Sovereignty and Sensitivity Part Three (My Multi-Site Journey)

One of the first outreaches we did at the River Road campus was a “donut outreach” for the high school located right across from the Church. Actually, as I recall, this idea was mentioned on the very night we were discussing whether or not to purchase the property for a multi-site location. Needless to say, we voted to get the property, and so we had a “donut outreach” scheduled within a very short time.

Our idea was to create a make-shift drive-thru in the Church parking lot so students driving to school could pick-up a donut and some juice. We had a great group of volunteers show up for the outreach; we set-up a canopy, some tables for the donuts and juice, and some cones for directing traffic. We figured a few students (and maybe a few teachers) who drive to school would pick-up some breakfast, and we would have the opportunity to share a “God bless you” with them at the beginning of their day.

In order to spread the word about the outreach, I (along with others) were positioned down the road with poster signs announcing “free donuts and juice” ahead at the Church. At first no one seemed to take us up on our offer. Then it happened….

I looked down the road from where I was standing with my poster sign, and I saw a large group of students walking across the road to get their donuts and juice. I must confess that my first thought was: I am SO FIRED! Then my next thought was the words of Jesus in John 4:35b, “I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest” (NIV).

I don’t want to get anyone in trouble, but let’s just say we had a lot of students FLOOD the Church parking lot that first day – many of whom did not drive themselves to school. When the school leadership talked to us later in the morning, they were extremely understanding and gracious. They knew that we didn’t want students crossing the road in any way. They understood we were thinking only students driving to school would drive-thru for a donut and juice.

So the school leadership told us that we could come on campus to share the donuts and juice before school began in the morning! I remember our youth pastor at the time telling me: Isn’t this just like the Church today? Here we are staying at our building, asking people to come to us, while God is opening a door for us to leave our building to go to where the people are!

Wow! What a powerful principle at the very heart of our entire multi-site strategy. One of the points we love about multi-site so much is that it helps us understand the Church is God’s people on mission. In other words, the Church is not a “place” where the world is invited to come to hear the Gospel; the Church is God’s people mobilized to go and preach the Gospel to the whole world!

One other point that began to surface on that morning was: If we were going to go on campus to hand-out donuts and juice, we were going to need A LOT MORE donuts and juice! It was one thing for us to plan to have breakfast for students driving onto our campus, but it was going to be an entirely different thing for us to take donuts and juice to any student from the entire school who wanted some.

So I remember asking our youth pastor, “What kind of resources do you think we need to do this every week for the rest of the school year?” Since we didn’t have many weeks of school left, he did a quick mental calculation and threw-out a number. We both talked about the number – a dollar amount which we did not have in our budget approved specifically for this type of outreach.

But I mentioned to our youth pastor that someone in our fellowship had given a special, designated gift for community outreach events. Although I knew some of that gift had already been spent on a recent event, I figured we could find out how much was left and then plan from there.

Now guess how much was left of that gift? You’re right! When we heard the balance of what was left from that gift (remember that it was a gift given months before this time), the amount just covered what we thought we needed. Once again, God had already provided for our needs even before we knew about them!

This was just the beginning of God’s work at the River Road campus, but it was an exciting beginning for sure.