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10-21-07 -- The Church Van with ‘Free Stuff’
Vehicle for Service
An October 2005 “Buzz” featured New Life Christian Church’s (Centreville, Virginia) most creative outreach tool—an ice cream truck. “People are interested in a church that gives away free ice cream!” the New Life team shared.
Today, 2|42 Community Church (Brighton, Michigan) takes the idea a step further with its Free Stuff Van.
“We knew about the ice cream idea and loved it,” says Susan Haning-ton, director of administration and contribution. “From the beginning we’ve wanted to be an inwardly strong church that’s outwardly focused. This fit that goal perfectly.”
The van began life as a professional delivery truck; the church installed windows and a music system and created new graphics for the exterior.
2|42 uses the van to share delicious snacks, often at community festivals, sports practices at local schools, or outside area malls at Christmas. But just as often, the van and its volunteer teams deliver other goods and services.
“In September we drove the van to an area wiped out by tornadoes to help cut down tree limbs and haul them away,” Hanington says. “Local vendors were charging huge amounts of money to do the same work—the ‘free stuff’ was our time and labor.”
This summer 2|42 experimented with making the van available to small groups in the church.
“Our cell groups borrow the van for service projects like collecting items for a shelter or delivering homemade goodies to every teacher in the school district,” she says. “It’s a way for everyone in the church to get involved with serving others.”
Hanington and her team brainstorm with groups eager to serve but short on ideas, and receive requests from organizations outside the church as well.
“After we brought Gatorade and Popsicles to sports practices, the school offered to collect items for the needy and asked us to deliver them,” she says. “Giving often leads to more giving.”
The church does distribute invitations to weekend services with its giveaways, but keeps service and relationship-building as the primary goals.
“We make people feel loved,” Hanington says, “and our service to them transforms our own hearts.”
www.242community.com
Church and State
While preparing an “Insider’s Look” sermon series focusing on past accomplishments and future initiatives, leaders at Lincoln (Illinois) Christian Church verified what had previously been only legend—in 1858 Abraham Lincoln served as both a lawyer and a judge in LCC’s first building.
Trials were moved to the church after the courthouse burned down the year before. Lincoln argued three cases and sat as judge for a fourth; according to the church research team, the cases included a loan on two mules and a property dispute.
The church will share the discovery with the Illinois State Historical Society. A fire destroyed Lincoln Christian’s original building in 1902.
www.lincolnchristianchurch.org
Fine Heart
Tracy Miner, a member of Maryland Community Church (Terre Haute, Indiana), traveled to Congo in May and developed a heart for ministering to the female victims of rape and abuse. Just a few months later Miner suddenly and tragically died of an enlarged heart. Now, Maryland Community has organized “Tracy’s Heart” to raise donations and other support for the women she felt called to serve.
The new ministry seeks to provide homes where the abused women can receive physical, emotional, and spiritual help and learn a trade or marketable skill. MCC hopes an eventual second phase will also allow some of the women to start a separate home for AIDS orphans.
www.mccth.org
Jennifer Taylor, one of CHRISTIAN STANDARD's contributing editors, lives in Nashville, Tennessee.
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