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A servant evangelism testimony…
Tuesday, October 21st, 2003
I really hope to be on track with posting again. I’m having a lot of late night vigils for studying, doing a family video for Christmas presents, and trying to redo my website — all in my “free” time, when I’m not working or in class or spending time with family.
I need to figure out how to sleep like Einstein did. He would work for hours, then sleep for 15 to 30 minutes, then work for another hour or two then sleep for 15 or 30 minutes and repeat this process throughout the day. I wonder if my family would tolerate that…or my job, for that matter.
Anyways…I was talking to a friend who’s presently working with a church plant, and he was telling me a story I thought you’d find interesting.
It seems the church is presently looking for a place to hold their weekly services, after meeting in homes throughout the week. The plant is in a fairly new (and exploding) area of Northwest Calgary called Tuscany. There are literally thousands and thousands of families in this place, most of them younger families with children.
The plant, called The Tapestry, has been in the process of an intentional servant evangelism strategy since the summer, when they were accompanied by a couple of missions groups and later did things like cleaning up the parks, handing out water bottles and freeze pops and the like.
They had previously asked the directors of the community center in Tuscany if they could hold meetings in that building, which is central to the area. The directors said they didn’t want any religious groups in the building, wanting to avoid that whole thing.
Recently, however, The Tapestry met with the directors again, after getting to know them through all the servant evangelism projects. The directors were happy to let them use it the following Sunday. Later, when The Tapestry approached them again about using it for another special occasion, the directors said, “You can use this building whenever you want.”
I’m really encouraged by that. I think God blesses the church that intentionally loves on and serves people. It’s what Jesus did. The gospel of Mark, chapter 10, verse 45 states, “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life a ransom for many.”
I really think God’s plan for the church is to serve and to give it’s life to others. Jesus calls us to imitate Him in His ministry on earth, and the more I look at His ministry, the more I realize He was all about giving Himself away.
And now a couple of marketing questions:
1. Would the Tapestry have had any of the success they are experiencing in Tuscany by first sending out fliers about a Bible study?
2. Will Tuscany have a better response to their marketing/outreach efforts now that they’re established as community volunteers?
I know, I know…they’re pretty obvious questions.
Why, then, doesn’t the church “go and do likewise?” It’s not a packaged model. It’s imitating Jesus!!
In other news…
Reaching into the “coolest thing I’ve ever seen done with a style sheet” bag, we find this. It’s a 3D house built with nothing but CSS. I’m absolutely flabbergasted at this one.
Thanks to Todd Dominey for the link.
And as part of the ongoing, “things that make Bill Gates go hmmmmmm” report, Apple has just announced that after only three days of iTunes being available to Windows losers (I meant users, of course), over one million users have downloaded over one million songs.
I’m proud to be a Mac man.
I have a feeling this little post will garner a few nasty comments, now that I think about it.
I still love you all!!
Lastly, BrotherPhil asked for a little help with using a banner image for links in TypePad. In the comments of this post, I tried to address a simple way to do this. Please read if you’re struggling with the same thing.
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