Kingdom Service Day 9: ABCD

Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) starts with what's right in a neighborhood rather than what is wrong and lacking.  The group above is a small group with Harvest friends and Orchard friends represented who are helping to make 33:5 come alive!

The house at 335 Almond is an asset in the Walnut Neighborhood.  It is a foundationally strong home that was built in 1925 and had one family living in it from 1956-2008.  After the owner passed away, this house sat empty for 4 1/2 years.  My husband, Mike, and I purchased it from the City and are working with friends to restore it.  

As we stood in a circle to introduce ourselves to one another and pray last night, each person in this group mentioned an asset to a neighborhood.  Here's the list:

People who will care for homes that are getting old and need attention

Play areas for children

Children

An ice cream store!

Openness and friendliness

A church on mission with the neighborhood

Safe places

Neighbors being good neighbors

Psalm 33:5 is this home's verse (hence the house's nickname "The 33:5")

The Lord loves righteousness and justice.  The earth is filled with his unfailing love.

Kingdom Service Day 8: Keep the main thing, the main thing

Jeff Mickey spoke on Sunday about how we can sometimes get lost in the mission of the moment and forget what's important...rather, we can forget who is important.  Sometimes serving Jesus can cause us to take our focus off Jesus and become more concerned about accomplishing the ministry than him!

A perfect example of this happened on Sunday morning.  Craig, from Orchard Hill, and George, from Harvest, were outside Harvest getting set up for a meal that would be served post-worship, the last Picnic in the Park.  They were busy, it was rainy and cold, they were trying to make an alternative plan and get everything inside...when all of sudden, a young man named Jonathan, came up to them and told them that he had been at Harvest the day before for a community breakfast, and he now wanted to accept Jesus as His Savior.  Craig told me that he and George were wrapped up in activity and some stressful moments to get that lunch ready, and so there was an inclination to want to hold the young man off until a more opportune time to speak with him.  Thankfully, they did not follow that inclination!  They could have easily gotten lost in the mission of the moment and forgotten the main mission.  George walked inside with the man, spent time with him, and led him to the Lord in prayer.

What a beautiful story!  What a great reminder that programs and ministry are not the mission....reconciliation to God through Jesus is the mission.  The ministry-the community meal, the youth art team, Jobs for Life-you fill in the blank, is a vehicle to ultimately help people come to know Jesus and make Him known.

You can watch Jeff's teaching by clicking here.

Kingdom Service Day 7: Pilgrims

One of the best books I've read the past few years is a book called Reconciling All Things by Chris Rice and Emmanuel Katangole.  The quote below speaks to the journey toward reconciliation being likened to pilgrims taking a pilgrimage.

"Through a profound rhythm of journeying, encountering sites of pain and hope, engaging the history and culture, serving and being present with those on the margins, worshiping, resting, and reflecting, pilgrims are slowly confronted by a different world that begins to interrupt their own.  Pilgrimage is a posture very different from mission.  The goal of a pilgrim is not to solve but to search, not so much to help as to join and be present.  Pilgrims do not rush to a goal, but slow down to hear the crying.  They are not as interested in making a difference as they are in making new friends.  The pace is slower, more reflective.

Pilgrims set out not so much to assist strangers but to eat with them.  There are so many efforts to make a difference that do not make us different.  It is not the people who paint a house in a strange place but rather the people who make friends and are transformed who make the deeper difference over the long haul.  Changed by their journeys, they change the world where they live."

Kingdom Service Day 6: Sharing a letter to the North American Church

  Last week, a friend shared one of Ann Voscamp's blog posts on facebook and turned me onto her blog entitled A Holy Experience.  I share a post from Ann, written as a response to her experience in Africa this summer.  It's a poignant word to Christ's Church in North America.  Read it here.

Kingdom Service Day 5: Relationships

"The poor don't need you, but you need the poor."  I will never forget these words spoken to me back in 2006 by Neighborhood Ministries President Kit Danley.

I had gone to Phoenix, AZ, with my family to visit my in-laws and had arranged to spend part of a day with Kit, whom I had heard speak at a conference out in Long Beach, CA.  God was working on my heart a great deal those days while I volunteered regularly at a transitional home for moms and children in Waterloo.

Kit graciously gave me a tour of the Neighborhood Ministries campus, and we ended up at a Mexican restaurant for lunch that day.  At some point in the conversation I said, "Well, we need each other, right? The poor need the rich, and the rich need the poor, right?"  Kit looked at me with eyes that searched deep inside my soul. There occurred the most pregnant pause, and then she opened her mouth to speak.  "The poor don't need you, but you need the poor."   I acknowledged her response with an awkward nod, took another bite of my burrito, and left that day knowing that it was largely for that one statement that God had hooked me up with Kit Danley.

Fast forward seven years.  God's been so good as He faithfully and gently teaches me the meaning of her words.  So much stays broken for the very reason that the rich don't really actually believe they need the poor in their lives for the sake of their own souls.  Even when we try to declare, like I did, that we do need each other, we can't seem to really believe that as long as we believe we're there to help the poor.  Not really until we can recognize our own deep depravity and poverty can we begin to deal with our power and privilege in such a way that it ultimately helps us to relate rightly with the poor.  And it takes being with and receiving from the poor to even begin to chip away at this.

Jesus, our great reconciler, desires to bring reconciliation, peace, justice, and authentic community to His body.  Ultimately, we do need each other and belong to each other.  But, perhaps we can't get to that place of beloved community until we wrestle with and come to better understand that "the poor don't need you, but you need the poor."  

Kingdom Service Day 4: Prayerwalking

Love God. Love Neighbor.  One way that helps me increase my love for both God and neighbor is to pray while walking through a neighborhood. I think it might just be the most important way of acting locally in Kingdom Service.

Last Tuesday morning, a friend and I walked Walnut Neighborhood for an hour, praying for the families, the churches, the businesses (even the boarded up ones), the nonprofits in the neighborhood.  We came across a friend who was helping to move a woman who had lived in her home for 30 years and is now downsizing to an apartment.  We met a resident who was walking along with great difficulty, and we prayed together for healing for her feet.  We prayed that Jesus would be known and would transform each household; we prayed for abundant life and restoration in every way.  We prayed against the evils of violence, addiction, racism, and hopelessness.  We prayed for hope. community.  vision.  passionate faith. compassion.  justice. We thanked God for being the God of hope. community. vision. passionate faith. compassion. justice.

Every time I plan on prayerwalking, I battle an attitude of "I really don't feel like going" and "this is a bit awkward".  And everytime I bulldoze past those feelings and actually go, I am blessed so much.  Prayerwalking always connects my heart more with God and with the neighborhood.  I have a greater love, a greater hope, and a better understanding of who it is that works to accomplish His good and perfect will.

I plan to walk Walnut and pray each Tuesday from 9-10 a.m. if you'd ever like to join me.  Or perhaps you'd like to give prayerwalking a try in your own neighborhood.    

If you have a story of how prayerwalking has impacted faith and life in your experience, please share a comment!

Kingdom Service Day 3: Triple S 3 P

Wayne Gordon, founding pastor of Lawndale Community Church, and president of CCDA, challenged us in his messages at National Conference a few weeks ago to stay close to God.  We don't just drift into spiritual growth and maturity, and so "Coach" as people lovingly call Gordon, challenged us to three things that I'm taking on as priority, as my discipline in them has slipped these past two years, and my soul and life can tell...

1. One hour alone with God everyday.  


2. Triple S 3 P stands for Silence, Solitude, Scripture, Pray, Praise, Put it in writing.  This is a great way to spend that hour.


3.  Sabbath.  Stop for one day.  It's so important that God lists it in the 10 Commandments.  Turn off the computer, cell phone, ipod.  Stop working.  Offer this trust to God.


As people who follow Christ, we are all called to follow him into the pain in the world.  In Kingdom Service, we find deep injustices and deep pain.  We need deep theology and deep joy and deep communion with God and each other in order to love well and shine brightly.

I desire this life of love, communion, and joy-filled service, and so I will fight for the space and rhythm that creates time alone with God each day and Sabbath rest.  I write this as a commitment because I know how easy it is to think it, say it, and how hard it can be to faithfully do it! I hope you'll join me in the fight!