pat loughery

Colleen writes in her first big blog entry about why our church sees community service as an act of worship.  Here’s  part of her intro:

We now meet on Sunday mornings for a worship service but my battle cry has been that these acts of love (our projects in the community) are also beautiful expressions of worship. The first Sunday of the month (Project Sunday) we do not have a traditional worship service instead we devote that time to working on a project together. The project looks different almost every time.

One of the things I like most about Ohana Project is the way we do service projects together.  When we led Mt. Si Vineyard, we focused on providing a wide range of volunteer opportunities for people in the church to choose from, and we rallied around a few different event based projects.  We wanted to create long-term partner relationships with local agencies who were already doing the stuff we wanted to do, and act as volunteer help with them.  We built on the model that Rich and Rose Swetman use with Vineyard Community Church in Shoreline, where they partner with local agencies with great impact.

But what Ohana does is a step beyond:  As a community we serve together, and we commit to do projects as a serious act of worship.  Cleaning toilets and trimming hedges is an act of worship that we do together in community, and working with a small number of partners so that we get to build relationship with those groups as well.

I’m happy that Colleen’s talking about *why* we do this stuff.  It’s a good glimpse into the personality of this church.