You don’t need me to organize it…you and your Home Group, class or friends can just do it.

• Grill out for the employees of a company or business.
• Set up a party trailer, which includes a grill, moonwalk, helium tank and balloons, video games, chairs, etc. at any community events.
• Dress up like a Star Wars character wherever there are people and take pictures with kids and families.  Give them a special invite card with the location they can download the picture.  You will have a blast and invite a bunch of people to church.
• Tailgate at high school football games.  Give away hot dogs and invite people.
• Set up a moonwalk at a local park while events are happening.
• Volunteer at community runs and bike races
• Hand out beverages  at an Uptown Greenville event
• Give out hand warmers with the Harmony logo (email hello@harmonydc.com) at winter events like the Christmas parade
• Do a free oil change or car inspection in a public parking lot
• Hang out with people at the UFC fights shown on every TV in town
• Host a block party for your neighborhood.
• Provide “full service” at a local gas station – wash windows and leave a car freshener
• Show free family movies at a park or your backyard
• Help local schools with their fall festivals.  Instead of re-creating the wheel, just help a school make their event better.
• Take professional pictures at local school talent shows
• Visit a nursing home
• Take a couple of hours and put out door hangers in your neighborhood or apartment complex.
• Go put invite cards on car windshields.  Try not to get arrested…that keeps it fun.
• Be intentional about coaching a kids sports team.
• You and your kids set up a lemonade stand.
• Have a free garage sale…give away things and invite people to church
• Do a free car wash
• Walk around a neighborhood and collect canned food.  Invite people to church while asking for food.
• Hand out helium balloons at special events
• Get a truck, ladder and a bunch of light bulbs and walk around and ask people if they need light bulbs changed.
• Set up a bounce house at the movie theater when a big kids movie premiers.  Or in front of another store.  Managers are often open to anything that draws attention to their store.
• Put out road signs on the weekend
• Put a giant leaf sign in the back of your truck.  Politicians do it – our cause is way more important!
• Custom order Harmony Church silly bandz
• Enter a float in one of the parades.  Walk along side it and give away candy and invites.
• Take breakfast to school teachers.  Simply email the principal and ask if you can do it, set a day, and make it happen.
• Get a giant backpack sprayer and offer to spray for bugs in people’s homes.  It might seem strange, but what a great way to talk to someone and invite them to church.
• Salt driveways when it ices during the winter.
• Help with field days at a local elementary school.  What school wouldn’t appreciate volunteers?
• Take food to fire stations.  Let them know you appreciate them and that they are always welcome at your church.
• Valet cars when a school has an open house.
• Provide childcare for high school graduations.
• Cook team meals before home games at local sporting events
• Pass out candy and invites at your own house on Halloween for actual kids, or downtown where hundreds of “children” come to “trick or treat” every year.
• Start a BBQ Cookoff

Better yet…come up with your own idea, get your friends or group involved, and make it happen.  Let us know how we can help.

1. Know non-Christians

It seems like common sense, but too many campus ministries are set up to babysit nice, moralistic, hypocritical youth group kids and create a bubble around them. As Christians, we have to be outwardly focused. As the Father sent Jesus, Jesus sends us into the culture. It’s so much easier to share the gospel if you belong before you ask people to believe (John 20:21).

2. Think about where you will live

Make your living situation missional: meet new friends and build relationships to see students meet Jesus instead of secluding yourself with people who all act and think the same way you do. Grab a Christian friend and move into the wildest apartment complex in the neighborhood. Don’t conform, but be a movement of change in an area where it’s desperately needed.

3. Join the Greek system

There’s instant community established by living in the Greek system, and people in sororities and fraternities know everyone. Once you’re in, you become really well connected and are able to be on mission in an extreme environment. Yeah, I know: they sin a lot. So does everyone else in college (1 Cor. 9:19–23).

4. Get involved (not just at church)

Join a club related to your major, hobby, or interest. Stop saying yes to every church obligation and begin seeking how the gospel can apply to all areas of life. Build relationships by playing intramural sports on a team without all your Christian friends.

5. Start a small group!

Instead of meeting in a house or apartment, start gathering in a coffee shop or the study hall of your dorm. This will not only allow you to support the local community, but it might also allow somebody else to eavesdrop on a worthwhile conversation.

6. Serve the community

Get involved with a local non-profit or service center. By serving the community alongside non-believers, you’re doing the work that Jesus calls us to do by being missional not only to the populations you’re serving, but also to the people you’re serving alongside.

7. Practice radical hospitality

College students aren’t known for being the most financially well-off or generous people around. Buying a classmate coffee or lunch is a small sacrifice that can speak volumes and make a huge statement in demonstrating grace. This could also mean driving the drunks home from a party and sharing the gospel with them the next day as you take them to get their car.

You have a few short years to reach people who will scatter throughout the world and live for something or someone. The key to being a missionary on a university campus is believing Jesus is worthy of every student’s worship, for his glory and our friends’ eternal joy!

For the majority of people, even ourselves at times, church is not the priority of the week. Too often school, work, sports, and other activities take precedence over gathering as the Church. They make the mistake of letting their time be ordered by the world, which views the weekends as a time to relax, to play sports, to stay up late and sleep in. For Christ-followers, however, Sunday should be the most important day of the week. You should try to schedule your work, activities, get-togethers, and vacations around church. You should live by the principle that Sunday morning starts Saturday night.

Here are some ways that we can prepare our hearts and minds for hearing the Word of Jesus on Sunday mornings:

• Make it a habit to be home on Saturday night.
• Be careful not to do, watch, or read anything that will cause lingering distractions in your mind the next day.
• Get things ready on Saturday night to alleviate the typical Sunday morning rush (lay out clothes, set the table, write the offering check, stock the diaper bag, etc).
• Get a good night’s sleep so you can be sharp and energetic to worship and serve God. It’s hard to listen when you’re nodding off.
• Eat a simple but adequate breakfast that will hold you until lunch. It’s difficult to hear over the grumbling of your stomach.
• Work together with the other members of your family to get ready, and to establish and maintain a godly atmosphere on the way to church. Listen to music, sing, and pray together.
• Arrive at church ten minutes early instead of ten minutes late so you have enough time to find a parking spot, drop the kids off in the nursery or their Sunday school classes, get a cup of coffee, visit with your friends, and find a seat.

What are some other things that we as the people of Jesus can do to prepare our hearts and minds for Him?

1. Spiritual maturity sufficient to lead a wife and children.

2. Personal maturity sufficient to be a responsible husband and father.

3. Economic maturity sufficient to hold an adult job and handle money.

4. Physical maturity sufficient to work and protect a family.

5. Sexual maturity sufficient to marry and fulfill God’s purposes.

6. Moral maturity sufficient to lead as example of righteousness.

7. Ethical maturity sufficient to make responsible decisions.

8. Worldview maturity sufficient to understand what is really important.

9. Relational maturity sufficient to understand and respect others.

10. Social maturity sufficient to make a contribution to society.

11. Verbal maturity sufficient to communicate and articulate as a man.

12. Character maturity sufficient to demonstrate courage under fire.

13. Biblical maturity sufficient to lead at some level in the church.

Where?

Where are the missional spaces (places and activities where you meet people)?
Where do they experience community?
Are their existing social networks with which we can engage or do we need to find ways of creating community within a neighbourhood?
Where should you be to have missional opportunities?

When?

When are the missional moments?
What are the rhythms of your neighbourhood?
How do people organise their time?
What cultural experiences and celebration do people value? How might these be used as bridges to the gospel?
When should you be available to have missional opportunities?

What?

What are peoples’ fears, hopes and hurts?
What ‘gospel’ stories are told in the neighbourhood? What gives people identity (creation)? How do they account for what what’s wrong with the world (fall)? What’s the solution (redemption)? What are their hopes (consummation)?
What are the barriers beliefs or assumptions cause people to dismiss the gospel?
What sins will the gospel first confront and heal for these people?
In what ways are people self-righteous?
What is the good news for people in this neighbourhood?
What will church look like for people in this neighbourhood?

Thoughts?

Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch, The Shaping of Things To Come (p213)

Observe the organic social rhythms of the host or target community.
Watch for the social patterning.
Ask where the social centers in your community are. Or as Brian Ollman at the Millennia Co-op in Los Angeles says, ‘Where are the ant trails? And where are they leading?’
Ask ‘What is church for this group of people?’ and ‘What will a Jesus-centered faith community look like among this people with their particular culture?’ Do not import an alien or artificial model of church. Try to help develop one that is truly indigenous to that culture or subculture.
Keep asking ‘What is good news for this community?’

Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways Handbook (99)

Where are people gathering and experiencing community?
Where are people finding meaning and a sense of identity?
What are the current existential issues? Where are people expressing a longing for the divine?
How does the gospel address these issues? What is “good news” for these people?
Where is God already at work in the community? And how can we join with God?
Given the above answers, what will chary look like for this community?

Mark Driscoll, The Radical Reformission (132-133)

During the week, make an effort to learn from the people whom you encounter in public settings, such as the bank teller or grocery store clerk. Simply ask them what they’ve learned about people after interacting with so many. You will find they are a wealth of insight … Most important, speak with lost people who are not like you, not for the purpose of converting them but rather for the purpose of learning what life is like for them in their culture.

Where do people spend their time and money?
What do people do during their free time?
What do they fear?
What do they dream about?
Where do they shop?
What cultural experiences do they value?
What are the most painful experiences they have had?
What music do they listen to?
What film and television do they watch?
What do they find humorous?
In what ways are they self-righteous?
What do they read?
What is their spirituality?
Whom do they trust? Why?
What do they think about the gospel?
What sins will the gospel first confront and heal for these people?

Harmony: do you know your neighbor? Do you know Greenville? If we don’t know our neighbors and our city, how can we love them?

We can’t.

Rock of Ages (chord chart)

Pretty awesome song. We used as an intro. Thumping bass line.

Rock of ages, cleft for me
let me hide myself in You
let the water and the blood
from Your wounded side which flowed
be of sin the double cure
save from wrath and make me pure

should my tears forever flow
should my zeal no faintness know
these for sin could not atone
You must save and You alone
in my hand no price i bring
simply to Your cross i cling

while i draw this fleeting breath
when my eyes shall close in death
when i rise to worlds unknown
and behold You on Your throne

Rock of ages, cleft for me
let me hide myself in You
let the water and the blood
save me, save me, make me Yours

in my hand no price i bring
simply to Your cross i cling

Jesus, Conqueror (chord chart)

This one will be a favorite soon at Harmony. Great chorus and melody.

Jesus, the Conqueror reigns
in glorious strength arrayed
His kingdom over all maintains
and bids the earth be glad

you sons of men rejoice
in Jesus’ mighty love
lift up your heart, lift up your voice
to Him who rules above

Chorus
Jesus reigns, He reigns forever
He’s the firstborn of all creation
Christ, the fullness of God
Jesus reigns, He reigns forever
the image of the invisible God
invisible God

extol His kingly power
worship the exalted Son
who died and lives to die no more
high on His Father’s throne

our Advocate with God
He undertakes our cause
and spreads through all the earth abroad
the victory of His cross

Chorus

A Theology of Worship (PDF)

Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. So they gave a dinner for Him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with Him at the table. Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

Do you see the same thing I see? How about the words you so often read over: “therefore” & “so”.  Check out the the second verse: So they gave a dinner for Him there. Why did they give Him a dinner? The first verse answers it: because Jesus had raised Lazarus from the dead. The same reason continues to verse 3: Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped His feet with her hair.

Often times we focus on the latter part of the story (Judas’ response to Mary’s act of worship) rather than looking at the beginning of the story: why she is worshiping to begin with.

Simply put, Mary is worshiping because of what Jesus did in Lazarus’ life.Worship arises out of resurrection.

Because of what Jesus did in Lazarus’ life, not only can Lazarus celebrate, but the people who love him can as well. In fact, they throw a party because of it. That being said, we should (and do) worship Christ because He has made us alive even when we were dead (Ephesians 2:4-5).  It is in response to our spiritual resurrection that we worship Him.

The ultimate result? The surrounding culture is changed. The fragrance of Mary’s act of worship filled the entire house. How is your environment changed by your acts of worship? Is it at all?