CityServe

"We're not going to have church. Instead we're going to be the church," our pastor told us a few weeks ago. Calvary cancelled all five of its weekend services and encouraged the church members to go out into the community and serve in place of coming to church for worship.

Our Life Group at church decided we would spend most of the weekend serving, since we are able-bodied and active people. Here are the highlights.

Strawberry Fields. We spent Saturday morning doing yard work at a group home. Our Life Group thought this would be a great opportunity to be able to work and interact with some people that may not get visitors a whole lot. However, when we arrived the social worker in charge of the home told us that all of the residents were non-verbal. Non-verbal is much different than non-communicative, as we found out. Pete, a wheelchair-bound resident that hadn't made a noise in over 10 years, started grunting intermittently as he watched us pull weeds out of the yard and landscaping. We thought Pete was explaining to us what it would be like to watch Monica Seles play Maria Sharapova at Wimbledon but found out later that Pete was trying to let us know that the crabgrass and dandelions we were pulling out at the roots were actually onion grass and tulips. Oops.

West Branch Park. We have some real go-getters in our Life Group that have far more gall than either of us (that isn't saying much). When they said they wanted to go door-to-door at a trailer park asking people if they needed help with anything, we both scrambled for excuses to bow out. Luckily Chad has a collection of "excuse emails" from his students that finally came in handy. Kathi used the common "doctor's appointment" excuse (with women, you just can't ask questions when they pull that card) and Chad used the "my mom gets worried when I'm outside in the wind working up a sweat because I might catch a cold" excuse that a 23-year old former Golden Gloves boxer gave him last year before a tennis class.

Actually we joined our group Sunday morning at the (dirt road) entrance to the (trailer) park (not very) excited about serving the (mobile) community. Feeling like we had been transported to West Virginia, we put on smiles to serve. A bumper sticker in a window reading, "Have you hugged your assault rifle lately?" and a pick-up truck proudly displaying the slogan, "Dodge the Father, Ram the Daughter," on its windshield did not make us feel real comfortable but we had a great time rounding up stray garbage, sweeping off a roof and cleaning out gutters. It was a great experience for us and we hope we are able to help them again in the future.