Serving on God’s S.W.A.T. Team earlier this year, Rachele Deininger, a Bremerton (Wash.) Church member, stumbled across the book, 101 Ways to Reach Out to Your Community by Steve Sjogren. Deininger shared the book with the Friday Night Live (FNL) team who had already been actively involved in creating a Friday evening program at the Bremerton Church, which provides a comfortable environment to invite unchurched friends to learn about Christ.
The FNL team had been trying to think of a way to reach beyond the church doors to the community, so they decided to devote a month to reading the book and to studying the Bible to discover how Christ reached out to His community while here on earth. This study led to the development of the community outreach arm of FNL, called S.W.A.T. (Serving With All Talents). The focus of S.W.A.T. is to show God’s love in a practical way to our community using servant evangelism.
Since it’s launch, S.W.A.T. has conducted seven outreach projects including: neighborhood yard clean-up, giving away quarters at Laundromats, giving away stamps and Payday candy bars on tax day, passing out water at the local Armed Forces Day parade, and handing out cold sodas along the Bremerton waterfront on the Fourth of July. So far this outreach method has allowed S.W.A.T. the opportunity to reach more than a thousand people in the city of Bremerton.
Just like God’s love, the goods or services given away are free and available to anyone willing to accept them. Attached to each give-away is a contact card bearing an appropriate greeting like, “You looked too thirsty to pass up. This is just a simple way of saying God loves you. No strings attached …” On the back, there is a map to the Bremerton Church with contact information and worship times.
To learn how you can start your own S.W.A.T. team, contact Rachele Deininger at mail@gofnl.com; (360) 377-5993 or (360) 434-0453.
Logan Everette demonstrates that people of any age can practice servant evangelism as he helps with a trash pick-up in downtown Bremerton.
Peter Braun and Dennis Bryan pass out cold sodas to community members setting up to watch the Fourth of July fireworks over Puget Sound Naval Shipyard.
