Celebrate and Serve with your Group

While most community groups are taking a break for the summer, the Northridge Serves partners are never on break from reaching and serving the neediest in our community. When you schedule an event with your group this summer, consider planning your backyard cookout around a time when one of our partners could use some extra volunteers.

Try trip to Mission: Share to help in the garden or soft clothing, or to Youth for Christ to help with a with facilities maintenance, or even a trip to our Irondequoit Campus to scrub out the trailers, and cap it off with a good meal together.

Groups Take the Initiative

One Northridge community group recently decided they would do something to help support the homeless in our community. With the leadership of a group member who regularly serves the homeless, they made serving together a two-night event:

On the first night our entire group built care packages to hand out to the homeless. On the second night seven of us walked/drove around the city and handed out the care packages.

Several members of the group were surprised to how "real" or "normal" the people we encountered were. Many commented that they were never have known they were homeless just by talking to them. Others were made aware of the severe poverty many in our city live in.

Group leaders... this is exactly the kind of growing experience that you long for in the lives of your members. Check out northridgeserves.com for ideas, and feel free to contact us for help. But if there's something you or your group members are passionate about, don't wait for Northridge Serves! Take the initiative.

The Best Seat in the House?

Once Jesus was invited to a banquet at the home of a religious leader. He reclined at the table, and watched as the other guests came in. The best seats filled up first, the places of honor.
So Jesus said this:

“When someone invites you to a wedding feast, do not take the place of honor, for a person more distinguished than you may have been invited. If so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, ‘Give this person your seat.’ Then, humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up to a better place.’ Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted” (Luke 14:8-11).

Serving others takes a certain amount of humility. A certain level of sacrifice. Those who serve with humility don't expect to get paid back on earth. They look forward to their reward in heaven. Listen to the very next words Jesus speaks:

Then Jesus said to his host, “When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or sisters, your relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous” (Luke 14:12-14).

Don't get me (or Jesus) wrong... there are rewards now for serving a meal for the homeless or packing a Christmas basket for a poor family. Even secular sociologists recognize that serving others gives us the warm fuzzies inside. It may even earn us some earthly applause, too. But Jesus says that if you work for those rewards, those are all the rewards you'll get (Matt 6:1-4). Instead, let's clean the kitchen at Grace House or coach basketball teams at YFC because we believe in the resurrection of the righteous--because we believe in a God who rewards (Heb. 11:6).

Community group leaders know that it can be difficult to get group members to serve, for any reason. We rejoice if we get a majority of our group to show up for something as easy as stuffing envelopes at CompassCare. But perhaps this season, as the joy (and stress) of Christmas begins to fill our cultural air, we can communicate to our groups about serving a little bit differently than ususal. Let's find an opportunity, set a date, make a plan--and when we communicate the details to our groups, let's do it with a focus on the God who rewards.

Hebrews 11 is about men and women of faith, people who were "longing for a better country" (v.16), who were looking ahead to their reward (v.26). And Jesus is the ultimate example, who "for the joy set before him he endured the cross" (12:2).

Northridge, "let us spur one another on toward love and good deeds" (10:24). Instead of making a beeline for the best seats in the house, let's humble ourselves, and serve as people who are certain of eternal joy.

Jesus versus Justice

This brief video from David Whiting provides perspective on a bigger purpose when helping those in need.

"If we give them food and clean water, but don't help them stand before God one day, what have we really accomplished?"

Simple Service Can Have Deep Impact

This brief video may help to strengthen your resolve to find ways to serve as a community group.  Simple acts of service can help others in ways that go beyond the physical tasks you perform.

Spiritalk - Small Groups Service Projects from christservant2 on GodTube.

Make Serving Others Part of Doing Life Together

It's September, and everything important is back: school, community groups, football...

Community group leaders know that the first few meetings often set the tone for group for the rest of the trimester, and even for the rest of the year. This fall the Northridge Serves Team is challenging every community group to make serving another part of the regular fabric of their group. If not the first week, at least within the first three weeks of group talk to your group about where you are planning to serve together this fall. Settle on an organization that your group wants to partner with, and get a date on the calendar.

One of the best and easiest ways to get involved with our partner agencies is to set up a tour with your group. It's a great way to expose your group members to some of the awesome work that God is doing in our city through ministries that are meeting the real physical needs of the least among us while holding tightly to the Gospel. Scheduling a simple tour this fall will make it even easier to serve as a group in a more active way in the winter and spring.

And after you serve together, you can throw in some football.

Helping with Landscaping

The Falzone group got together to serve the Holmes Rd School by helping them with landscaping.

If you don't remember, Holmes Rd. is the school our Greece Campus partnered with for Advent Conspiracy. What a great and easy way to extend our partnership beyond December.

As always, Community Groups, thanks for serving!

Deeper Impact

The Northridge Serves partners love volunteers who can commit regular hours every week or month. But your schedule is crazy. And trying to get your group together just for a regular meeting is hard enough! You and your group want to have a deeper impact through serving, but it seems impossible to contribute enough time to make a life-changing impact.

Here's a method we've found some groups using very effectively:
Instead of serving as a huge group, break yourselves up and spread your service out over an entire quarter or year. Each week or month, send two of three of your group members to serve together. For the agency's perspective, they're getting 2 or 3 consistent volunteers, but each of your group members will only serve once or twice a quarter. Not only is this a great way to serve, but it provides an opportunity for a couple members of your group to spend additional time together building relationships through shared experiences.

Summer is a great time to start thinking about this, so you can hit the ground running with your group in the fall. Pick an organization and a specific weekly or monthly serving opportunity, perhaps something like stocking shelves at the Mission: Share food pantry. On the first or second week of group, pass out a calendar or list of dates, and have everyone sign up for one or two. Tada!

Steps to Start Serving

Northridge Serves wants to make it as easy as possible for you and your community group to start serving "the least of these" in and around Rochester. Here's a quick step-by-step guide for groups to get started.

1. Designate a service coordinator: It's likely that someone in your community group has experience serving, or has a strong passion to serve.
2. Look at northridgeserves.com: Browse through our partner organizations and opportunities to get involved. These are organizations that Northridge has vetted, so you don't have to wonder if they're legitimate.
3. Talk to your Campus Coordinator: The Northridge Serves Team has coordinators at each campus to help you connect with an opportunity to serve. They are familiar with our partners and relevant opportunities, to help you find the perfect fit for your group. Email us...we'll be sure your message gets to the right place.
1. Irondequoit: Joel Witwer, Matt & Belinda Sones
2. Greece: Joel & Carina Sawyer
3. Webster: Debbie Hall
4. Seek Group Input: If you're not sure which opportunity would be best, enact democracy. Bring a few options to your group, and let them weigh in.
5. Decide: Sometimes this is the hardest part. Make the final decision.
6. Let us know:
1. Give us a heads up that you're planning to serve.
2. After you've served, tell us how it went. We're always looking for feedback to improve our relationships with our service partners.
3. With permission, take pictures while you're serving, and share them!