In our continued series of using the newsletter to highlight various aspects of the church, I want to introduce the outreach team. Katherine Heidenthal, Anne Price, Ellen Hardy, Greg Deener, Justin Hendrix, and Erich Rose have all been involved in meeting, praying, and investigating how our church can spread the Kingdom of God in the greater Richmond area. Our hope and dream is that we do two things: share the Gospel with those who do not know God and take care of those who are hurting and broken. Both of the desires are summed up in the simple statement (included in our core values)—“care for those in need.”
There are a number of people at Incarnation who already participate in sharing the Gospel and taking care of those in need, but our hope is that this team leads the church in discovering how we can do this together. As of now, we do not know exactly what this will look like, but our desire is that church becomes deeply involved in the redemption of this community. We have investigated and prayed about a number of possibilities, but we are still asking the question, “What does God want us to do as a church?” I believe that God has a something for us to participate in, and am eager to see these prayers answered.
As a small part of this, we are planning to visit Deep Run Park on the weekends of March 14-15 and March 28-29. Our plan is to simply give coffee and hot chocolate away to people who are at the park. This is a really small investment in the redemption of the community, but it is a good beginning, because it gives us a chance to get to know people who are outside the church and bless them in a tangible way. This won’t be a “let me tell you about Jesus” event (unless someone asks!), but instead simply a chance to be kind, meet non-Christians, and let others know that our church is here to bless and serve. We will give you a chance to sign up for this, and hope to have a table at the park with a few volunteers on Saturday and Sunday morning each of those weekends.
Pray for this group, and bring ideas about engaging our community to them! If you want to be a part of the group, let me know. It isn’t a closed society; instead, it is simply the “tip of the spear” in terms of discovering how we all can be involved together in service and gospel proclamation.
-Steven