One of my intents with this blog was to talk about the various activities and things we are experiencing as God prepares us to plant a church.  I have dropped the ball on more of those than I wished to.   But here is today’s update.

Part of the challenge Pastor Philip has laid on me back in September was to plan an outreach activity for the church to participate in every month.  It was difficult in the fall with so much going on but I led a yard team in September and a leaf-raking team at the beginning of November.  All through that time I was thinking about how great it would be to do a hot drink distribution at a soccer field once the rain and the cold set in.

I got my chance today.  It feels right now like the most successful outreach I have led so far.  First, we had a massive turnout – I had 13 people turn out at 8:30am on a Saturday.  That was tremendous.  Second, I was tipped by one of my team members about asking Starbucks for containers that we could use for drink distribution, but it turned out that they not only supplied the containers requested, but they also gave us coffee and a coffee backpack!

Two families stepped up and brewed the coffee and hot chocolate for us.   We picked up the supplies, set up a cover, and set to work!  We set up adjacent to an artificial turf field in North Delta, and the temperature was hovering around 7 or 8 degrees Celsius (40-45 Fahrenheit) with a misting rain.  Over 2 hours we served close to 160 cups of hot chocolate and coffee.  We had a lot of encouraging and positive feedback and several people stopped to ask us details on our church.

I was most blessed by the enthusiasm and the smoothness with which we operated.  They made it easy for me to feel comfortable in leadership.  What a blessing they were!

I learned a lot about what is possible when you step out in faith.  I learned that Starbucks has coffee backpacks that hardly ever get used!  We will be using them again!  I also learned that people are pretty open at such spaces when they can see we are serving them without asking anything in return.  All profitable things to know.