Monday, July 28, 2008

The Party in Occidental Park

Missio Lux was able to live into our missio DNA yesterday as we put on a party in Occidental Park for hundreds of homeless people.
The idea was to bring Jesus into a park where the homeless gather through music, food and essential supplies of life!

We partnered with Bread of Life Mission and the Rag Band. Jay Boone is the leader of the Rag Band, he has a guitar shop in Pioneer Square close to Occidental Park and he has an amazing recovery story. The Rag Band shows up faithfully every Monday night to lead worship at Celebrate Recovery, so we are developing a friendship and a partnership for being the church present to the world.

I am going to tell this story over a few days because there is so much to tell, and I am still processing all the ways in which I saw God present and at work!

The day was full of contrasts for me. I spoke at the Mother church, Pine Lake Covenant in the morning. I hadn't been to a worship service at PL since our commissioning in early March. It felt a bit strange, but by the end, very familiar. Pine Lake is a great church in an affluent area, so driving into the city to Pioneer Sqaure reminded me of the vast difference in the two environments.

When we arrived, Jay Boone gave us a full barrell full of men's underwear, socks and deoderant. We began to assemble the bags to give out to the men and when I looked up, I saw a line of hundreds of people. We didn't have hundreds to give out, we had about a 100 bags, so that meant that right off the bat we were going to disappoint more people that we were going to please.

The line never went away. As soon as they smelled coals on a BBQ, the line got longer. Read tomorrow to hear about how God multiplied food for 250 into food for a 1,000!



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