Being Jesus . . . Our Call From God

People living in the Greater Valley Area, home to both Point University and the Chattahoochee Fuller Center for Housing had the opportunity this past week to witness something pretty amazing. For Point, what we have been calling Impact Day became Impact Week. For the Fuller Center, the largest number of volunteers in its history worked all week in the name of Christ, answering God’s call to His people to be Jesus to the world around us. Spring Road Christian Church also played a major role in Impact Week, providing leadership in ways that made the 400+ volunteers manageable! 

By late Friday afternoon, 61 homes in the Lanett, Alabama mill village had been improved and the place simply looks better. We mowed lawns, trimmed shrubbery and trees, raked up leaves, picked up trash, edged overgrown curbs, painted, repaired, and who knows what else. The long-term impact of Impact Week is known only by God, but the immediate and observable impact is that homes look better and Point students, faculty, and staff had the opportunity to make a difference in a neighborhood long-since left behind by the mills that once were the staple of the Greater Valley Area.

Years ago I read a little book by William Robinson titled The Biblical Doctrine of the Church. Robinson believed that the church is, when all is said and done, truly the body of Christ sent to the world to do for those around us what Jesus did for Israel. John 20:21 – As the Father has sent me, so send I you – was more than just another verse of Scripture.

In describing the nature of the church, Robinson says, “She (the church) is in the world to redeem it. Her position is not one of privilege, but of responsibility. That she is described as ‘leaven’ means that she is a hidden explosive force, for leaven in its operation is both unseen and explosive.” (pages 118, 199) Two places immediately come to mind when I think about where the “leaven” was hidden last week. One is in the lives of people who, at least for some, might have experienced for the first time in their memories what it means to be on the receiving end of “being Jesus to the world.” The other is in the hearts of students, faculty, and staff whose lives might have been changed by being Jesus to others, and they may not even realize it yet. That’s what I think of as “the time bomb” nature of the Christian gospel.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s  Life Together, while writing about what he calls “the ministry of serving,” he says, “Only where hands are not too good for deeds of love and mercy in everyday helpfulness can the mouth joyfully and convincingly proclaim the message of God’s love and mercy.” (page 100) Last week over 400 pairs of hands found a way not to be “too good for deeds of love and mercy.” And again, I remind myself that only God is able to fully know and measure the impact those deeds of love and mercy will have in eternity.

One of the great things I observed last week – in addition to so many people from Point and the Fuller Center, Spring Road Christian, and other places serving – was that you could see people in the neighborhood whose houses weren’t on the list for our service outside doing some clean up kind of work. They were, along with all of us, taking care of creation, the world God Himself declared to be “very good” as He finished His work of creating the universe.

I have no idea how many different faith groups were represented among the volunteers for last week’s Impact Week. But I do know that when people who follow Jesus decide to work together in the name of Jesus, God blesses those endeavors. It seems to me that the less sectarian we are, the more He blesses. That confirms my long-held idea that if you and I believe the truth about Jesus, then everything else in life can be worked out around His name.

Thank God for Impact Week. Thank God for Kasey Bodine, Mary Susan Underwood, Chris Beirne, and Donna Phillips who did a lot of the leg work on the Point side of things. Thank God for Kim Roberts from the Fuller Center – she made it all happen in ways that are remarkable. Thank God for house captains, tool providers, and other leaders, many of whom were from Spring Road Christian Church. Thank God for a part of the world called the Greater Valley Area, where opportunities to be Jesus to the world abound.