People have often asked what has helped grow the campus. There are obviously many factors that have worked together to bring about the growth we have seen, but for today I want to clue into one. SERVANT EVANGELISM. I believe the term was coined by Steve Sjogren and I have seen the concept really work in our area.

We try to do one about every 6-8 weeks as a way to presence Celebration in the community. We have done a variety of things from gift wrapping outreaches, to water bottle give-aways, etc. But July 4th we pulled off one of our boldest days of Simple Act of Christian Kindness Outreaches. We did 3 outreaches in one day. 2 parades and one Town Festival. At the parades we threw out candy and Celebration Water bottles. We gave out in excess of 1000 of each before 11am. The parades were awesome, about 20+ people helped out at each and we started around 8:30 and were done by 11am and had an opportunity to touch about 2000+ people with the love of Christ.

The town fair had about 15,000+ in attendance and we set up a Triple Booth this year. One area giving away washable tatoo’s, another area balloons and small token games for kids. The 3rd area was a small putting green where we gave away Pastor Stovall’s Message – The God of the Mulligan with a Celebration golf ball. We gave out 250 of those, some 800+ flyers, over 1000 baloons and kids toys.

The youth group even one upped it this year and worked the crowd reaching out to young people with a cool flyer.

I would highly recommend these types of events for any church seeking to grow their name and share the love of Christ in their community. People often seemed wowed by the love of Christ through something as simple as a free gift of water on a hot summer day.

A case in point 2 years ago we met a man named Scott on July 4th. At the time he was disconnected from church. This year he was the last one with us helping tear down the booth. He is on fire for God and reaching out to others around him. How awesome is that.

For full event pictures visit http://orangepark.celebration.org

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