3 Local Outreaches EBC Participates In
I woke up yesterday morning (and apparently so did you) to find a winter wonderland waiting outside for me. I put on an extra layer of clothing and safely navigated to the Teach One to Lead One Leadership Breakfast. I enjoyed and appreciated many things about it. There were many stories shared that make it obvious that we are greatly impacting the youth of our county. And as great as that is, I wondered if what we are doing is such a good idea. I was concerned that kids will hear that all they need to do is apply our “Universal Principles” to their lives and all will be well. I’m especially weary of this because while these Principles primarily come from Scripture, the kids don’t know that. And we are not allowed to explicitly share “the hope that is in us” in the classroom. While I remain concerned about this, I’ve concluded that if we are faithful to look for ways to plant seeds and are open about the fact that we are Christians, it is in fact, a very good program.
This past Sunday, during the 11am service, several of you joined me in my office regarding another very good program. We met to discuss how we can best serve our Safe Park guests. If you’re not aware, each night we host about six guests on the church parking lot who are currently living out of their vehicles. It was wonderful to be joined and to hear from two of them, Thor and Norah (you may have met them when they helped at the church workday cleanup on Saturday morning). They helped us see that it’s going to be a bit tricky figuring out how to best help, as our guests are very different and there is no “one size fits all” method to helping all of them out of their homelessness. And even if there were, I’m not sure we’d have the people, programs, resources and “know how” to do it. (By the way, be praying for our guests. Pray that they’d find ways to stay warm, that they’d find housing, and most importantly, that they’d find Jesus!)
In this past weekend’s Worship Services, we were blessed to hear about Open House Ministries. This is a Ministry that is able to be incredibly explicit in their communication about everybody’s need for Jesus. This is a Ministry that already has the programs and “know how” for helping the homeless in our area. We were able to listen first-hand to the amazing testimony of Katie, a young woman who has “come full-circle” due in large part to Open House Ministries. If you didn’t get to see it, take a moment to watch it right now. It’s very powerful! You can also read her story in the December Open House Newsletter. I say all of this because we’d very much like to ramp up our support of Open House Ministries. They are doing successful transformative work, but they need our help. If you didn’t get a chance to communicate your desire to join us in our support of Open House, please let us know now.
Thank you dear Church! I’m so thankful for you 😊
Pastor Matt Daniells
Categories: Evergreen Connection