Washing Cars in the Name of Jesus // July ‘23 Update
Summer Verm
Hi, fam! It’s been awhile! It’s time for a much-overdue Resilient Church update. Let me sum up our summer in one sentence:
Summer has been sssssllllooooowwwwwww.
And that’s been a wonderful thing.
Vermillion is a college town that nearly doubles in size during the school year. So that means it gets cut in half during the summer, in addition to everyone leaving to camping (like seriously. Everyone camps out here.)
Instead of fighting against the lull of Summer Verm and trying to stay as busy as we possibly can, we’ve encouraged our Leadership Team and our church family to soak up this summer and rest. To truly slow down and rest. This especially applied to myself. I was able to take the entire month of June off, between a 1-week spiritual retreat, a 2-week family vacation, and a 1-week pastor’s retreat during District Conference. My soul desperately needed the break. And I can imagine all of our people need it, too.
That said, the slowness of Summer Verm has also given us the chance to try a bunch of new things! Check it out here in this summer update 😊
Stranger Stories: Summer Series
Since we reach a wide population of college students and young adults, our church is about 30% of its size during the school year. Since we’re a smaller group of 20-30 people most Sundays, the sermon has functioned more as a classroom and small group setting during our summer sermon series called Stranger Stories.
Inspired by the show Stranger Things, we’ve spent 8 weeks reading some of the “stranger stories” of the Bible that most people have never even heard of. We’ve read stories like Micah and his Idols in Judges 17, what to do with defiling molds in Leviticus 13, Balaam’s talking donkey, and the inheritance of Zelophehad’s daughters in Numbers 36, to name a few. We approached these stories through a small group & workshop teaching style, while introducing our people to a 3-step Bible study method so they can be equipped to tackle any kind of “strange story” they may come across in Scripture.
Mason, our worship pastor, and I also have done a new conversational approach to these messages for our podcast! You can listen to the episodes of Stranger Stories by clicking the Spotify or Apple Podcasts buttons here:
Appreciating Our School District
Our first service opportunity took place in May, when we were able to write personalized “Thank You” notes to every employee in our school district! Mason and I delivered the notes with a variety of bagels to celebrate the end of another school year.
Prayer at Prentis Park
One of the ways we’ve been soaking up the beautiful summer weather is by having weekly prayer meetings at Prentis Park during the noon-hour. We’ve had a consistent group of 6 to 8 individuals show up from several different churches, and we spend 45 minutes covering our community in prayer.
We’ve been praying for God to bring healing and restoration to our people, awakening the Church to God’s purpose, protection over USD and college students, and to see God bring revival to our city and region, amongst many other things. It’s one of the highlights of our weeks, and we’re not planning on stopping these prayer meetings anytime soon!
Worship Night at the Platz
We’ve also been able to have monthly summer worship nights! Our first one in May was at the Vermillion Public Library as a throw back to when we would do these worship nights in our early days before our public launch (unfortunately I don’t have any pictures). But our second worship night took place at the Platz downtown! We had between 20 to 30 in attendance, and it was a really sweet time of gathering people from a variety of churches to worship Christ as King.
$1 Car Wash Serving Event
Perhaps the funnest outreach event we’ve done this summer was our $1 car wash! It works just like any other $1 car wash event, but with a twist. Instead of them paying us after we wash their car, we give them $1, just as a way to surprise them with a random act of kindness and generosity. When they insisted that we take their cash, I would tell them, “We believe God has blessed us abundantly, and we just want to turn that around and remind them that God has blessed them, too.” We washed upwards of 15-20 cars!
We were able to give $25 away to Ryan, a guy who was traveling across the country and was in desperate need of gas. We got to talk about the resilience faith in God gives us. We had a man named Steven and his dog, Russel, stop by and visit with us for awhile, which sparked up a conversation about religion in which I got to present the Gospel with him and exchange contact information. Not to mention several people who were very interested in checking out Resilient Church!
It was such a blast, and we’re praying that God continues to move in the lives of those we served.
What’s Next & Prayer Requests
Although our first few months of the summer were pretty quiet, we have a lot of things going on here in the next 2 months as we gear up to relaunch ourselves into the Fall semester when students arrive. All of these events are opportunities for us to reach our community and USD students with the Gospel and mission of Resilient Church!
Please join me in praying for the Lord to move in mighty ways during these events and campaigns, for his glory, to expand his kingdom, and form vibrant lives through salvation in his son.
Community Worship Night at Prentis Park: Wednesday, July 19
Community Block Party Door Hanger Distribution: Saturday, July 29
Community Block Party Outreach Event: Saturday, August 5
Mailing campaign promoting our Fall sermon series on Mental Health: Mid-late August
Resilient Students College Ministry at USD Welcome Week: August 14-18
Resilient Students Welcome Week Worship Night: Friday, August 25
Resilient Church 1-year Birthday Celebration! Sunday, August 27
