We have been living in a time when plans have been canceled or postponed at the speed of sound. One day we were sorting out the details about going away on SERVE and excitedly coming home from the Leadership Summit, then a week later, we were hunkering down for a 6-month lock-in. We didn’t foresee this.
It was/is hard, this new world. If there was a glimmer of hope for ministry during this time, it came in the form of SERVE@home as a hands-on practical way to, within a COVID reality, still be a model of creative Kingdom hospitality and compassion.
As a SERVE team at Covenant CRC in Edmonton, Alberta, it was important to remind our church community that in spite of the world seemingly shutting down, the needs of our surrounding communities were still real. 15 students and leaders experienced that first hand.
Each morning we gathered for devotions, listening for what Jesus was saying to each one of us through Matthew 5, the Beatitudes. Powerful messages absorbed through personal reflection to set the pace for the day.
Each reflection tied into what that day had in store for us. Between moving a young family from one home to another, preparing meals for those shut-in and who could not afford food that week, delivering these meals, hosting a COVID-safe BBQ, sorting clothes and toiletries for those in need and the list goes on. As Jesus once said after seeing the crowds of people in need, “the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few”.
At the end of each day, we listened to each other. The stories of where we saw God and His amazing work in action.
SERVE@home was an answer to prayer for our church. A community that desperately needed community. Where grace and compassion revealed itself through God’s redemptive story that is as real today as it was when He promised to Abram, “and all nations will be blessed through you”
About the Author: Ron deVries lives in Edmonton, AB, and is the ministry ambassador to ThereforeGo as well as a Regional Catalyst for the office of Faith Formations of the CRCNA.