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“Love each other with genuine affection, and take delight in honoring each other.”

Romans 12:10

“God's dream is that you and I and all of us will realize that we are family, that we are made for togetherness, for goodness, and for compassion.”

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Earlier this year, Church on the Hill hosted a Sunday Serve Day with the goal of worshipping together here on the Hill and then serving our community together. What a wonderful way to show our love for God and our love for others! As we prepare to come together for another Sunday Serve Day, I wanted to share some highlights, just a few ways that God showed up.

1. I believe very strongly that there is somewhere for each of us to serve our community. Like 1 Corinthians 12:5 says, “There are different kinds of service, but we serve the same Lord.” One of the goals of Sunday Serve Day is for us to get to try out different service projects, to find that area where we feel joy in serving.

At our last Sunday Serve Day, we sent a group of volunteers to Jambos. If you aren’t familiar with Jambos, they are an amazing organization that is “on a mission to bring comfort to kids in the foster care system by providing them with brand new pajamas.”

This mission deeply moved one of our volunteers, because of her personal experience with adopting her daughter. I could feel her passion when she told me about her experience there. And that passion and joy has translated into her volunteering with Jambos on her own! God used a few hours on a Sunday to plug someone into serving not just her local community, but foster kids all over the world.

2. As Paul reminds us in Timothy, our young leaders are a gift! One of our youth developed and led her own service project for Serve Day back in April. She decided to repurpose old church t-shirts to make dog and cat toys! When I delivered the toys to the recipients, I got to see the joy this environmentally friendly and creative project had created. As a church family, we are blessed to get to see our younger members grow in their faith and abilities. I think it is an honor that we get to be a stepping stone for our youth as they begin their own journey of service.
3. We also had an unexpected volunteer join us – one of our unhoused neighbors. He slept outside Church on the Hill and joined us for breakfast and for service. He then asked to join us for Sunday Serve Day. He helped pack food boxes for The Block Community Outreach’s clients and spent time getting to know members of our congregation. What a gift, to be able to build community while serving our community. To find out more information about homelessness here in Gwinnett CLICK HERE. For a great resource on the Christian perspective on homelessness, I highly recommend the book, Grace Can Lead Us Home.

These are just three examples, but I really think God shows up when we serve Him and our community, when we do what we can to make our home look a little more like heaven. I invite you to experience this for yourself. For more details on Sunday Serve Day, CLICK HERE. I hope you join us on October 29^th!

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