into a life poured out for others. She made him a promise: if Steve didn't make it, she'd sell everything they owned and go wherever God asked her to go next. "It was like I could feel God picking me up under my arms," she said, "carrying me down the hall at the hospital, walking with me, sitting next to me." The blood pressure medication keeping Steve alive was saving his heart, but starving his extremities. In the days that followed, his feet began to turn black, and so did his fingers. Both feet were removed in emergency amputations just before the new year. Steve woke for the first time three weeks after his first surgery, on New Year's Eve. A nurse he'd never met, someone he couldn't even see in the dark, came in and wrapped her arms around his head and prayed over him. "That's when the peace of God began to work in my heart," he said. The Mission Changes Dawn had been set to leave for a mission trip to Kenya the Monday after Steve was admitted. That trip never happened. Instead, her teammates showed up at the hospital. "We were going to be in Kenya with you," they told her, "but now the mission's changed. It's about Steve." Word spread fast through the rest of Steve and Dawn's church, their mission team, and decades of friendships built across a 30-year ministry. The waiting room filled up. A friend then suggested she start a GiveSendGo fundraiser. "A lot of Christians use it," her friend told her. "Pastors use it for mission trips. Families use it to adopt children." Dawn agreed, and her friend Britney set it up on her behalf. A day and a half later, GiveSendGo's Hope Team Manager, Rene, called Dawn at the exact moment Steve was being wheeled back into surgery to have his arm amputated. "Can I pray for you?" Rene asked her. "They're about to amputate my husband's arm," Dawn told him. Rene prayed with her right there, over the phone, surrounded by friends in the ICU waiting room. When she hung up, someone asked who'd called. "That was GiveSendGo," Dawn said. "They just called to pray for me." From there, their story kept spreading and many others in their life reached out to pray. Some even shared their own testimonies of how God was working in their families. "To watch that unfold and to watch God minister to all of us," Dawn said, "It was incredible. I've never seen anything like it in my whole 30-year ministry." "A lot of that built up while I was unconscious," Steve said. "So when I became aware of it, it was already a large number of people who were praying." Even people who'd never met him, with no reason to know Steve's name, had given to his fundraiser so he could get back to preaching the gospel. "A lot of them were small gifts," he said, "but they add up." A Long Road, Told in Small Steps What followed was months of surgeries, ICU days, and slow, hard-won progress. Doctors were planning below-the-knee amputations on both of Steve's legs, once his body was strong enough to survive them. He lost some of his fingertips too. By March, he was in a rehabilitation center, learning to stand on his first set of prosthetic legs and adjusting to a prosthetic arm he couldn't yet use while his residual limb continued to heal. On April 1st, Steve rang the bell and walked out of rehab on his new legs. "I shall not die, but live, and declare the works of the Lord," he said, quoting Psalm 118:17. But he was still facing a long list of needs: a better prosthetic arm, a vehicle he could safely drive, ongoing therapy, and specialized care that insurance wouldn't fully cover. Outrageous Generosity On May 16th, 2026, Steve and Dawn's church family and community threw them a welcome-home celebration in Ferguson, North Carolina. GiveSendGo was there too, and through its Outrageous Generosity initiative, presented the Mathews family with a check for $12,500. "We were blown away," Dawn wrote afterward. "Thank you so much for this outrageous blessing." GiveSendGo's Outrageous Generosity initiative is their way of blessing people and families in unexpected need. (Read about another Outrageous Generosity moment here when GiveSendGo bought and gave away a car to a family in need.) "I want to say thank you to the Hope Team, that calls people day after day with different kinds of trials going on," Steve said. "Thank you for being a part of GiveSendGo." As of this writing, Steve and Dawn's fundraiser has raised more than $80,000 from givers in their community and around the world. Everything Made New Looking back, Dawn believes everything they went through was worth it, for where they are now. "When Steve woke up, I listened to a song, and it talked about how God is making everything new," she said. "I thought, that is our life. God was making everything new in us. He made Steve new... And when God makes all things new, he makes them better. He makes them beautiful." "If I had to go back to the 6th of December and God asked me, 'Do you want to go through this, or do you not?,'" she said. "I think if I could see the outcome where we're at today, I would still say yes. I can't imagine not going through this to see the power and the presence of God in the way that we've seen him." Steve agrees. "I should have died," he said. "The doctor didn't think I would live. And thousands and thousands of people prayed for me. And I believe God answers prayer. He's a God who's listening. He wants us to pray for each other. And I believe that I am the beneficiary of thousands of prayers, and God answered those." Steve doesn't describe his story as one of loss. He describes it as a life he handed over a long time ago. "Over 30 years ago, I gave my whole life to Christ," he said. "If he's my Lord, then it's all his. And if he wants an arm and two legs and some fingertips for his glory... if that magnifies his gospel, I would freely give that." A Life Already Given Steve's back in his pulpit now, back to preaching, teaching, and writing. To anyone walking through something they can't yet see the other side of, he offers this: "If you rely on Christ and you trust him, he'll meet you there and he will walk you through it." What began with a diagnosis nobody saw coming didn't end there. A friend started a fundraiser, and hundreds of family, friends, and strangers decided to walk with Steve and Dawn through the hardest season of their lives. That's the story behind every GiveSendGo fundraiser. If you're facing something like this right now, or you know someone who is, you don't have to carry it alone. Start a fundraiser for yourself, or for someone you love, and let your loved ones show up for you, just as Steve and Dawn's community did for them. Watch Steve and Dawn's full story here, and see the moment GiveSendGo surprised them with a $12,500 check through their Outrageous Generosity initiative, at their welcome home celebration here. You can also pray for Steve's continued recovery along with his remaining needs, including prosthetics, home modifications, and a vehicle Steve can safely drive, at givesendgo.com/stevemathews.
Fundraising TipsHow GiveSendGo Works: Start a Free Fundraiser in 3 Steps
Posted by Alex Shipley on Jul 24, 2026
Asking for help is rarely easy. Whether you're going through a tough season yourself or watching someone you love walk through one, just knowing where to start can feel overwhelming. GiveSendGo exists for real life and real stories like yours: a $40,000 surgery insurance won't cover, a mission trip to Haiti, a house fire that took everything, a cookbook you've been wanting to publish. Whatever brought you here, we've got the steps and the tools to help you reach it. Since 2015, we've been a trusted place for people to find help, and hope, right when they need it most. Here's a relief: it's just three steps, and you can have your fundraiser live in a matter of minutes. Below is exactly how, plus a few additional resources if you want to go deeper on any step. One thing worth saying plainly before you start: asking doesn't make you a burden. People generally want to help the folks they care about, they just need to know how. A fundraiser is how they find out. 1. Just Click Start Click "Start a GiveSendGo," pick your country, your goal amount, and your category (there are 20 to choose from), and now you're building. On the goal: pick a number givers can picture reaching. An amount that feels impossible doesn't build confidence, it does the opposite. Start modest if you need to, and raise your goal each time you hit it. Reaching a goal, even a small one, is proof your fundraiser works, and proof brings more givers. You'll need a title. It's the first thing anyone sees, so it has to say exactly what the need is. Don't overthink it here, we've got a whole guide on writing a title that gets donations if you want it, but a clear, specific title beats a clever one every time. "Help Sarah Beat Stage 2 Breast Cancer" will always outperform "Sarah's Fight." Then the story. It only needs three things, in this order: what happened, who it's for, and what the money covers. That's it. One real detail carries more weight than five adjectives: not "this has been such a difficult season," but "Sarah's chemo starts October 3rd, and this covers the childcare her insurance won't." Write it the way you'd tell a neighbor at the mailbox. If you're stuck, start with the sentence you'd text a friend to explain why you're doing this. That sentence is usually your first paragraph. Last, add a photo or a short video. A face people know is the fastest way to build trust with them and establish a connection to your story. That's it! See a full step-by-step guide here: Creating a GiveSendGo Fundraiser. 2. Share Your Fundraiser A fundraiser doesn't spread on its own. It spreads because you sent it to someone first. And the ones shared early and often in the first three days are the ones most likely to reach their goal. Start small, and start the day you launch. Text three to five people in your closest circle, the ones you'd call before anyone else. Ask them for three things: read it, give if they can, and share it with one person they know. Something like: "I set this up for Sarah. Would you take a look, and if you're able, pass it to someone who'd want to know?" Those first gifts matter more than their size. They're proof to every person who lands on the page that this is real and this is worth giving to. Once that base is set, widen out: your church, your job, your group chats, your socials. Share it more than once. People miss things the first time through their feed. One in four people who visit a fundraiser end up giving, so every share is a real chance at more donations. For a fuller plan, see How to Build Your Fundraising Team and What To Do in the First 3 Days of Launching Your Fundraiser. Updates count too. When you post one, a goal you just hit, a new photo, a plain thank you, everyone already following your fundraiser gets notified, and your fundraiser lands back in front of mind. More on that here: Posting a Fundraiser Update. 3. Get Paid Before any money can move, someone has to be set as the fundraiser's recipient. That can be you or the person you're raising money for. It's a quick step in your dashboard if you haven't done it yet. If the recipient isn't you, the person you invite will receive an email to fill in their details, and they'll need to complete that before they can receive their funds. From there, getting your donations out is called a transfer. If you're the recipient, you can set transfers to go out automatically on a schedule (weekly, biweekly, or monthly), or request one manually any time funds are available, just click "Request Transfer" in the Transfers tab. Once a transfer is processed, expect it in your bank account within 2-3 business days. More on How Transfers Work on GiveSendGo. On fees: GiveSendGo charges a 0% platform fee. We don't take a penny of what you raise. The only cost is the payment processing fee, 2.7% plus 30 cents per transaction, standard for moving money by card. That fee comes out before the transfer, not out of your pocket separately, so what lands in your account is simply what's left after processing. If a transfer ever looks smaller than you expected, it's almost always timing: recent donations can still be processing and land in your next transfer instead of this one. It's rarely a sign anything's wrong. Your fundraiser doesn't need to be perfect. It needs to exist. Click Start, tell the truth about what's going on, and send it to the first five people who'd want to know. Get started now.
GiversHope Has a Heartbeat: Baby Cash’s Story
Posted by Alex Shipley on Jul 17, 2026
Watch Sam, Kendall, and Cash's story here. There's a bridge between two Boston hospitals, and somewhere in the middle of it, a father is running. Just moments ago, Kendall had given birth to her and Sam's son, Cash. Almost as soon as he arrived, he was whisked away. Sam kissed Kendall on the forehead and took off after the team of doctors wheeling Cash down the hallway, trying to keep up. He doesn't know yet that his son's heart is about to stop. A Shocking Diagnosis Rewind several weeks, to Kendall's 36-week ultrasound appointment. About ten minutes in, the sonographer went quiet. "I don't want to freak you out, but something's wrong with his heart. I'll be right back." Sam and Kendall looked at each other in the empty room. Every pregnancy before this one had been normal. Their kids were healthy. This had to be a mistake. They texted family right away, asking everyone to pray it was. When the doctor came back, she brought two pictures: one of a normal heart, and one of a heart that looked like Cash's. His was built backward. The two main vessels that carry blood in and out were swapped, a condition called transposition of the great arteries. Left alone, it's fatal. Caught and corrected in time, it's survivable. "You'll need to go down to Boston tomorrow to confirm it," the doctor told them, "but it's looking like he will need surgery in his first week of life." A Sister Steps In The next day, at Boston Children's, the diagnosis was confirmed. A cardiologist, a social worker, and a financial counselor sat Sam and Kendall down in a conference room and walked them through everything ahead: the surgery, the recovery, the medications he'd need, the follow-up care. Then came the question about insurance. Kendall and Sam didn't have the traditional kind, and the programs the hospital usually pointed families toward, they didn't qualify for. So they went home and did the math themselves. Open-heart surgery. A hospital stay with an uncertain end date. Medications. So many unknowns. Kendall's sister quickly stepped in. Before Cash was even born, she started and shared a GiveSendGo fundraiser to help the family through the weeks and months ahead. Support and prayer started pouring in almost immediately. Baby Cash Makes His Entrance Kendall was due June 3, 2023. The date came and went, and the hospital calls started, pushing her to schedule an induction. But she felt the Holy Spirit telling her to wait, that Cash needed the extra time to grow stronger for what was coming. 'You're making unwise decisions," they said. "You need to get in here. You're putting your son's life at risk." But Kendall stayed the course, listening for that same voice, until two weeks overdue, she finally felt the release to schedule it. She went in the next day, on June 15th, to give birth. Labor was comparable to every birth before it, except this time she had to deliver in an operating room. When Cash was born, he was placed on his mother's chest for only a couple minutes, before he was carried across the room to a warming table. Wires everywhere. A breathing tube placed. Then came the transfer to another hospital, across the bridge connecting the two. Across the Bridge Sam leaned down, kissed his wife on the forehead, and chased after the team of six or seven doctors. But somewhere along the way, Cash's breathing tube was bumped out of place, sending him into cardiac arrest. At Boston Children's, they wheeled him into an ICU room that filled instantly with more than forty-five people. Doctors began chest compressions. With every push, Sam watched his son's small arms lift off the table. "His heart rate is dropping," a nurse told Sam. "You probably need to leave the room." Sam waited nearly two hours without a word on Cash or his wife, who was experiencing some bleeding after birth. When a nurse finally came for him, she told him Cash had been unresponsive for three minutes before his heart started again. He was stable. Cash's Heart Surgery Sam and Kendall prayed that day a surgery slot would open up quickly. And it did, for the very next day, June 16. "I know it's fast. I know this is probably a shock to you," the surgeon told them. It wasn't. It was exactly what they'd asked for. The surgery went well. Most babies have a rough night after a procedure like this. Kendall, Sam, and their community prayed for another miracle, and the rough night doctors warned them to expect never came. Every day after, they joined a small huddle with Cash's medical team and heard some version of the same story: he'd made leaps overnight. Underneath all of it, the fundraiser Kendall's sister had started was quietly holding up the rest of their life. Parking. Meals during their stay, and even at home after the fact. The month Sam took off work. The costs that never show up on a hospital bill but pile up anyway. "It was something completely off our plate that we didn't need to worry about," Sam said. "It was going to be covered." But it wasn't only the money that held them steady. Their fundraiser page, also had a Pray button, with a number of its own that kept climbing. "It was really beautiful being able to see the Pray button and the numbers just roll in," Kendall said. "As we were seeing the financial outpouring, the Pray button spoke more to us, because we knew that at any given moment, someone somewhere was making sure they were praying for us. We felt so covered." Prayers, generosity, and messages of encouragement arrived from their community and from people the family had never met. Some from around the world. The Phone Call that Brought Tears A woman from GiveSendGo's Hope Team called them not long after Cash was born, while the weight of everything they'd been through was just beginning to settle. She asked how they were doing, then started praying for them. Everyone on the call got emotional. "It felt like the call came at the perfect time," Kendall said. "We were just starting to process everything we'd gone through, and it was like, somebody's checking in on us after the fact. It was so encouraging." Cash recovered well and got to go home, but then the bills started to flood in. That's when Kendall's other sister called. "I just have to tell you and encourage you, the Lord told me He's going to take care of it. That you're not going to pay a cent. It's going to be taken care of for you." And it was. Cash Celebrates 1 Year and His Heartaversary A year later, Cash turned one. His cardiology team cleared his heart as perfectly healthy. He is, by every account, an ordinary toddler now. "Every one-year-old's birthday is exciting," Kendall said, "but it felt different with him, because we didn't know if he'd make it a year. Had he not gotten that surgery, the reality is he would have died. If this was sixty years ago, we would have lost our child." The family celebrates two special days and milestones for Cash now. His birthday. And what they call his "Heartaversary": the day of his surgery, when he got a second chance at life. "You wouldn't be able to tell that he had a heart issue," Sam said. "I'm very thankful for the community that was around us because of GiveSendGo." "It brought in not only financial help," Kendall said, "but spiritual, emotional, and a ton of encouragement, when we were in one of our lowest points." No parent wants to watch their child covered in wires and bandages, facing the possibility of losing him. But what Kendall and Sam got in return was a testimony of God's provision and faithfulness through it, and a community that surrounded them with help and hope in their most challenging season. It started with a sister who saw their need and refused to let them face it alone, who started a fundraiser in mere minutes, shared it with everyone she knew, and watched strangers around the world turn into a community of tangible support and spiritual encouragement overnight. That's the story behind every GiveSendGo fundraiser. A family facing a diagnosis, a bill, a crisis they didn't choose. And someone (a sister, a friend, a neighbor) who decides they're not going to wait to be asked before they help. If that's you right now, on either side of that story, you don't have to carry it alone. Start a fundraiser for yourself, or for someone you love, and share it with the people who'd want to show up for you. GiveSendGo is here for stories like yours. You can also watch Sam, Kendall, and Cash's full story here.
DevotionalsAre You Running to Broken Cisterns or Living Water?
Posted by Rene Marroquin on Jun 24, 2026
Psalm 55:22 says, "Cast your burden on the Lord, and He will sustain you." Worry itself may begin with real concerns, but when it controls us, it can become sinful. Jesus repeatedly told His followers not to live in anxious fear, and the apostles taught the same. Anxiety often reveals that we are trying to carry responsibilities God has already promised to handle. Instead of trusting Him, we act as though everything depends entirely on us. When we cling tightly to our burdens, we place ourselves where only God belongs. We begin to believe we must foresee every problem, solve every outcome, and protect ourselves by our own strength. This lack of trust can slowly pull our hearts away from God. Fear tempts us to rely more on human wisdom than on His guidance. Like Israel in the Old Testament, we sometimes run to "broken cisterns" instead of the living fountain of God's care and faithfulness. An anxious heart can also weaken our spiritual life. Worry makes us question God's love and goodness. Our prayers lose confidence, our peace disappears, and our witness to others becomes clouded by fear and self-protection. When trust in God grows weak, temptation often grows stronger because we start looking for ungodly ways to secure ourselves. But there is another way. God invites us to bring every burden to Him the moment it appears. Through simple faith, we can rest in His promises and remember that He truly cares for us. Trust keeps us near to Him and strengthens us against fear and temptation. Isaiah reminds us that God gives "perfect peace" to the person whose mind is fixed on Him. Real peace is not found in controlling everything, but in confidently resting in the faithful care of God.
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