The “out” of reaching out

On his children’s television show, Mr. Rogers used to say that neighbours were “the people that you meet when you’re walking down the street; they’re the people that you meet each day.”

When Jesus was asked about neighbours, He told the story of the Good Samaritan to demonstrate a wider view of neighbourliness – we need to show compassion and generosity, even to our enemies.

I’m not sure we always do a terribly good job with either kind of neighbour. The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada plans to change this through an initiative called Celebration 2005.

Celebration 2005 encourages “churches [to] pray and work together to celebrate the love of God publicly by sharing it through creative and expressive acts in local communities during the three week window of May 21–June 12. Celebration 2005 is designed as a catalyst to draw people together in new and different ways to demonstrate God’s love in practical ways to their communities.”

Your church decides what activity best suits your own community and church – mowing lawns, a free picnic, service project, a festival or something else. On June 12, your church can celebrate with churches across Canada in a satellite hookup. Church leaders will gather later to share what they have learned and plan what to do next. (With material from EFC Celebration 2005 website)

The idea strikes me as a good one, which we can do even informally.

The traditional approach to outreach is to invite people into our churches to join in our programs and special events. This makes sense on various levels. We have good facilities; why not use them? We feel at home in our churches among people we truly think of as family; surely others will enjoy getting to know us too.

However, as society becomes a post-Christian culture, there are many people who have never entered a church building before and who, thanks to media caricature and reports, as well as simply a fear of the unknown, will not do so.

To befriend such neighbours means we need to go where they are.

This doesn’t have to mean we do more. A good friend of mine is involved in a thriving church plant in a rural town. In their first few years, they noticed that around May 1, attendance in programs dropped off, and those who continued to come found themselves more tired than usual. Eventually they realized that the families of the church, like the rest of the town, were involved in spring sports. Rather than trying to compete, the church decided to finish programs earlier, strongly encouraging church members to serve as coaches in the community leagues, as ministry.

My friend, whose husband coached girls’ soccer, reported the experiment a success. The volunteers who were juggling less were making a greater impact, having been challenged to see their neighbours as people Jesus loves and themselves as vehicles of that love.

A quick survey reveals a wide variety of other creative strategies being employed by churches across Canada: a church that built a new building but was unable to sell the old property has decided to use it to reach into the neighbouring community. The old church will house a food bank, used clothing store, a free gym with weight machines and workout equipment, a MOPS centre for teen moms, a counselling centre and a children’s choir.

Another church has moved their Alpha program into a local restaurant. Still another church offered an eight-week fitness program as an outreach to the community, with a 30-minute aerobics class followed by a 30-minute Bible study. More than 20 women from the community and church participated.

When I was an Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship staff worker we called the usual forms of outreach done by campus ministries and churches “in-drag.” Celebration 2005 reminds me that outreach needs to reach “out,” rather than dragging in, and that doing so is cause for celebration.

Mr. Rogers was a Presbyterian minister, ordained to television ministry to children. That’s a creative form of outreach. Whether or not you get involved in Celebration 2005, my prayer is that each of us will find ways to reach out to the people we meet when we’re walking down the street.

Susan Fish attends Kitchener (Ont.) MB Church. She is writing this column every other issue during 2005.