This past Sunday we launched “The year of Serve” at church which is our way of dedicating this year to serving our community and the world through missions and community service. Our church has plenty of community projects and domestic and international mission trips planned for this year (including a trip to Uganda July 15th to the village where Joy will be living by then!). I can’t wait!
Service is now on the minds of everyone at the church including in our Bible Fellowship (Sunday School) classes. Each class is “encouraged” to organise at least three mission projects this year. My wife and I recently took on the Mission Coordinator position in our class and are really excited about our class serving this year! Our class already has three mission/community projects planned and we hope to knock those out and achieve much more this year as well!
Pastor has also challenged the church to witness to people we come in contact with in daily life and we were each given 5 gospel tracts a few weeks ago to use as a tool to spread the good news of Jesus. That was a fantastic excersize for me as it caused me to get outside my comfort zone to open a dialog with people about the Lord. Now lets not misunderstand … I have NO problem talking to anyone about near anything. It’s just the fear or nervousness of starting a conversation about what can be a touchy subject to some that is/was the problem. It was fantastic though because I was challenged to find ways to break the ice and start a dialog with people I barely knew. I had a meaningful interaction with 2 people and placed the other 3 into the hands of people I came in contact with in my daily life (wait staff, etc). I even wrote my phone number on the back in case they have questions. I am sure someone will call and catch me completely off guard 6 months from now – haha.
This Sunday something a little cooler was given out. At the front of the church they had tables setup and on the tables they had larger gospel tracks with a $1 bill inside. We were challenged to come forward to get one and commit to use the dollar to buy some unexpecting person something as a way to open the door to sharing the gospel. They are calling it the “$1 Challenge”. The single dollar was meant to be more symbolic than useful. While you can certainly find something to buy someone for $1 it is more likely you will pay for their meal or starbucks coffee, etc. and the dollar will be “seed money” so to speak. One of the staff pastors demonstrated the idea in a short video that we were shown Sunday night. You can watch the video (and learn more about our mission) at servestrong.org.
It is exciting to be challenged to put our mouths where our hearts are and I am eager to see our collective impact on the community!