Being The Church
This past Sunday, the church came together to Be the Church to the community around us. You can check out some of the pictures of the day here. It was definitely a day of reaching out and showing the community around us that FBC is here and we want to help. Four groups were sent out. One to a local laundromat to pay for laundry. One to the police department to wash cars and also to deliver gift baskets to the fire departments, police department, and ambulance service. One out the front doors of the church and throughout Williamson picking up trash and cleaning the streets. And one door to door mowing lawns.
When doing something like this, you do a lot of planning, but when the day comes, the plans don’t always work out like we want them to. The police were called away so we couldn’t wash as many cars as we wanted. The laundromat wasn’t as busy as we first thought it would be. This aside, God still works and his plan to love our neighbor happened throughout the day.
It is funny to me that we base success on results. Will anyone come to church? Will the church grow more? Did we help a large amount of people? Did everything go according to plan? Did a lot of people attend the event?
These questions are nice to evaluate and hopefully see how we can help others better or more specifically, but the success of this event was not based on the number of people who came, or that we helped, or that may come to church because of it. The success of the event is whether God was praised and honored through our actions. To this end, I believe he was and it makes this a huge success.
I believe we reached passed the walls of our church and passed some barriers we may have had in each of our lives. We were able to love our neighbor not expecting anything in return. We were able to offer grace and love and maybe provide some needs. And we were able to see that we could do this ourselve in the everyday. As we go forward from here, remember this day. Remember the needs around us and think about how even in small ways you can lend a hand and love your neighbor.