Sunday Service . . . Service Sunday

We've been studying the early church in Acts at our community church recently. It's led to some interesting applications as we try to be more like the early church in unity and purpose.

Today, in lieu of a normal church service, we had "service Sunday". After a few songs and a very brief message about how Jesus taught that he who wishes to be great in the kingdom of Heaven must be servant of all, they put us all to work actually serving others. (The plan had been announced ahead of time, so we all came prepared to work.)

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Various groups went out into the community--both to church family members and to the neighborhoods surrounding the church--to serve. Some of the tasks included helping at shelters, nursing homes, and other ministries; delivering needed items that had been donated or purchased with money from the special offering last week; doing house and yard work for people in the community; cleaning up a local park; and picking up trash along the roadside.

DH, the kids and I joined one of the groups picking up trash. The kids worked hard and enjoyed themselves; especially since they got to wear gloves--very exciting. I commented to one of the other adults that it's fun to do a project like that with children, because they actually get excited about the things they find. With small children, it's not just picking up trash--it's a veritable treasure hunt.

"A bottle! Look! Wow!"

"What's this? It's weally neat looking. It's sort of like a wire or something. Is it a wire? I think it's a wire."

"Ooh, a Coca-Cola can! Why did somebody throw a Coca-Cola can out here? That wasn't very nice of them, was it?"

I think a task like that is really good for the kids (and adults, too) on more than one level. We had opportunities to talk about all sorts of topics from serving and others, to helping keep the world clean and beautiful, to why it's important to pick up after ourselves and not leave trash behind.

It was fun to get to work with some others from church that we hadn't spent much time with before, too. One of the ladies that was on our team is even another blogger.

The photos above were taken after the trash pick-up was over, while everyone was standing around eating snacks. I had fully intended to take photos during the project, but I ended up having my hands full with picking up trash and trying to keep Baby E out of the street. :)