2nd Saturday Kindness to go...

Kindness to go...a variant... every 2nd Saturday we gather a group of people and head out into the community.

This past Saturday, our mission to Honduras team and several others gathered to learn, go, and serve.

Here's what it looks like... Caleb my friend and Jedi knight arrived early, we made a couple pots of coffee, set up tables to place the items for our Kindness bags, prepared the computer with graphics, prepared maps, readied the name tags, turned up the volume music, and prayed together.

People arrived, we welcomed the troops, offered the coffee and waited for most people to show up.

Once everyone arrived...we went into our Outreach / Teen space.

Every 2nd Saturday we usually have a short training element. This past weekend I spoke to the Mission team.

Having lived in Scotland for 18 years and having hosted 1 to 2 teams per year I shared some of the things we learned.

1. Learning to serve at home is important for serving in other countries.
2. Most teams don't realize that they are part of the process...they will add to what is already on the ground. Good teams seek to build upon what has already been accomplished by the local church / missionary group and seek to be a positive influence while serving and seek to leave a positive vibe when they leave.
3. Expectations are important...both for the team and the church / missionary group being served by the team.

Most frustrations happen when clear expectations are not spelled out. Good team leaders ask great questions. What are you expecting us to accomplish while we are with you? Do you expect us to be 'on' all the time or will be have some down time? What will we be doing? Who will be seeking to reach? Do you want us to train / teach / equip? What's our schedule look like? Do we need to help cover your costs? If so how much?

When I hosted teams I always gave the group serving a few evenings off and made sure they had at least one day off per week. I also, sent a schedule and an overview of the outreach and spoke often on the phone to the team leaders.

One team sent a couple of people over to Scotland to spy out the land. As a result they came back for 7 years.

4. Sowing and reaping on purpose.

I then spoke about 1 Cor 3 and Paul's attitude as a servant and the Jesus method of evangelism in John 4.

We broke up into groups to pray asking God to send people who would be workers in the harvest.

Caleb then told the people how to pack the bags. I described the outreach, where we were going, and handed out the maps.

We now have a mini green bus so the Honduras team went in the van and the rest of us car pooled to our area.

We arrived and prayed again.

Headed out in pairs of 2 for the outreach. We agreed to meet back in an hour. When we met back we shared stories, prayed again and headed home.

Some things that happened...

When prayer was mentioned at H&R Block a lady jumped up an said yes please pray for a boy in Atlanta that has Bacterial Meningitis and Rocky Mountain spotted fever!

A young worker said 'Hey, I live just across the street from your church.' He had a positive conversation and an personal invite.

One bank teller said, 'You are the Vineyard that pretty good church.' continued 'Aren't you guys going to plant a church in our area in 2008?'

Kindness to go on 2nd Saturday is a great way we've discovered to continue the outflow value at the Vineyard.