Improving Our Serve: What We’ve Learned Through Service Sundays

Our church in Shoreline, Washington, wanted to be more involved in our community.  We didn’t necessarily want to create a new program or event that would draw our neighbors into our church.  We wanted our members to get out into the surrounding neighborhood and build relationships.

We held our first “Service Sunday” in March of 2008, where church members went out in teams on a Sunday morning to help out neighbors in very practical ways.  We’ve had two other Service Sundays in June and August, on days when there was a fifth Sunday in the month.  Reflecting on our three experiences, we’re thankful we were led to dive into this sometimes uncomfortable approach and we praise God for the developing connections and relationships that are taking place.

We’re glad to share some of the things we’ve learned:

Scheduling:
We meet for worship at the same time as usual, so visitors don’t come to an empty church.  Our worship service is short, albeit enthusiastic.  Within half an hour, members are gathering into their teams and heading out to their jobs.  The list of jobs (18 projects for about 130 participating members.) includes tasks that could always use an extra hand (such as garbage picking or pulling weeds out of the community forest) so that any last-minute person could join in.

There are about two and a half hours allotted for our various jobs.  We need plenty of time to help encourage our goal of relaxed, fun relationship building.  It’s also important to have enough time to complete the task well.

As teams finish their jobs, they head back to the church.  Several teams have remained in the church building: for prayer, to do indoor projects (like assembling first aid kits for our sister church in Africa) and to prepare our meal.  We gather together for lunch, having learned to begin the meal even if a few straggling teams haven’t finished up yet.

During these meals, conversation is buzzing and enthusiasm and story-telling are at their all-time high.  It’s a delightful time.  Recipients of our tasks (and any people we’ve met along the way) are invited to join us.

Our first Service Sunday meals were potlucks.  Everyone brought more than enough to serve extra people and it worked just fine.  We got the feeling, however, that many un-churched people were not used to the idea of a potluck and felt uncomfortable with the idea.  Our third Service Sunday was a large BBQ lunch, with church members frying up burgers and hot dogs, providing a more familiar palate and environment for everyone involved.

We concluded our first Service Sunday with an afternoon worship service right after lunch.  It was intended especially as time of singing, sharing and praising God for His presence.  We were quickly aware of how uncomfortable some of our visitors were with this approach.  Not only were they unfamiliar with the songs, but they were unsure of what would happen next – as if they suddenly lost their trust in us and worried that we were about to Evangelize.  As well, the sharing time turned into some playful team competitiveness, with an air of our great ability to interact with our neighboring heathens.  We decided to cancel the service and to instead simply allow the lunch to linger.  This meal time has become a highlight for many people – there’s evidence of relationship building in true fellowship void of cliques.

The Jobs:
The church members who volunteer to set up our jobs have been very organized – and they really need to be.  Getting 130 people out the door with the tools they need is a big job.  We’ve chosen to include both public and private jobs, and appreciate the balance this provides.  Public jobs include picking garbage along city streets and trails, cleaning up school yards and pulling weeds from the local park.  Private jobs include projects for particular neighbors: weeding, painting, washing windows, hauling out backyard junk, etc.

Each team has an appointed leader who takes the initiative with the assigned job.  S/he often makes contact with the recipient before Service Sunday and lets the members of the team know what tools they’ll need to take along.  Team leaders arrive early, are sure to have members sign any necessary city waiver forms, and hand out t-shirts.

We chose to buy t-shirts for a number of reasons, and we’re glad we did.  They build cohesiveness and add enthusiasm.  T-shirts get handed out by team leaders and are promptly returned to be washed and stored for the next Service Sunday.  We’ve kept them simple, with our church name on the front and the words “neighbors helping neighbors” on the back.  A surprising, but big benefit to our matching t-shirts is that other people recognize us as a group and feel more comfortable approaching us.  An organized group seems more trustworthy than a collection of random individuals.

Another expense we’ve had with Service Sundays is the dumpster rental.  We bring a large garbage and yard waste dumpster onto our parking lot so we can completely take away the trash or weeds we haul out of someone’s yard.  People are very appreciative and we often give church members and other neighbors a chance to add to the dumpster for a few days before they’re hauled away by the city.

At first, menial jobs like picking garbage were meant to be replaced by more meaningful tasks.  But some wonderful stories have come from teams in these jobs.  Although not officially signed up to work with any neighbors, they always end up meeting people and engaging in interesting discussions.  We’re planning to keep our menial tasks!

Many of our jobs return to the same places or people at the next Service Sunday.  These ongoing relationships are most exciting.  Not only are we getting to know our neighbors, but they are connecting with other neighbors through us.  And when we return to the local park to pull weeds, it’s great to know that we’re making a visible difference in our community.  Often church members continue developing these new relationships on their own, stopping to visit a neighbor they helped out or to attend a community park clean up.

We’re so excited about this avenue of service and outreach.  By serving our neighbors in this way, we’re developing relationships and creating a connectedness throughout our neighborhood!  It’s been an exciting journey – praise God!

Erika Bakker

To find out more about 1st Seattle CRC and their Service Sundays click here.