by: Darrell Vesterfelt

I have recently been spending time at the Source Boiler Room in Minneapolis.  There is such a diverse gathering of people that meet there on Saturday nights for the Merge Church service, which is one of the community expressions of the Boiler Room.  A couple of weeks ago we spent time together as a church family celebrating the Christmas season with a gathering celebrating the birth Christ.  This celebration was a collection of family and friends of Source along with some neighbors.  We expressed community that night by playing games, great conversation, and of course, a meal.

One thing you must know about Source is that we have several friends within our neighborhood that will show up at random times with many different needs.  The night of our Christmas party we invited in three men who showed up on our doorstep and were hungry and in need of food.  Instead of giving them a hand out and sending them on their way we invited them into our community to share in the meal that we were partaking.  As these men were having a conversation with Peter, our director and pastor, I walked by and introduced myself.  Small talk began.  Unprompted one of the men looked me in the eyes as he was preparing another spoonful of food for his mouth and exclaimed, “I don’t know what it is but this food tastes so… good!”

Understanding that I was talking to a man living in poverty, my mind immediately became overwhelmed.  I thought to myself over and over again, “Jesus tastes so… good!”  Although time was spent preparing this meal, it was nothing to write home about, a smorgasbord of appetizers including meatballs and little hotdogs, a common Christmas party menu.  This man in need, had his hunger met not only with the remedy for that hunger as we sent him on his way, but we gave a remedy for that hunger as we invited him to experience the nature of Jesus expressed through our community.  He wasn’t tasting the hours of preparation in the iron kitchen, but he was tasting the sweetness of Jesus in our community.

Looking back on the values of Project Awaken (prayer, community, and mission) I am beginning to see a clear progression.  As I wrote about in October, we receive the nature of Jesus through prayer, and once we have experienced that foundational nature of Jesus we are charged to administer it with one another in community.  At that Christmas party, I finally saw the final step of the progression.  Mission that night was this: the administration of that same nature of Jesus that we received in prayer, shared not only within our community but shared with an outsider and then an invitation and acceptance into the open arms of our community.

True mission is only practiced in partnership with prayer and community.  We are reducing our evangelistic efforts to a Christian responsibility when we practice mission outside of this interconnectivity of prayer, community, and mission.  May there be a generation that understands that anything practiced outside of the nature of Christ is only a mirror of human effort and cheapened gospel.