Twice a year we do something huge for our community. It’s called Serve Day. We do it in the fall and the spring. Our next one is on Saturday May 10th. Here’s what it looks like: We bring a Salvation Army truck to our church parking lot. Hire an industrial paper shredder, order 10 30 yard dumpsters to take both trash & recycle…and set up some trailers to haul away old appliances. Then we promote to our surrounding neighbors “Got Trash” serve day. Bring your trash to our church from 10-2 on May 10 and we’ll dispose of it for free. If you’ve got items for Salvation Army…bring it. If you’ve got large amounts of sensitive papers that need to be shredded…bring it. If you’ve got household trash or recyclables….bring it. And, if you’ve got old appliances that you can’t get rid of….bring it. Plus, we send everyone away with free lunch and a car wash. We promote this with a simple area mailer and through our small groups. We encourage everyone in our small groups to invite their neighbors to bring their trash. We had volunteers stationed at each point to remove the trash for the neighbors.
Here’s what happened last fall: It poured down rain all 4 hours (yea…Seattle). We had such a huge response that our dumpsters & Salvation army trucks were full in the first 2 hrs. People wanted to donate money and we said no…we simply wanted to serve. People were shocked and thrilled.
I love it. This is the church being the church!