Last year I met Ben for the 1st time. He probably was the most energetic volunteer I have ever met. The location of our first encounter was Glendale’s Homeless Connect Day and it seemed like Ben was running the show – which in a way he was. Ben managed all the manpower for the day and was doing everything he could to make the day a success.

Ben is a volunteer leader (for a day gig he plays electrician) of ServeLA, a ministry out of Mosaic.

At first I was a little taken. I’ve worked in fulltime ministry for many years and usually churches just do their own thing. I am not saying that is bad. *cough* There are many great churches that have a huge impact on their community. But at the Homeless Connect Day ServeLA was helping the City of Glendale and all the other organizations involved – not just their own church community.

Taken from the ServeLA website:

What is serveLA?
We are a community of people who are committed to the future our city, striving to make whatever difference we can.

I love that! A church ministry going outside its own church body to help others is simply gorgeous! But we need more! We need ServeBoston, ServeCleveland, ServeChicago, Serve(insert your own city)!

As the economy gets worse we need to get better. One huge way we can get better is if more church leaders would be secure enough (ya, I went there) to allow their own church to build something besides their own church! I mean, we talk about community on Sunday morning then the rest of the week we only help build our own ministries. Yes, I know, your church may have bought a new basketball hoop for the local school. You may have even painted a mural. But then you went back to doing your own thing and won’t be back to help that school for 6 months or more. What I am talking about is a fulltime commitment to work with and serve the community outside of your church community!

So here’s the challenge. Assign someone to find events being held in your community, maybe even being held by another church, then have a team of people go serve those events doing whatever is asked – and without any agenda! Repeat daily! Now that’s a real church!

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 9:54 pm and is filed under My Big Mouth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.