We had our annual Community Thanksgiving Service this past Wednesday night at the 1st United Methodist Church of Alhambra, with about seven churches from the area participating, including two from Monterey Park. The best part of it for me was seeing all the different churches working together, connecting, and coming together for the specific cause that connected to the theme of the evening "Our Daily Bread."
I was glad we were able to get a representative from People for People, our local food bank to share the needs in the long term as well as the short term: three of the low income families with Christmas wish lists were "adopted" by attendees to the service, and we collected a whole car load of cans and dried food that we asked attendees to bring to the service for People for People's annual Christmas dinner delivery to the 150 or so families in our area.
Although I'm thankful for the chance for the Church of the cities to come together for a worship service, the whole theme of showing compassion to our needy neighbors made me think that perhaps the better alternative for the Church is to actually host our low-income neighbors and share a meal than have a worship service about it. Better yet, have a worship service added so they can be a part of it as well. Wouldn't it be great if we had a dinner together and had an open testimony time to express our gratitude as the Church with the community? Let a deeper justice and worship flow together!
Yea! I've been thinking about how we should be sharing meals with people who need food, perhaps even inviting them to our holiday dinner at our homes. We used to do that at Door of Hope: take meals and then eat with them, not just drop off the food. But I think that there are so many people already serving at Door of Hope and there are families right here that we can build relationships with. We are having a spaghetti luncheon fundraiser to raise money for Urbana. I have been considering asking people to buy tickets to give to the homeless in our city.
ReplyDeleteWhen's the spaghetti? I know what you mean; that's the strength of a meal donor system where we sit down with the residents to eat.
ReplyDeleteDecember 13th @ 11:30am after church
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