Serving Our City, May 2008

On Saturday evening, May 10, a few of the guys associated with our church plant drove to the east side of Oklahoma City to do a service project together. I was really looking forward to this one. A friend of mine is helping us get into our community--particular the parts of our community that have a different culture than what we are used to experiencing.

So off we went to the Marcus Garvey Leadership Charter School. The school was having its first annual "My Queen and Me" banquet, something similar to a mother-son dinner. Our task was to help the other men serve dinner to the mothers (or grandmothers, cousins, or aunts) and the sons. I thought this would be a great experience for us men to serve together. I especially liked the idea of the men serving the women and sons, an excellent illustration of the way things ought to be. Men need to be seen as willing servants of their families.

Our group was warmly accepted and I thought we fit right in (although we certainly stood out from the rest in attendance that evening!). Everyone had a wonderful time, even though we worked pretty hard to keep glasses filled all evening.

It is our dream that our church downtown will reflect the different nationalities in our city. We also know that for this dream to come to pass, we will have to be willing to get around people who are different than us and learn from them.

Doing that can be uncomfortable at times, but it can also be fun. The latter is what we experienced on May 10, as you can see from the picture at the left (can you pick out the ones from our group?).