I know its summer time, but you should take some time and start planning your Fall outreach. Time flies and Autumn will be here before you know it!
Here are a five Servant Evangelism ideas to get you thinking and planning:
1. School Supplies For Needy Families
It has become trendy to give away school supply backpacks on the first week of the school year. Whether or not that goes on in your neck of the woods, supplies are sorely needed for the rest of the school year. Put on a supply drive among your people. It isn’t overwhelming to give away supplies when most of those in your church bring a little something. I encourage you to neatly stack up school supplies at the edge of your stage to make the statement that you are doing something great together that is outward focused.
Be sure you make clear you aren’t just being good citizens when you do this outreach. Instead, you are bringing the Kingdom of God to those in need. This is (or at least should be) normal behavior among inhabitants of the Kingdom of God who are living in the model of Jesus.
2. “Take Five”–All of our families take five apple pies to their neighbors with an offer to pray for them any time.
Most people don’t know their neighbor’s names, much less have they spent time with them in any significant way. You’d be surprised at how responsive people are to a small act of kindness and consideration. Sure an apple pie takes a bit of effort to turn out, but it will yield untold dividends with your neighbors.
3. Free Garage Sale.
Churches have garage or rummage sales all the time. The typical spiel is they are raising money for the youth to go to a camp or something useful like this. Instead of the relatively small amount of money that would be raised for this cause, why not give it all away?
If you are afraid of people coming in and hogging all the good stuff (taking advantage of the good deals), maybe you should consider putting a limit on the large items. For example: maybe people can choose to get one large item like a tv or a couch, or they can choose to get 10-12 small items (books, clothing, knick-knacks, etc.)
Sometimes you’ve just got to trust people and their better and higher nature.
It will be great for your reputation in the community, and it will be great for your hearts.
4. Watermelon / Pumpkin / Cantaloupe Giveaway
You’ll need to plan for this one. Either plant these in advance or find a sympathetic farmer who is willing to give you a surplus of his crop come harvest time. Load up a pick-up truck and drive around announcing your fruit.
There are also seasons when the fruit is abundant, and the “supply and demand” factor kicks in, which means significant time savings for those who need to purchase the items.
5. Pizza on Move-In Day at Dorms
Who doesn’t like pizza?? Places like Papa Johns or Little Caesars have great prices on pies, and they taste great. As a local church, your role might well be to underwrite the project and to train the outreach folk to ensure that things will run smoothly and the outreach will be done in a substantive way.
You are only limited by your imagination. Start planning and let us know about some of your servant evangelism ideas.
For more information on servant evangelism, visit www.kindness.com
