Collaboration – Raising Serving to the Next Level
Last Saturday was another huge blessing as I was part of Inasmuch United Knoxville. Specifically, I was responsible for one of two food packing events in which 60,000 meals were packed and donated to local organizations to distribute over time to food insecure people in my community. This was only one of 38 compassion ministry […]
It’s Not About Us
A pastor was meeting with a group of new members of his church. It was a class designed to help them assimilate into the congregation. So, he told them about various opportunities to learn and grow as followers of Jesus through a variety of classes the church offered. He told them about the church’s financial […]
The Power of Serving
Sometimes the most powerful thing is something we hardly ever think of as powerful. For example, love is powerful. Passion is powerful. Tradition is powerful. But we seldom think of any of these as powerful. Serving is in that category—powerful but not usually thought of in that way. Serving has the power to give hope, to strengthen […]
I Don’t Have Time to Serve
We can get creative when we need to give a reason for not doing something we know we should do. For example, a well-known church leader asked other church leaders through Twitter what they had heard from parishioners as reasons for not attending church. Here are some of the more interesting “reasons” they heard: “We […]
Serving Builds Community
Immediate past Governor of Tennessee Bill Haslam has just released a new book Faithful Presence: The Promise and Peril of Faith in the Public Square. He begins this fresh look at the place of spiritual values in politics by describing the depth and breadth of the divide in America now. He says simply “We are […]
Serving Gives Hope
Serving is powerful. It is transformative and its impact can be surprisingly wonderful. An Inasmuch event of a good number of years ago verifies this. Leaders targeted a neighborhood where there was a high crime rate, rampant drug use and poverty. When the residents were asked if volunteers could make repairs to their homes, many of which were […]
5 Traits of a True Servant
Not everyone who serves is a servant. Not everyone who does something for someone else is serving. If you Google “serving,” you will see plenty of articles about military service. I was in the Army, but I do not think of that time as serving. If I had been in combat, I might feel differently, but I had a […]
Time to Push the Reset Button
Remember the days when airplanes had to circle the airport for a while prior to landing? That image is analogous to how most of us have been feeling during COVID—living life in a holding pattern until it’s safe to resume “normal” activities. That is certainly true for churches for whom week-to-week activities still do not look anything […]
Weeping Over Your City
From time to time Compassionaries will feature a guest blog written by someone outside the Inasmuch ministry. This one is a guest blog written by Dr. Bill Wilson, President of The Center for Healthy Churches. Learn more about Bill from his bio below. Churches ask me regularly how they can not only survive their current […]
To Serve is to Take a Risk
This blog is a follow-up to To Be or Not To Be a Good Samaritan. So, if you haven’t read it yet, you may want to go back to it. Mercy is Messy Some readers of the last blog questioned whether it is wise to try to be a Good Samaritan in all circumstances. For example, […]
