So All May Hear
Oct 13, 2024 | by The Fellowship
As the Missions Pastor at The Fellowship, last year after our 2023 ServeFest, I began to have a growing dissatisfaction about how we had been designing the event. One of our mottos at The Fellowship Is: "We do good deeds … to build good will … to share the Good News.” My dissatisfaction was about not having opportunities to share the really Good News about what Jesus did for me (us). We accomplished a really great job of doing good deeds which built good will, but we rarely had the opportunity to share the Good News. If we did not change the design of ServeFest, it was unlikely that we ever would!
As I contemplated this problem, I was unaware that Pastor Brian was also having some dissatisfaction about ServeFest. He noticed that our church body did not get the opportunity to see the scope of ServeFest and the impact it had on our non-profit partners. In past events we had 400+ volunteers spread across Katy doing 35 different projects. As an individual volunteer on one of those projects, it was hard to see the enormous impact of ServeFest. To each volunteer, It probably felt like ServeFest was a single project done with a team of a dozen or so other people. Our church body was not experiencing the overwhelming results that have the ability to propel us to even more impactful projects.
When I shared my concerns with Pastor Brian, he shared his own dissatisfaction. We began to think and pray about what to do.
A few weeks later, Pastor Brian shared an idea for how we could put our congregation face-to-face with people who do not know Jesus or The Fellowship. What if we picked an area of Katy and committed to knocking on as many doors as possible and offering some service for free? His suggestion was spreading mulch in the front gardens of those who answered the door. We could also pray over that person and if the opportunity presented itself, share a brief testimony about what Jesus had done for us and would do for anyone who accepted Him as personal Savior. I loved the idea, and we set our plan in place.
After months of thinking, planning and praying, on Sunday, October 6th ServeFest 2024 became a reality. More than 300 of our 380 volunteers (the others packed meals for Feed The Hunger) were organized into teams of 6-8 people. They spread out across the area within a one-mile radius of our church equipped with mulch, a conversation plan and confidence that comes from the Holy Spirit. Between 9:00 am and 2:00 pm more than 1,700 doors were knocked on! Each team was to text in updates of what they were experiencing. What relief and amazement l experienced as the texts came pouring in! It was not long before the first trucks supporting each team with mulch began to return to our church campus for refilling. What surer sign that our teams were having success giving away mulch!
By 11:00 am, the resupply process was working so smoothly that some men and women who had been assigned to that duty were not busy. They asked if it was ok for them to go out and knock on doors to find more people who wanted mulch. I loved the dedicated hearts demonstrated by that question. Absolutely! Go!
By our ending time, more than 1,700 doors were knocked on, some 300 doors had been opened to our teams, 45 tons of mulch was spread on flower beds, and more than 200 people had been prayed over! Embedded in each prayer was a praise to God for providing a way to spend eternity with Him. Yes! We thanked Him for our own salvation as well as how He made the impossible possible by sending His son Jesus to live a perfect life, die for our sins, defeat death and rise again to eternal life. Clearly embedded in the prayer was the Gospel story which some 200+ people heard!
After the prayer was finished, each person was asked if there was anything in the prayer that piqued their interest. Only 16 failed to express any interest in the prayer content and 20 conversations continued until the recipient heard the Gospel story in more detail poured out for them.
To end the encounter, each resident was given an invitation card to our ServeFest dinner being held that evening at the church. Almost every ServeFest volunteer at the dinner wore a Fellowship t-shirt which made it easier to spot our guests from the community. Our best estimate is that between 20 and 40 people attended from those contacted that day. They received a tasty meal, enthusiastic welcome, great fellowship, and a second sharing of what Jesus did for each of us by Pastor Brian.
Since Sunday afternoon, countless volunteers have expressed how blessed they were by ServeFest and how fun it was to share the event with their church family. Many met other members of The Fellowship they had not known previously. I believe the shared experience of our 380 volunteers will ripple across our church family for months and years to come. We serve an awesome God who honors our willingness to surrender our agendas and take up His call. The best is yet to come!
May the God of peace …
equip you with everything good for doing His will
and may he work in us what is pleasing to him,
through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory
for ever and ever. Amen
Hebrews 13:20-21