GO!
June 8, 2010
Go and find the lost. Go serve those who society leaves behind. Go beyond your comfort zone and your own borders. Go and not just talk about, but truly demonstrate, Christ. To the lost. The sick. The broken. The weary. The tired. The one who keeps wanting but is never fulfilled.
“Go!” Boldly and with compassion.
Growing up in a UCC church in a small town it always struck me as odd that we would gather in our Sunday best in the church to sing antiquated songs with lyrics like “doth thou thath wrought” and I remember telling my grandpa as we were leaving one Sunday how I didn’t feel any different or know any more walking out of that church than when I walked in. That feeling of sameness bothered me greatly because I had learned early on in Sunday school about a compassionate and powerful Jesus who healed the sick, comforted the grieving and brought people back from death, but yet, this church it didn’t feel “alive” at all. Something was very wrong here. I knew in my heart there had to be more than this. No, this couldn’t be it. To walk in the doors every Sunday at 10:15, smile at the people, parrot some phrases with the congregation, sing some songs and try to stay awake during the sermon while daydreaming which NFL teams were playing on TV later that day.
My world shifted in 2000 when I came upon the Vineyard in Cincinnati. It was an early fall Saturday and I had been using The Vineyard parking lot as a shortcut to get to work. New in town, I was looking for a new church to join and decided if I was going to use their parking lot, I could at least see what they had to offer. To my shock and amazement, when I walked through the doors they had a huge “ServeFest” going on with at least a dozen outreaches, everything from a Coke outreach to a free car wash to a nursing home visitation, even a bathroom cleaning outreach. All to serve the people outside the church walls to let them know God loves them. It was incredible. This…this is what I had been looking for all my life. This is what I knew Jesus would be about today. This was “Go!”
So how does that snippet of my life fit into the Vineyard core mission? I hope it dovetails nicely. To reach out to people who are broken and heading down the wrong road at a breakneck speed stop so they can experience God to find a more fulfilling, peaceful path. To team up with those who used to want for only for themselves, but now want to serve in the name of something greater than self. To “Go!” and serve in the name of Christ.
Someone once said, “Christianity at its simplest form is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread”. And through the history of the Vineyard movement and at VCC that’s what we’re all about. Now for sure, with a membership as large as VCC, there are people all over the spectrum in regards of serving. But it’s the culture of service and slipping on the dusty sandals of Christ for even a moment to a stranger, a co-worker or the cashier at a Taco Bell, it’s a force of a million light touches of love to demonstrate to people, sometimes on the worst day of their life, that there is a God, He is alive and well, and He loves you so much he would rather go to Hell alone than to be in Heaven without you.
“Go!” It’s the key core value that started with the Vineyard back from its inception and still holds true today. And it’s not just a suggestion from Christ, but a command, “Go and make fishers of men!” It’s pretty much what drives me to help lead with the LA La Viña outreach and when volunteering for Breathe or any of the other programs VCC puts on to reach out to the lost and serve those who live on “the fringe”.
And the best part is I can leave from any service or outreach at VCC and know I am changed, that I have learned something to put into practice that coming week and the weeks to come. And walk out with an attitude that’s focused on Christ so I can do what He asked us all to do in his name. ”Go!”
- Brian G.
Being Available
December 4, 2008
Our small group is in the midst of reading Dave’s book and are really into it! The chapter on “availability” spoke volumes to all of us. So, we have been praying everyday and asking the question “God, I am available; how can I serve someone today?” Well, needless to say, God is faithful and he has answered our prayers everyday and then answered them in a bigger than expected way. What I mean by that is our small group had the privilege of providing two different families in the Winton Terrace area Thanksgiving dinners. One family we took food over on a Wednesday night to a single mom and 5 children. The mom wanted to prepare the meal herself and requested all the needed ingredients to make a Thanksgiving meal. She wanted the meal to be a way of bringing her extended family together because she lost her mother recently. She was murdered this past June. To make matters even worse, the mother that was shot and killed was holding this woman’s 2 year old son (the 2 year old’s grandmother). In addition, two other children of hers were present and witnessed this terrible murder. This all sounds surreal, but it is true because I have staff members who are serving this family and attending to some of their needs. Fortunately, this mom was open to prayer and we got the privilege of praying with her and her children that Wednesday evening.
The second family we served was a single mom with 6 precious children ranging from 7 years to 7 months We took fully cooked meal to her on Thanksgiving morning. She too allowed us to pray for her. The small children were so receptive to prayer; we joined hands and prayed in our little circle. The mom specifically asked for prayer to pass her driver’s test. When we finished praying, the little 4 year old tugged on my shirt and gleefully said, “My daddy’s out of jail now.” The mom laughed very nervously in response to her child’s statement. What a heart break!
We did not leave either place feeling good about what we had done, instead we felt overwhelmed by the needs of our community and asked ourselves, what else can we do? Taking a few meals is just not enough!
Of course, we will continue to lift the families up and many others just like them and also continue to ask God what else can we do. Our small group is meeting again this coming Wednesday to walk through another chapter of the Outward Focused Life book. We know God has a plan for our group and we are praying that we pay close attention to His voice as we enter into this busy holiday season.
We are grateful for your prayers!
Annette (and Mike)
Inward Focused Evangelism?
September 5, 2008
We often view our circumstances and Kingdom principles as black or white, but God often invites us to experience his grace in the many gray areas of this world. When we can’t reconcile God’s big ideas with our limited human understanding, we find ourselves wanting a set of rules to live by. Black and white boundaries temporarily make things easier (action A is okay, but action B is a “no-no”). But they also make it tempting to miss what God might be doing in the misty gray. That’s where we learn to rely on his grace.
Our lives are full of situations with seemingly competing values. So we live in a perpetual pendulum swing, swaying from one extreme to the other, rarely finding balance and peace in the middle. Take the typical church ministries of prayer and outreach, for example. On the surface, these seem like opposites, with one focused inward and the other outward. But can a person really pray for God’s Kingdom to come and draw closer to him without understanding his passion for others? And when we reach out, do we really receive no personal growth benefit? Of course not! Godly prayer usually has an outward-focused element to it, while true mission spurs inner growth. God is a win-win God.
This is why when I talk about “Inward Focused Evangelism”, I get more than a few sideways glances. That simply can’t be right, can it? Evangelism means to bring the good news of God’s Kingdom to others. “Others” is right there in the definition. So how can participating in evangelism, through an outreach or mission project, be about me?
Certainly I have shown up to serve from time to time because some friend or spikey-haired pastor talked me into it. That’s pretty much about me. There have been occasions when I reached out in order to feel better about myself or my life’s circumstances. That was definitely about me. But what about when I show up to serve or tell someone about my experience in Jesus with pure motives? Is that ever about me? Sure is. Every single time.
Because God is not wasteful, he will use all of our experiences to grow us and to bring glory to himself, if we’ll let him (check out Romans 8:28). So I may start out with a desire to serve out of a pure love for God or others. But God will bring more to that act of service than I can imagine by blessing me as well. Sometimes the way he does that is just by offering up a good dose of “feel good.” Often, though, he allows me to see a glimpse of his character that I hadn’t noticed before. And the intimacy and growth that happens as I know him better is a rich reward. You see, I become more like Jesus when I do the things he did. And he served constantly.
So I believe it’s okay when as church leaders, we sometimes tap into a person’s desire for inner healing and growth as a motivation for serving. I’ve learned I can rely on God to guide a person into a genuine concern for others as they are in the process of serving, even if they began reaching out for selfish reasons. I don’t have to cultivate a passion for the lost to get someone started. That’s the Holy Spirit’s job.
Paul understood this win-win aspect of growing in Christ. He wrote “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.” Philemon 1:6 (NIV) Did you catch that? Share with others so that you can better understand what you have with Christ.
So whether we serve as a result of loving God and others, or we serve so that we can learn to grow in our love of God and others, the message is the same: let’s go serve somebody!
