The Church needs to stop serving to and start serving with!

Last week Atlee Community Church - Northminster Campus played host to 38 homeless women for a week.

We hosted Caritas (The local homeless shelter) for women.

It happened rather quickly because Caritas had not found a church to partner with for that particular week.

I received an email while on vacation, so there was very little I could do being out of the country.

Gina (my assistant) and Charles (my best friend) stepped up to make it all happen.

I came home mid week to find out how great things were going.

The first night or so the ladies were given the opportunity for the very first time to cook their own meals.

This is somewhat of a foreign concept to most churches. 

We the church want to serve to/for someone, but not with someone.

The church always serves the meals.

New concept; ask the ladies if they want to prepare their meals?

The ladies absolutely loved it!

Volunteers came to participate and I was told they couldn't tell who was who.

That's a beautiful thing.

Another learning point came when circumstances forced us to put the ladies in four separate rooms instead of the usual one large room like the gym.

Guess what?

The ladies loved the rooms.

They felt as if they had some privacy.

That morning Charles and I were planning the next time we would host Caritas.

We figured we would put them all in the gym because it was easier for us.

We were not thinking from the women's prospective.

Guilty as charged.

We need to think from their perspective not ours.

Every evening a few ladies would come back early from their day and help prep the food for that night.

I learned a lot from this experience.

We need to think differently about how we serve one another.

We need to make respect and dignity a part of how we serve.

We need to stop the model of to and for and start with a new model of with.

Tomorrow I will share how one ladies life from last week is now totally different.

She's not in the shelter any more!