Serving Others

Back in January, in a sermon, I referenced a story Mike Yaconelli told in his book Dangerous Wonder. In this book, he told this story.

Our town is small by California standards – one traffic light and six thousand residents.  One Sunday morning I was preaching about the unconditional love of God, a love that was outside the lines and resulted in the church loving outside the lines.  Our church is different from most; the congregation feels free to interrupt me during my sermons.  Just as I was finishing, a sixteen year old girl said, “This is a good sermon, Pastor, but I was thinking that if we are supposed to love outside the lines, then I know how we can do it.  In three weeks the Siskiyou County Fair is coming, and with the fair come the ‘carnies.’” (The “carnies are itinerant workers who operate the rides of the traveling carnival.  Every year the carnies are the talk of our rural town.  Most of them are tough-looking and scary with lots of tattoos, huge muscles, and hard-looking faces.  People always make derogatory comments about them.)

The high school girl continued, “I was thinking that instead of making fun of the carnies, maybe we should have a dinner and welcome them to town.”

The church agreed, and this young girl organized the entire event.  She called the manager of the fair for permission, called the owner of the carnival to see if they would want a dinner.  The carnival owner suggested a lunch just before the fair opened.  “Okay,” said the girl, “We will barbeque hamburgers and cheeseburgers and have salads, desserts, and soft drinks. All you can eat.  How many can we expect?” After some thought, the owner said to expect fifty. 

The day of the lunch about twenty people from the church showed up to help serve. There was enough food for seventy. At twelve-thirty when the lunch was to begin, only four carnies showed up. By one-thirty, however we hadn’t served 50 carnies, or 75 carnies, or even 150 carnies.  We had served 200 carnies. When it looked like we would run out of food, the young girl came running up to me, the pastor , and said, “We’re running out of food.  GET SOME!” We did.

When the lunch was over, numerous carnies came up to the young girl and thanked her.  One older lady who had been working carnivals for a long time said, “I have been doing carnivals for forty years, and this is the first time I’ve been welcomed to town.” The all-you-can-eat carnie lunch has been going for seven years now, all because a teenage girl was naïve enough to believe God loved a group of carnies as much as He loved her. (Mike Yaconelli: Dangerous Wonder, NavPress. 1998.)

Some members of the congregation heard this story and it stuck with them.  The gears began turning, and they decided, "Hey, we have a festival here in Millersport... and they employ people to work the concessions and rides... we could have a meal for them, too!"

So today was the day when we served them... and it was fantastic!  We served lasagna, bread, salad, cake, and ice cream, and it was great.  I got to greet them and say a blessing - we welcomed them to town and thanked them for serving us, because we love our Sweet Corn Festival, and without the rides and concessions it just wouldn't be the same. 

I found out a lot about the people who worked the rides.  Several of them were from Turkey, Ukraine, and Russia - they were university students who came here to work for the summer before going back to school.  The entire group wasn't your stereotypical "carnies" - they were clean, appreciative, and no more tattooed than the rest of society.  And they really appreciated the welcome they got to Millersport from the church.

Best yet: everyone who served was extremely excited to serve and wants to make it an annual event.

Weekend Reflections #2

I didn't only experience death and funerals over the past couple of weeks; this weekend I had the privilege of conducting the wedding of Rudy and Maggie Alexeeff (I love putting their names together, by the way) and celebrating the 50 year anniversary of Larry and Doris Dawson with a renewal of vows.

Weddings can be really stressful. Many women have dreamed all their lives of this special day, and they want it to be perfect. And often their mothers have been dreaming of this day as well, and they want it to be their version of perfect. And then there are the grooms, who just want to be out of the tux and married!

I consider myself to have two main jobs on a wedding day: the first is the obvious one: to get the couple married. My second job is to make sure everything goes smoothly. I know there are things beyond my control (I can tell members of the bridal party to drink enough water and to flex their knees, but if they choose not to do so and end up fainting, well, that's beyond my control), but I can help everyone to be calm, knowing that everything will go well. To that end, I make sure that everyone knows that I will direct everything that's going to happen; every time they need to move, I'll tell them to do so. When they need to speak, I'll give them their cues. No need to have things memorized. I had to laugh at Rudy: right before the wedding, after he had escorted his parents down the aisle, he came out to where the guys were waiting and told me something along the lines of, "I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't remember anything from the rehearsal!"

That's why I know one of my main jobs is to make sure the wedding goes smoothly.

I loved Rudy and Maggie's wedding. Why? Because I had a stake in it. I don't know Maggie very well yet, but I knew from the day I met Rudy at the Church by Size seminar that we would be friends. It is awesome to work together. And I know how much he loves Maggie because of how he talks about her and how he respects her and prays for her every day.

This makes me think about evangelism. If we love Jesus half as much as Rudy loves Maggie, then we naturally will talk about him. I felt like I began to know Maggie just because of how Rudy talked about her, but I was encouraged to really get to know her for myself.

My favorite moment in a wedding is the moment when the bride begins her walk down the aisle. I always steal a glance at the groom, because not only is his bride radiant, but he is as well. It's a fantastic reminder of God's love for us. The Bible describes God's relationship with us like this: we as the Church are the bride of Jesus Christ. And when we "come down the aisle" dressed in our good deeds, he is beaming.

Blogging from the NPC: Day 1

We made it in plenty of time to get some food and go to the first main session. Efram Smith spoke from Ezekiel 37 (the Valley of the Dry Bones). It was hard to stay focused because I was pretty tired, but his point was that Jesus is alive(!) and that means He breathes His breath into us and makes us alive, too. One of the best comments he made was about our current political situation:

An economic bailout is simply the government putting tendons, flesh, and skin on the dry bones, but only the LORD God can breathe breath into us.

Following the session, I went to Don Everts' session on Understanding the Postmodern Skeptic's Path to Faith. It was fantastic. I really appreciated Don's relational teaching style, which was full of stories. He focused on five thresholds through which a skeptic must pass in order to come to life-saving faith in Jesus Christ.

They first have to trust a Christian, then become curious about Jesus, then be willing to change, then move from meandering to truly seeking, then finally make the decision to be a Christ-follower.

It was very freeing from a pattern that (perhaps unconsciously) stressed "sealing the deal" and led to a lot of misunderstandings about evangelism (especially how to do it in a post-Christian culture). It was a good reminder that evangelism takes a long time, if you want to do it, you've got to be in it for the long haul, and our best technique is to live out a true, vibrant, living faith in front of our skeptical friends. It was a very well done seminar.

After the seminar, we were pretty well beat, so we skipped out on Shane Claiborne's session and had a leisurely dinner. Our server was very cool and was kind of surprised that we just wanted to sit and enjoy our dinner. He doesn't see that very much. We made sure he knew we were pastors here for the NPC, and then we stiffed him on his tip and gave him a tract instead.

KIDDING!

No, we tipped like we should, and we also told his manager what a good job he'd done. Then it was back to the hotel for some debriefing and finally beautiful sleep!

Woo Hoo!

In Sunday's message, I quoted youth ministry pioneer Mike Yaconelli from his book Messy Spirituality and from one of his speeches at Youth Specialties' National Youthworkers Convention; he was talking about a youthworker who had been "disciplined" because the church saw his junior highers sitting on the church lawn, smoking cigarettes. Mike said that if he was the pastor, he'd call the youthworker in and tell him, "You deserve a raise; if you can get kids who smoke to read the Bible... WOO HOO!"

I used that quote and ended up with a loud, arms-raised woo hoo.

Know that though I wear my heart on my sleeve, I'm not a loud preacher. I don't yell at the congregation. I don't say Woo Hoo a lot from the stage. But it was called for Sunday, and it was awesome. I can't really put my finger on what it was about it. Maybe it was adrenaline, but whatever the case, I was fired up. I was excited. I was nervous about the message itself; it was one that could have drawn a bit of heat from some who don't like change very much, and I wasn't really sure how "woo hoo" would go over, but once I shouted it out, I was ready to take on the world!

Perhaps it was just the adrenaline. Or maybe it was Mike Yaconelli, watching from Heaven, asking God, "Hey, he's using my quotes; can I have some fun with this?"
Whatever the case, it sure was fun! What a ride!!!!