411: NYC CHURCH PLANT LAYS THE GROUNDWORK IN PRAYER

…To that strategic prayer cover, the 411 team added intentional service in the community.  It started simply, with water and granola bars or Krispy Kreme donuts and Starbucks handed out in sub-zero weather as busy New Yorkers were hustling to work.  The group’s service expanded from handing out bubbles to kids in the park to weeding the now-famous Daffodil Hill where bodies were brought for identificaiton after the 9/11 attacks.

In a display of “post-modern day foot-washing,” the 411 crew even scrubbed rubber mats where kids play in a neglected park and cleaned bathrooms that were too nasty to open before.  The group’s black T-shirts – which have the appearance of “stage crew” apparel among the area’s artist community – got to be so well-known that New Yorkers started asking where the 411 group was serving that day, what they were giving away or if someone would pray for them.

411: NYC CHURCH PLANT LAYS THE GROUNDWORK IN PRAYER

A church cannot be a place where we are merely to come together once a week and enjoy our doctrine and congratulate ourselves that we have a faith free from superstition. We must do something for others, as well as for ourselves. And the more we have done for others, the more in the end, we shall find we have done for ourselves.

Caroline Bartlett Crane (via psdlund)