Yesterday

Saturday, I took part in a church service project. A family in the area suffered a house fire and the insurance company, in all it's wisdom, wasn't allowing the woman anywhere near enough to make the necessary repairs. Now, the actual fire and heat damage was confined to the living room and kitchen and normally, those would be the only rooms that would have to gutted and rebuilt. Areas that were just sooty from the smoke could be cleaned and repainted, carpet replaced, that sort of thing. Unfortunately, this isn't a normal case. The woman's teenage daughter has a respiratory ailment, so the entire house has to gutted and rebuilt. To help stretch her money, the lady turned to Wake County Health and Human Services who, in turn, called our church to see if we could help. Help we did. At around 10 am yesterday morning, 18 people descended on the house and began cleaning it out. By noon, when I had to leave, the entire 1st floor was all but done. I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if those who stayed on didn't finish the job.

Now, I don't relate this story to blow my horn or that of my particular church. Or Christians in general, frankly. No, I brought this up to highlight another tenet of Christian life: missional living. I'm talking living the missionary lifestyle in order to bring the gospel message to others.
There are lots of ways to do this. Service projects like the one above only scratch the surface and, truthfully, are the easy way out. I mean, really, you can go out and spend a Saturday doing home repairs, serving food at a homeless shelter, visiting shut-ins, etc. Then, the rest of the week, you go back to a "me first and screw everyone else" attitude. If you spend all week calling yourself a Christian, but acting like a selfish ass, you might as well stay home on Saturday. Maybe you can spend the time getting a clue, because it sounds like you don't have one. The whole point of doing this stuff is to spread the love that God has for us and let others in on the deal. If you're pissing off everyone you come into contact with because your attitude sucks..., well that kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it? Another thing about the idea of missional living is that it's not just for Missionaries (I use the caps to denote the professionals), all of us are Christ's missionaries everywhere we go. People that know us and know we profess to be Christian are watching to see what we do and how we do it. There are a lot people out there who've never been inside a church and many others who haven't been in a long time. We can be the deciding factor as to whether they ever step foot inside a church for the rest of their lives. As a my brother's pastor once said "You're the only Bible some folks will ever read".