There’s a chapter in the book, Jesus Loves You, that I really struggled with: Jesus Loves the Religious. I could identify. It frustrates me when I see the church being something other than what the church was designed to be. In this chapter Craig Gross writes. “it is the few examples that can spoil the great intentions of many… If the goal is to ‘reach the world’, the world should not be repelled by what they see spoken about Jesus.” So true.

After reading this I thought it would be great to find out how a church with a strong service culture goes about mobilizing a grassroots community service mission. My friend Matthew told me that his church, Cross Point Community Church in Nashville does this beautifully. I had a chance to interview Ryan Bult, Director of Ministries at Cross Point, to find out how they do it. I hope their example is both a help and an inspiration to your church or small group.

NW: Tell me a little bit about the Cross Point community.

RB: Cross Point has three campuses in the Nashville area. We’ll be opening our fourth campus next year. What we believe is different about Cross Point is that we take building a faith community very seriously. We are all about loving God and loving people. At Cross Point, we know that Jesus said that serving is something you must do and that it’s not an option.

NW: How has service become such an important part of your culture?

RB: In building that culture, that message has to come from the top down, so when Pete Wilson, our senior pastor, started Cross Point seven years ago, he said that mission would be something that will always be important to our church. At Cross Point, ten percent of everything that is given goes directly to missions. It’s funding that we don’t rely on. We just started a “one percent more” campaign where we’ll be giving one percent more each year over the next ten years. Showing this example of giving sets a tone that this is something important that we’ll always do.

NW: Can you give me some examples of the type of outreach Cross Point does?

RB: One thing that is really important to us is our Serving Saturdays, where we gather three times a year on a Saturday to serve the community. We send out flyers and walk the streets and talk to people in the neighborhoods that we’ve decided to focus on, asking them to give us a call if they need anything. Hundreds of volunteers gather and go out to paint homes, do repairs, and help local businesses. Whatever needs are brought to us, we try to get done. Our hope is that we get out in the community and show our neighbors the love of Christ. It’s not about church recruitment, it’s about unconditional love and building relationships.

Another important thing is the Preston Taylor after school program. Preston Taylor is a community organization that we’ve been able to come alongside and send volunteers to offer tutoring, snacks, Bible study, and work on reading. We’re excited that we’re going to open an after school site on campus at Cross Point, so children will be coming here after school. Again, it’s about long-term relationships. We don’t stop at the after school program. We recruit volunteers to be lunch buddies and have lunch with these kids once a week at school to create a mentoring program, which is especially important considering the number of absent fathers we see. Hopefully we’ll be able to not only help these children with their literacy skills, but still be around to celebrate with them when they graduate and go to college.

We also work with Lighthouse Mission Ministries, which is a prison aftercare program located about three blocks away from our campus. Lighthouse operates sort of like a halfway house for men who are transitioning out of the corrections system. We have them all over once a month for Sunday service. We also have them over for meals, and we go over and join them for meals as well. This is also about building relationships. It’s cool to see those relationships form. The guys like listening to Pete, and many come back for Sunday service. Several have joined our membership. Many of these men were incarcerated for alcohol and drug offenses. When you suffer from alcohol or drug abuse, the focus is often on yourself, so it’s very cool to see these men build relationships with us and in turn want to go out and serve others. In fact, some of these guys have even started to go on mission trips with us.

We want the church to be the church. Even though someone may come from a difficult circumstance, they’re not a charity case. As different as we may seem, at our core we’re all alike.

NW: With a large membership, how do you motivate people to really get involved with service?

RB: We never want Cross Point to be just a place you go to on Sunday morning. We want everybody who attends to be actively involved in serving and actively involved in a small group. If you ask Pete, he’d tell you that missions and small groups are two pillars of our church and that they go hand in hand. We rely on our small groups and our small group leadership to carry this out into the community. For example, small groups lead the cause on our serving Saturdays. When community members respond to us that they have a need, we assign that need to a small group. What we don’t want is for people to serve just three times a year. So when a small group goes to one person’s house on the serving Saturday, the hope is that the small group is going to build a relationship with that person. While they’re there on that Saturday, we want them to start building that relationship and find out what other needs that person has. That gives them an opportunity to go back and continue to help that person or that family and create bonds with them that go beyond that one, church-sponsored Saturday event. I provide service opportunities, but we rely on our small group leadership to fill in the gaps.

We also use multimedia to motivate people. Don’t underestimate the power of multimedia to do this. It plays a huge role in telling a story. Matt Singleton, our creative director, is an amazing filmmaker, and he shoots video of all the things that we’ve done. We use that video and music and those images to connect with people and show them why we’re doing what we’re doing. When people see those films and hear those stories of transformed lives, they have an emotional connection. The stories tell them the “why,” and sometimes that’s what people need to get up and do it. When you couple those multimedia pieces with what’s being talked about on the stage, it really drives the point home. We also look for opportunities to have people who have volunteered in the community share their experience and talk about what serving did for them. When you combine the emotion of the multimedia, the communication of our vision from the platform, and the excitement from those who have volunteered, it becomes contagious.

Leave a comment with ways that your church or small group love your neighbors. We’d love to learn from your examples!

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