Missional Renaissance

Our small group recently read the book The Missional Renaissance and followed up with some parables in Matthew that support the major themes in the book. As a result, our group desired to focus on missional living. One thing we want to do is seek out opportunities to serve. One guy in our group has a good friend that recently lost her husband and she has two young boys ages 5 and 14. Our friend told us her fence really needs repairing and that he thought it would make a great impression on her 14 year son to see the church helping out those in need. So we decided to build her a new fence! We decided to have a garage sale to try and raise some of the around $1,100 we need to finance the fence. We had the garage sale this Saturday at our house. Everyone collected items from their homes and friends. Then members of our group came over on Friday night and we got everything priced and set up. We started the sale early Saturday morning and wrapped up just before two. We were so excited by the results! We raised over $800 and had a great time together. It was such a blessing to have our group working together! Now we just need the men to start construction!

On Sunday our church took part in the Go and Be initiative. About 25 churches from around the metroplex took part in a massive service day on Sunday. We didn't have traditional church but instead served the community surrounding our building through numerous service projects including painting, building playgrounds, cleaning apartments and many more. The initiative urges Christians to be the change you want to see. This was perfect timing for our group and I suspect many other groups within our church :) Our small group cleaned 5 apartments. We split into groups and my group cleaned three apartments. The first one was an Ethiopian lady with 4 month old twins. Then we cleaned her friend's next door and then her brother's. I thought it was going to be really disgusting cleaning someone else's home. But their apartments were all really well kept and it was great to get to see how appreciative these individuals were for someone coming in and cleaning for them. After the service projects, our church had a picnic at the local high school that the whole community was invited to. Everyone we talked to that had participated in the service project was very excited about the results. It was a great weekend serving with our friends and I look forward to our next project! After re-reading my post, I realize it is hard to convey what a great weekend we had and how God was working in the community. But I was truly inspired to "be the change" after serving with my friends and sharing the excitement together!