After breakfast we took a group photo of our team.
After that we joined the congregation for worship.
Our kitchen coordinator, Janet, shared a story with the children.
And the Praise Team led us in worship.
Gil shared a message on "Living out Act 6 of a Seven Act Play".
He started out by getting some SERVE participants to do some improvisation comedy. They did a game called party quirks where one person has to answer who the other people are (or trying to portray). My apologies, I laughed so hard I missed my opportunity to get any pictures. He then went on to share that Christianity lived out is improvisation, and history is a 7 act play.
Act 1 is God's story of creation, a call to love that comes to a climax with the creation of 'us', and given a mandate to take care of creation and his people. To love is to give away our power, and it was meant to be mutual.
Act 2 is the fall of creation. We no longer wanted to be image bearers, we wanted to be God, and this leads to hurt.
Act 3 then is God telling us he won't let us live this way, through the story of Israel. We receive love, or blessings from God, but we fail to give love or blessings to others. In Exodus we see that they want a king, not to give but to hold onto power.
In act 4 God gives us his son, who lives out the blessing to the nation. He was full love all the time, and shows us a better way; to love the poor, the sick, and the unlovable.
Act 5 then goes on to take away our sin through the dying on the cross of his son.
Act 6 falls between this and God's redemption of all of creation. We need to see where we have come from and where we are going. Jesus asks who is my mother and brothers, and goes on to say that all who do God's will are our family. We are all worthwhile and part of the family, and all have a role to play. We cannot ignore those who are marginalized. We are not good enough at this yet, we still categorize people as who's in and who's not. We need to live out an improvisation of love.
After the service we shared coffee and fellowship out on the parking lot.
After lunch the youth and leaders did a scavenger hunt through Clinton, and traded up a red paper clip. After that they traveled to home with a pool and did some community building games.
The first game was a water balloon relay. The object was to scoop a water balloon out of the kiddy pool using only a plunger, then weave through the obstacle course and bring the water balloon back to the kiddy pool.
"I knight thee" is a great way to remember the names of all the people you have just met.
How many balloons can you blow up in a given time frame and stick on one of your team members.
The teams were given a partially water filled beach ball, which makes it unbalanced, to toss among the group.
The idea was to stuff as many balloons in someone's shirt to make them look as big and muscular as they could.
Pool time!
They came back to the church to a wonderful roast beef dinner.
In the evening we had a worship service with all our host churches and prayer partners.
Vanastra CCRC's chair of council opened the worship service.
Then the Praise Team led us in worship again.
We are just blessed by the amazing turnout we had at the service, we were filled to capacity! We are humbled by the support of our host churches.
In the evening Gil shared some his early faith life with us. He was taught that we are inherently bad and that there is a chasm between us and God that Christ death can bridge, and as long as we are moral that God will bless us. Then a number of terrible things occurred in his life and shattered his world view. He had to learn that some things don't get fixed on this side of eternity. In 2nd Corinthians we learn that Christ was crucified in weakness. We need to live the kingdom now and give our bodies and our weakness to him. We play a game of having it all together, but we all have a mess and admit we don't have it all together. As leaders we need to show our weakness, and God will make us into something beautiful. The marginalized give this gift all the time because it is obvious they don't have it all together, and it is easier for us to be weak around them. Everyone has a gift to share and we need to allow those who we don't think do to share their gifts. By not allowing them to share with us we put them down. Jesus tells us it is better to give than to receive, but we don't allow the marginalized to give. We need to have a mutual relationship. We need to offer all of us all of the time.
Afterwards, those whose prayer partner showed up had the opportunity to meet with them. The youth whose prayer partner could not make it gathered in small groups with a prayer warrior and had a time of prayer before grabbing their cake and drinks. Each team was colour coded so that the prayer partner would know what group to find them in.
People found a spot around the property to talk and pray with their prayer partners to get to know them a little bit and find any prayer needs the participant has so that their prayers can be more focused.
