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My wife Sheri and I moved here the fall of last year, so this is my first experience with Serve Dei at the Well. As a Campus Pastor, I was able to see the Serve Dei packet a few days before they went out at services at North AM. Before I went and told someone they misspelled "Serve Day" on the cover, I read it through and found it wasn't a misspelling at all. The Well had made a change in the spelling (and meaning) a couple years ago as a way to challenge people to move from a serving event or activity, to a way of life. Serve Day had the tendency to give the impression that we do "mission" for a day, and then wait another year to do our next "mission project" or Serve Day. We felt that changing it to Serve Dei, Serve God, communicated our vision that people would see this as a catalyst to make a change in their lifestyle, to move from doing a mission, to being on mission... all the time! What a fantastic concept!
As we "launched" Serve Dei just a couple of weeks ago, I couldn't help but wonder how much of this vision is catching on. If you’re like me, I am an “achiever” who has the tendency to measure success and/or check off my boxes on a list of to-dos. I realized I don’t want my natural tendency of accomplishing a task in a certain amount of time to effect how I do Serve Dei as a lifestyle. I don't want to just look forward to next year, when we get our next one or five dollars, or whatever it is that the church will motivate us with, to use for the next "project." Have you experinced this? I have been challenged this year because I have been so used to “doing” mission, that being on mission is quite a change in my thinking. I was wondering how many others might default to the same kind of thinking. And then I experienced one of those great moments...
Sheri and I go to Starbucks just about every Monday from 8am to noon with an open invitation to folks from the North AM services to come by and say "hi". On this particular Monday morning, the day after everyone was challenged in the services to be an intentional blessing, a man in his 40's just about ran into the coffee shop at 7:58am. He told me he was a podiatrist who was on his way to the office, but said he had to come by and show me something. In his hand was a plastic bag full of 4-5 random items. He said he and his family collectively received $5 at the service, and took some time on Sunday afternoon to process what they could do as a family with it. He took his two kids to the Dollar Store, and they said they wanted to pick out five items that a homeless person might need. They ended up with some toothpaste, a toothbrush, a couple of other hygiene products, and a small Bible. He said the family plans on giving this bag to the person God brings across their path, using it as an intentional blessing for someone. I thought the idea was great, but to be honest, I was also thinking it might still be about doing something missional instead of being missional. But then his face lit up and he said, "PJ, we were thinking about the challenge of making this a lifestyle and not a one time thing, so we as a family plan to have a bag in our glove box all the time." We are going to give this bag away, and then spend another $5 to make another bag, and then another..." Wow! I was so encouraged. Here is a family that will now look at people around them in a whole new way; a family that will always be looking for an opportunity to be an intentional blessing, and maybe more, to certain people they come in contact with.
My hope is that we would all be like this family and think of creative ways to make the move from Serve Day to Serve Dei, from an event to a lifestyle.