Our church meets in a rented high school cafetorium, averaging 120 in worship each week. During each of our two “seeker seasons” in spring and fall, we pour lots of energy into one major “outrageous outreach”–something unusual, fun, and aimed at reaching a subcommunity within our community.
This year we upped the octane level and cranked up our first ever Biker Sunday. We realized that most of us know someone or live near someone who rides a motorcycle, and several of us actually ride a bike either for pleasure or to save money on gas.
As opposed to a black tie and tails evening, this was a black leather and doo-rag afternoon. We got ready to rumble, and our people got really revved up for reaching those not yet convinced about the lordship of Jesus Christ.
After months of prayer and preparation, and almost 3,000 posters distributed to places where bikers would hang out, we set up the parking lot and waited. What sounded like thunder on the horizon turned out to be the first bikers arriving.
When the smoke cleared and the registration forms were tallied, we had 60 bikes, 70 guests, and a total of 215 people. We worshiped together, gawked at chrome at the afternoon People’s Choice Bike Show, and witnessed authentic believers having a noise-making good time.
After our guest speaker, a bike-riding, Messiah-serving rabbi, gave his testimony, one young lady from our own youth group pointed her life in Jesus’ direction.
The rewards from this single event were huge and would have been enough to keep us motivated for some time. But it became clear that we were being taught even more important, longer lasting lessons that would spill over into our “normal” ministries.
Training Yields
1. Work doesn’t feel like work when you’re having fun. Some rose well before dawn, and they worked hard all morning and much of the afternoon. But they’ll tell you that it didn’t feel like work. When the rewards are huge, you tend to forget all about the work part of work.
2. Unity happens when people tackle a challenging group effort. When the goal is bigger than any individual, or any single team, people draw together, put differences aside, solve problems, roll up their sleeves, and get the job done. This was the largest outreach event we’ve attempted, and we experienced a greater team effort than ever before.
3. Giving ourselves away feels great. When the first long line of bikers rumbled down Willis Road toward the parking lot, people literally began jumping up and down in celebration. When a young lady prayed with our response team after the morning service, angels began jumping up and down.
4. Reaching “foreign” subcultures isn’t that foreign. Once we began milling around talking with these biker types, we saw that they were just people types dressed in leather vests and chaps. People may look different, but they are still just people, and they aren’t that difficult to get to know.
5. Moving a lot of stuff is easy when everyone grabs one item. When the rain started toward the end of our musical praise time, it took only about ten minutes to relocate everybody inside.
6. Creativity opens ears and hearts. Some in our audience tuned up for a clear message of God’s grace because of the creative way in which it was shared.
These wonderfully transferable lessons will help us in our weekly ministries.
We trust God will help us reach other subcultures in our community on a weekly basis, as we learn to make work fun, unify around challenging group goals, give ourselves away in selfless service, reach slightly different people who are still just people, involve more people in multi-team efforts, and continue elevating the level of creativity in how we communicate his life-changing message of hope.
We look forward to more heavenly victories as people give their lives to Jesus.
Clark Cothern is pastor of Living Water Community Church, Ypsilanti, Michigan. He rides a Honda Shadow Spirit.
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