“If you could grab the steamer and steam the bathroom floors that would be grand!”
“If you could go pass out these leaflets for the Easter service that would be much appreciated!”
“If you could help sort the clothes in the WearHouse that would be absolutely brilliant!”
Vineyard WearHouse (photo from Ekow Ankumah)
These are some of the ministry opportunities that we had this month at Vineyard church and there were many times where I had to check my heart and serve out of a place of love and joy and gratefulness. The Race is flashy and glamorous in the Christian world. People love to see pictures of us riding elephants and seeing incredible sunsets on rocky coasts. They want to see us holding little African and Asian orphans and working in rice fields or bars in Thailand, but the truth is, we do a lot of the ordinary.
In the town of Portrush (Photo from Helene Charles)
The Race is doing life in another country with a community that is mission-minded and Christ-centered and although the tasks of cooking, cleaning, chatting, and commuting may be the same as the locals, we carry with us the potential to radically transform nations.
Cara and I at Portrush (photo from Helene Charles)
This month, while working at Vineyard, I learned how to live in a Western country and encounter the Spirit in a mighty and tangible way.
Similar to American churches, they have coffee, tea, and donuts at the beginning of church and they have an awesome worship band to draw you in and their youth ministry has awesome events. But they are markedly different because they are bold and courageous in their faith and they are very in tune with the Holy Spirit.
A group of us in Portrush before the Women’s Conference (photo from Saige Campbell)
I would go to the coffee shops and overhear the youth leaders having conversations with kids trying to help them give up cigarettes and forgive their parents and decide to follow Jesus. I would walk down the street and see different members having a chat with different people in town and sharing the love of Jesus and praying for the Holy Spirit to fall in their lives. Every Saturday, they went out and did healing on the streets. The people of Causeway Coastal Vineyard do not define their lives by mundane and menial tasks, instead they understand that the mundane allows them to do the supernatural.
Handing out leaflets for Easter service can be boring, but it creates an opportunity for hundreds of people to encounter the God of the universe. Cleaning toilets and shining faucets may be menial, but it lets Mark, who faithfully cleans the church, know that he has brothers and sisters in the kingdom who will come alongside him. Telling the 11-14 year olds an embarrassing story about you may seem degrading and unnecessary, but it provides an open door of conversation with the awkward kid on the far couch who often feels unnoticed.
After two weeks with Vineyard Church, twenty-four of us headed to meet our parents in Dublin and we had a chance to live out a Holy Spirit-led life with our parents for a week. No longer were we scrubbing toilets or moving chairs to the storage, we were sent out to speak to the homeless, minister to the lonely, engage the tourists, and seek the lost.
The Lord transformed my heart in that week. My mom and I had a few conversations and encounters in that week, but none of them were life-changing that I know of. What was life-changing is that the Lord increased my desire and my passion for evangelism so much.
Mom and I at our pub in Dublin (photo from Sybil Bull)
I never really wanted to evangelize before the Race. It’s true.
I’ve always known that I needed to, but I did not want to. But over the past three months, my heart has changed and during that week of Parent Vision Trip (PVT), I realized that I most definitely, without question, need to live intentionally like this every day.
Countless people are living mundane and menial lives, without purpose, without hope, and without vision and sometimes on the Race, I get the immense opportunities to see these people face to face and have a conversation with them or pray with them. But other times I am asked to move tables and set up chairs and vacuum and these “boring” tasks lead to immense opportunities for someone else and that’s ok. I didn’t come on the Race to save the world, I came on the Race to play my part. Will you play yours?
