Pastor Ralph KalmsChrist Lutheran Church, Lakewood
So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.
Romans 12:1 (The Message)
Compassion Weekend is a name we’ve given to an attempt to have our congregation worship by serving. I saw this idea originally at Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California and have been thrilled at how its’ been embraced at two different congregations I’ve served at since. The idea is simple: we pick a weekend in which we commit ourselves to serving our community for a full day Saturday and half day Sunday. We cancel our regular morning worship services as a way of saying that God can be worshipped outside a sanctuary as we give ourselves away on behalf of others. And we commit not only our time and energy but our money as well in paying for whatever work we do.
This past May 14-15 we had 355 volunteers working a total of about 2200 hours at 25 different projects. The projects cost in the neighborhood of $10,000. We did laundry in Tillicum, landscaping at the Tacoma Mission, worked at 3 different public schools in Lakewood, did bell concerts in nursing homes and construction for the Family Renewal Center. We packed AIDS care-giver kits for World Vision and led worship and had a barbeque lunch at the Youth for Christ Center in Tillicum.
The weekend has some basic commitments which we’re still trying to grow into: our goal is to serve in ways that truly make a difference, we hope to build relationships with those we serve, we pay for whatever we do. There are projects that anyone can be involved in (this year our age span was 4 to 94!). And we hope to encounter the very real presence of Christ in surprising ways.
This past May we rediscovered the amazing good news that our everyday ordinary lives can become an offering to our Lord!
