Since our goal is to live each day as missionaries who live and reveal God’s Kingdom and make disciples wherever God places us, our immediate community, where we live, work, and meet together, is especially important to us. God also asks us to focus our attention outside of our immediate community, sometimes to where he’s at work in a neighboring state, and sometimes in places all over the world. It’s our responsibility to go, but it’s also our privilege to look around our community and world and ask God how we can show and share Jesus’ love. And we’re having a blast!
Here are some of the ways we’re leaning into the privilege of living and revealing the kingdom at home and around the world:
Out of the Building Sundays– We serve together out in our community on some Sunday mornings, rather than meeting together for worship at our usual location. We call that being “out of the building” and we spend those Sundays meeting needs, serving people and pointing them to Jesus. We prepare and serve meals, give out free groceries, partner with a school, plant gardens, paint, make bagged lunches for hungry kids, and serve together in so many other ways. To find out when our next out of the building opportunity is scheduled and how you can join us, just email Melba.
Mission Trips- We partner with several ministries and missionaries in the U.S. and abroad, which means we send mission teams from our church to show and share Jesus’ love wherever there’s a need. One of our teams partners with Appalachia Service Project in West Virginia (going this fall) as they provide help improving the sub-standard housing in that area and build relationships that help lead people to become followers of Christ. We also partner with a missionary in Mexico and one in India, where we’ve sent teams and are so looking forward to the next opportunity to serve with them.
Finances- Crossroads is serious about “putting our money where our mouth is” when it comes to being missionaries in our community and our world. So while we place a high priority on going and on serving, we also place a high priority on helping provide the finances our mission and ministry partners need in order to be effective in pointing people to Jesus. Our mission budget, made up of what our people give to God through our church, reflects that commitment and we’re working each year to increase the percentage of our budget that goes out into our community and our world.
Prayer– And although it’s last on the list, our church and our partner ministries and missionaries don’t consider prayer the least important thing we do. We consider it the most important way we serve- as we bring our needs and challenges to God’s throne and claim his promises that he’ll meet our all of our needs and draw the people we serve to himself- he always does!
If you’d like more info about getting involved in any of the ways we’re serving, Melba would love to have a conversation!