Planting Space

contributed by Doug Foltz, Project Manager

Last week I had a great conversation with a church planter I’m working with, Jake Nelson. Here’s what he said in his blog:

You can plan for months for a big event that might draw a few people, or with no preparation at all we can paint pumpkins and use sidewalk chalk for hopscotch and have 50 people show up in 5 minutes. (which happened). “Who are you with?” they asked. “We’re with Jesus.”

Jake is planting Response Christian Church in downtown Indianapolis. He recently began serving kids at the Salvation Army. He showed up with 15 pumpkins and some paint and the kids loved it. He was asked to come back and start doing regular service projects with the kids. The word has gotten around the community about what is going on and now Jake has people calling him and asking if they can serve too. Many, in fact most, of these people are not yet believers and though they wouldn’t go to church they are happy to serve their community.

Too often our model is to wait on the volunteers before we begin serving the community. Instead we should consider serving the community as a way to attract volunteers. Many postmoderns frown at the idea of going to church, but love the idea of being the hands and feet of Jesus in the community. Service becomes a gateway drug to personal transformation in Jesus. It reminds me of these verses from Matthew 9:36-38, “When he (Jesus) saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” Jesus doesn’t say that the workers are few so lets skip the harvest. Instead, Jesus challenges us to trust that God will provide the workers.

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