Woud You Like a Free Bottle of Water?

As they used to say on the television show, The A-Team, “I Love it when a plan comes together!” I also love it when a plan comes together like it did yesterday at the Fall Jamboree. Our servant evangelism goal was to give away 900 bottles of water to the people that came to the event. 900 bottles of water filled the back of Joe Johnson’s truck two tiers of water deep. Looking at all that water it was easy to think, “That’s a lot of water to give away.” The good news is that we did it. By about 7:00 p.m. the last of the water bottles was gone and we were packing up the site and heading back to our homes.

The day was an exercise in going into the public arena and sharing something—a simple bottle of water—with a thirsty individual. Each person that took a bottle of water was also given a postcard sized piece of paper that had a weekly schedule of church events and church contact information on one side. On the reverse side, it had the following message:

“There’s a Place for You at Virginia Avenue. In one of the Gospels, Jesus offered a woman at a well a drink of living water to quench her spiritual thirst. We offer you this water today to quench a physical thirst and as a symbol of God’ love for you. We invite you to come and worship with us so that you might experience the ‘living water’ that Jesus offered to all that would follow him.”

We then included the following verse from John’s Gospel:

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”                                                                                                John 4: 13,14 NIV
The final outcome of our efforts yesterday may not be readily know or easily calculated. However, we have touched the lives of several hundred people in an unexpected way. We offered them cold water, perhaps our gift was enough to make one or two of them want to come and look for the living water promised by Jesus. If they do, then all our efforts will have been worth it.

That’s what Servant Evangelism is all about. Offering God’s love in unexpected and, sometimes, unimagined ways, to the people of our community. If you  are interested, then be sure to check out the other Servant Evangelism opportunities that we have available in the weeks ahead.