This past Sunday we canceled church services to go out into the community to be the church by doing ordinary acts of kindness. This was the final week of our series - Beyond Sunday. Church is more than a Sunday service. Church is people loving people. Church is people sharing God’s love with people.

We had a great turnout too! Our act of kindness was simple: give out Krispy Kreme doughnuts to people serving in the workplace on Sunday. We gave out free doughnuts to fire stations, a police station, a hospital, real estate offices, stores and more.

Many people in our church had never done anything like this. Their experiences were extremely positive! Everyone that we gave doughnuts was not only thankful but really surprised. Some even asked, “Why are you doing this?” The response that they heard was something to the effect … “We’re just sharing God’s love in a practical way.”

It was really something to experience such a favorable response and so many smiles too!

Hello everyone,

As I reflect back on this past Sunday, I just want to say thank you to so many of you for an incredible day! It was really something to see so many people from our church go out into the community to do an act of kindness and share God’s love in a practical way!

It was great to come back to the theater afterwards and share so many positive stories with each other too! Imagine how many people we touched! It was a first for many of you too. And, it was really something for me to hear how much you enjoyed going out.

I was at the Tuesday group at Aqui tonight and Carminha, the owner, mentioned that the owner of the cigar store next to her was so excited to get the doughnuts. He came running over to Aqui to tell Carminha – and how nice it was for a church to do this. Carminha said, “I know … I got some too!”

One of the most awesome comments to me was that people in our church got to know each other even better too as they carpooled together – inflow/outflow!

My hope and prayer is that the Lord has planted a seed in our hearts about people all around us that God loves – and wants us to reach out to them in simple, loving, caring ways.

Thank you everyone! And, I want to say a special thanks to Krispy Kreme for giving us a great price and awesome service. And, thank you to Josh, Janna, Nate, Larry, Anne, Angelo, Teresa, Jamie and Trish for helping to organize the teams that morning too.

Please join me in praying for people that we touched with God’s love this past Sunday.

Warmly,

Dan

Spiritual Break-in Moments are times in our lives where God tries to get our attention. Here’s the thing, when God brings Spiritual Break-in Moments into our lives, how we respond can mean the difference between living a fulfilled life … a life full of hope and vitality …and - living a life that is without any real purpose … a life where we may just drift though without any sense of significance and meaning. And, perhaps more than anything else - to take off the spiritual blinders that we all can face at times, we need to embrace spiritual BIM’s: Break-in Moments.

It’s heating up again! We just got word tonight that lots of food … 4 or 5 van loads … are ready for us to pick up at the grocery store chain that we’re working with in Bethesda and DC! Lots of lives will be touched by God’s love this Saturday! There are many families in need of just basic food in our community that we can help. We thank God that He has made this connection possible for us to help so many!

Part of the 40 Days of Community is reaching out to our neighbors and sharing God’s love in practical ways like service. It also means that we want to share the good news of God’s love for them too. One of the fun things that some of us have been doing is just going out in the community and connecting with people about Christ, the church or whatever. People are open to spiritual things and Christ. We went into one local salon and gave out some invite cards to the manager there. She was so grateful and excited that she started giving the cards out to people in the waiting area!