Servolution: “a movement of people who believe that the church should be known what it’s for. A revolution that is fueled by serving, by showing, sharing God’s love intentionally. To display God’s love by serving them” (Devin Hudson – Servolution, 2009).
Severolution occured over three days, September 5th, 6th, and 7th – and was incredible. Volunteers served eight different locations and put in something crazy like 1800 service hours and served 9000 people.
Service has always been my “heart throb” to use Protestant verabage for a moment. Was it deeply ingrained in me as a Latter Day Saint or is it something that God gifted me with? Whatever the reason, service is passion. Not always to serve with others, but simply to serve others. And I prefer to remain invisible whenever possible.
For a little while now, I’ve remained at Grace Point out of comfort and complacity, while I don’t always agree with the theologly presented at Grace Point, overall I really enjoy the people. My husband has a huge heart for kids and feels really called to serve the children at GP, so I stay, neither being passionate for or against the church, but with my heart elsewhere.
This weekend however, really reminded me why we felt so called, pulled even, by God to Grace Point church again. Service. It is the one act, the one componet of Grace Point that has always set it distinctly apart from every other Protestant church, service is what makes this church so different. Having studied LDS apologetics for years before coming to Grace Point, I had a certain – idea of what “Christians” were. Yes, that does mean I seperated “Christians” from myself as a Latter Day Saint, this doesn’t mean that every LDS does this, but I did. I honestly think it was the apologetics that did it, that stuff takes a toll on you after awhile. It was only through the amazing living example of the Sager family that Steve and I began to know real Christians who didn’t care that we were Mormons and still accepted us just the way we were. However, coming into Grace Point, knowing no one, I held my own ideas of what Protestant churches looked like, taught, and so forth.
If you have followed my blog for any length of time, you know that Steve and I were not impressed with Grace Point spiritually, we felt it was too showy, too much on the entertainment side, and were not really interested in returning. It was only through a dream that I had, that we realized that God was pulling us to Grace Point, even though we had already made the decision to attend Discovery Church with our friends from the Sager small group. Yet, we knew that God was calling, so back to Grace Point we went. To be honest, I don’t remember how many sermons I had attended or if this was one of the first ones, but I do vividly recall the first time I heard Devin speak about Grace Point’s call to service. In my heart, I felt like I was home – a church that served with no strings attatched was certainly something I could get behind.
This past Sunday Devin spoke again about service, which he often does. He was not any more passionate than any other time speaking about service, he was not louder, or more persuasive -but something caught my attention and I found myself remembering why I loved Grace Point church. It serves without any agenda. Servolution is not a weekend, it’s not time carved out of your schedule, it’s a way of living, the same as breathing, and walking, and eating.
Service happens every moment of everyday – from seeing a mother and child walk in the blazing sun to school and offering them a ride instead, to buying a bottle of water for a homeless man laying under a dirty pipe outside a Rebel store trying to get a drink. There are opportunities everywhere and what really sets people apart from “Christians” and truly, converted Christ followers (or Saints) are no-agenda-acts-of-kindness. I’ve had plenty of Christians offer me things as a Mormon, however they always wanted to talk with me about their church. I loved that the team leaders of each Servolution location specifically instructed volunteers to not evangelize these people, but just serve them, the only PR these volunteers were equipped with were business cards for Grace Point and specifically instructed only to give them out if the opportunity arouse in conversation, but not to shove them into everyone’s hands. I cannot say how much I loved that.
Servolution was so healthy for me spiritually, I was totally exhausted afterwards, but I feel so spiritually revived it’s awesome. For a long time, I’ve been carrying a very heavy weight around me of a percieption of Christians, and Servolution reminded me that those who are “sold out to Jesus” as people like to say, do not always have to be rude, overbearing, insensitive, arragont, prideful, cruel, thoughtless, and unaccountable as sadly my closest examples have been for awhile now. That as passionate followers, we don’t always have to be running our mouths in order to win some war waged by the enemy and in fact, the most powerful weapon we have is service. Service without the sermon, service without the opinions and judgements, just service – as Jesus who cleaned Judas’ feet knowing he would betray Him, so should we serve others, even those who we do not agree with and cannot support, we should serve.
BE A SERVOLUTIONARY!
