Summer of Service 2009
At Riverside Church of Christ, we believe that our God is active in reconciling the world to himself and that He invites us to join Him in that work. Over the past few months we, as a church, have been reminded of our call to be people who experience the love of Jesus Christ and then let that love spill over into our relationships with people in our community. As part of this renewed focus on being blessings to those around us, we have decided to use this coming summer to emphasize service opportunities that exist in our communities.
During our May 17th worship service, our leadership announced plans for this summer that we hope will lead us closer to God and closer to others. Our focus for the summer will be to encourage every member of our church family to be involved in some act of service in our community. In order to give more time for you to do this, we will not be holding our typical Wednesday night gatherings during the summer months. We ask, instead, that you use this time or any other time during the week to serve others.
We will come together one Wednesday a month (June 10, July 1, and August 12) for times of fellowship and fun. We will also be offering a time of devotional and a fellowship meal every Friday evening at 6:15 pm at our building. This is a chance for people to come together during the week and encourage each other.
Though we will have these fellowship events, our true focus will be on service. If you would like to see a list of service opportunities as well as a calendar of service events, please click the links below:
Some of these opportunities allow you to assist ministry organizations in our area with whom Riverside partners on a regular basis (CCA, GriefWorks, etc.). Others allow you to directly bless the lives of people in this area (Project BackPack, Kids Eat Free, Card-writing, etc.). Our hope is that you will prayerfully consider serving individually, with your family, with your Impact group, or with a group of friends.
The choice for where you serve this summer is fully up to you. While we have several ministries that we are formally involved with or are organizing, we understand that there are plenty of other places for you to serve. We are confident that God will lead you to a place where you can show His love to others.
As we go through the summer, we would love to hear about your experiences. In order to do this we will be using our Riverside Spiritual Formation Blog (http://riversidecommunity.wordpress.com) as a chance to swap stories, share service ideas, and encourage each other. We invite you to check the blog regularly during the summer for those things.