A Heart Warming Gesture
Tom Shrum, a student in my Evangelism Class, recently shared this story. I am reminded of the old adage, "Preach Christ at all times; when necessary, use words."
For the past few months, our youth group has been planning an outreach to a woman and her child in our community. Today, we finished it. We started with a dresser that was donated from a local furniture store that we stained. We wanted to fill the dresser with baby clothes and give it away to a needy family for Christmas.
I made some contacts about finding a family who would really be blessed by the gift. After we found the family, I had the teens go to each of the adult Sunday school classes in the church and tell them about our outreach. I equipped them with a script of dialogue and a list of items that the family needed. We wanted to make this a whole church outreach, instead of just our youth group.
We then set a date that the clothes had to be in by and we got the dresser filled. We had so many gifts that we could not fit them all in the dresser. Today, we delivered the dresser to a family in our community who had an 8 month old baby. As we pulled in to the low income housing apartments, I had the teens get out the vehicle and pretend to play hacky sack in the parking lot. Meanwhile, myself and another youth leader carried the dresser to the apartment. We set the dresser down, knocked on the door and ran. I had a girl taking pictures from far away so that we could capture their reaction.
As we were running away, a man opened the door and to his amazement there was a dresser on his porch. He called for Nicole and they both came out to see it. We all watched them open the card and the drawers from a distance. The family was so excited about the gift that they got their neighbors to come over and see it. We were excited too. We didn’t want to leave. We wanted to stay and watch them open the drawers and discover all of the clothes.
The best part about all of this was that they will never know who gave it to them. Our card simply said: “Merry Christmas, Jesus Loves You Very Much. We hope you have a holiday filled with peace and joy, from someone who cares.”
Praise God!!! A family gets blessed and God is the only One who gets the glory.
For the past few months, our youth group has been planning an outreach to a woman and her child in our community. Today, we finished it. We started with a dresser that was donated from a local furniture store that we stained. We wanted to fill the dresser with baby clothes and give it away to a needy family for Christmas.
I made some contacts about finding a family who would really be blessed by the gift. After we found the family, I had the teens go to each of the adult Sunday school classes in the church and tell them about our outreach. I equipped them with a script of dialogue and a list of items that the family needed. We wanted to make this a whole church outreach, instead of just our youth group.
We then set a date that the clothes had to be in by and we got the dresser filled. We had so many gifts that we could not fit them all in the dresser. Today, we delivered the dresser to a family in our community who had an 8 month old baby. As we pulled in to the low income housing apartments, I had the teens get out the vehicle and pretend to play hacky sack in the parking lot. Meanwhile, myself and another youth leader carried the dresser to the apartment. We set the dresser down, knocked on the door and ran. I had a girl taking pictures from far away so that we could capture their reaction.
As we were running away, a man opened the door and to his amazement there was a dresser on his porch. He called for Nicole and they both came out to see it. We all watched them open the card and the drawers from a distance. The family was so excited about the gift that they got their neighbors to come over and see it. We were excited too. We didn’t want to leave. We wanted to stay and watch them open the drawers and discover all of the clothes.
The best part about all of this was that they will never know who gave it to them. Our card simply said: “Merry Christmas, Jesus Loves You Very Much. We hope you have a holiday filled with peace and joy, from someone who cares.”
Praise God!!! A family gets blessed and God is the only One who gets the glory.
OUTREACH is the key that so many churches have totally neglected.
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