New Service

This past Monday, we inaugurated a new service. For four years or so, we have had a Mission Night on Mondays—we gave out food and clothing. For the two years I have been here, I have puzzled about how to connect mission to evangelism. It’s easy enough to connect evangelism to mission—we can tell all kinds of people what we do on Monday nights. The problem came when we tried to tell people on Monday night what we’re up to Sunday morning. We just weren’t seeing people come to worship.

So for about a year or so I and a few others have been thinking about bringing Sunday morning to Monday night. So, while we still give out food and clothing, we also have a service—praying, singing, preaching. And we also have a meal together.

So for about a month this summer, we shut down the food and clothing ministry while we talked about how to do something new.

Then we opened back up, pretty much like we had been doing it before. We put up a sign and found something amazing. There were close to 70 people at our doors. We had not had that many for a mission night in a long time. We discovered that most people in the neighborhood had no idea we did such a thing!

We shut down for another two weeks to stock up the pantry and get ready. Monday was the first night. 55 people came. 55 people from the neighborhood, people who do not come to church on Sundays. No doubt some have a church, but most do not. And so the one thing we wanted to do, fill the belly and the spirit, we did. Two birds with one stone.

Making the change was hard. It felt, no doubt, like we were closing some chapter. It is hard to imagine new things, or doing something good in a new way. What if it fails? How do we get past feeling sad for losing the old ways? In the end, not much changed—people still come and get items from the food pantry. We just added a meal—and the point is not just to feed, but to sit down, to let people know they matter, to get to know them and let them get to know us. And, I pray, one day turn over the ministry to them.

The crazy thing is—and there are all kinds of things that hit you— we have been talking and trying to reach out to the community. And in one simple thing, a meal and a service, we di what we have wanted to.

And it’s funny how things have happened. We have also been talking about doing economic development in the community, looking to help go-getters start their own businesses. Well, there is a fellow, Kenny, who has wanted to start a restaurant or catering business. He cooks for a well-known restaurant in town. I mentioned to him that we have a nice kitchen. He said, “I noticed that at your wedding.” I went on to ask him if he had thought about maybe doing something out of there. He said that was an answer to prayer, because his wife had said that instead of him asking me, he should wait for me to ask him. So the rent is going to be him cooking for Monday nights and our fellowship dinners.

So, we have a professional chef who cooks the meals for the Monday night service. It is so awesome to work with such a creative staff and volunteers.

Bill MacDonald, one of our faithful volunteers, said he looks forward to the day when there are more people in the service on Monday nights than there are on Sunday mornings.