As we continue on this journey to lead a small church in Athens, Ohio to impact the community and change lives we want to celebrate all that God is doing.
For Christmas we were able to bake several thousand cookies and put together gift baskets for the community. We identified 65 local organizations and put together a gift basket with the intent to say thank you to these groups and their employees for being a valuable part of our community. We delivered around one hundred baskets all over Athens County. The best reaction we received was from a man at the library. As he said thank you for the basket he began to tear up. His speech was broken, and he said, “I’m overwhelmed by the old fashioned neighborliness of the gift.” That one delivery was worth all the work. But to our delight we received appreciation everywhere we went. Each group that received a basket was delighted to have been thought of.
Another God moment was our Christmas drama that was performed on Dec. 18. We had almost all of our church members participating as actors or singers in the performance so we were a little nervous that we might be putting on a show to an empty sanctuary. Much to our delight we had 42 people in service that morning. That is our largest attendance since my wife and I arrived in mid-August. Nearly 50% of those in attendance were visitors to see their friend or family member in our interpretation of the Christmas story.
Yet another work of God’s grace allowed us to partner with West Elementary school. I approached the principal of the school and shared with her our church’s vision to change lives in the city of Athens. We talked about several ways that we might be able to do that and settled on helping feed children and families that were in need of assistance. The school sent out letters and explained that Athens Fellowship was willing to help families that might need some help with food over the holiday season. We had four families respond and we provided them with food baskets. Not just for Christmas day, but for the entire week of Christmas break. We figured that any family that was going to have difficulty putting Christmas dinner on the table was going to have difficulty over the entire Christmas break.
On the other side of December and the Christmas season we rejoice that God has used us to do great things in our community. We know that we are a small church and we do not have the resources to meet all of the needs in our community, but we also know that we cannot stand by and do nothing. If we are to reflect the image of Christ we must do what we can with what we have and trust God with everything else.
We have a long way to go, yet we recognize that we have come so far in just a short period of time. Praise the Lord for what he is doing through us and in us!
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