For the last several weeks, Brenda and I prepared for a mission team to come and help our church serve it’s community.
Our new church development doesn’t want to be a church that stays within its walls, but rather, a congregation that loves and serves the community it is in.
Our target area of influence for this mission team was the public high schools that are in the community of Bella Vista. Just beyond our apartment, there are 3 high schools, representing 8000 students and 600 teachers.
We secured access to two of them for this outreach, working with their English departments to setup classes on English conversation.
Plowing the ground
Serving in the community is more than just sharing the gospel with whomever will listen. It’s also doing the good news and earning the right to be heard. These relationships will open up doors to further community engagement.
Service is blessing the community and seeking its peace. Service is simply plowing the ground. It’s buildling the right to be credible, to be heard, and to be present in the future when they call upon us for a need.
Service without an overt agenda allows us to show that we truly care.
Service also will involve others on our mission as we seek to make an impact in the community as agents of transformation.
It’s hard to make transformation happen in one 2 hour visit. But it’s a start.
At the end of each class, the English departments expressed their appreciation and a desire to come back and do more.
It is up to our church to put the next round of service in place.
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