Tuesday, October 31, 2006
spring clean day
When I arrived at Opawa I suggested an Annual Spring Clean Day. Simply an invitation to spend half a day either (a) spring cleaning around the church; (b) pick up rubbish around our community; (c) offer to clean (pre-arranged) houses in our community. I simply wanted to get us into our community as a community. I wanted to offer a wide range of jobs – cleaning, lifting, fixing, painting – so that lots of skills and competencies could be involved.
It was a new concept and I got some pretty blank looks at first. But each year it has grown and developed. The 3rd Spring Clean Day rolled around on Saturday. New features this year included the following: A strong partnership with a local community group. We offered a barbeque at lunch time and about a dozen locals joined us for lunch. Great stuff. As part of our worship through the month of October we have also been offering spiritual resources around spring cleaning (our relationships, our lives, our time). These have helped to integrate body, mind and soul.
The day was outstanding. About 60 people turned up to help. We filled three Skip bins and visited about 15 community homes. We enjoyed being a community eating and working in the community.
Great witness Steve, I hope the sweet smell of Christ affects those communities deeply. I particularly like that you reached out to the community that wasn’t just church families man, but their neighbors. Very cool.
Sets
Comment by Anthony Stiff — November 1, 2006 @ 2:02 am