God gives us many opportunities to reach out with his love and all we need to do is take them! Part of what we do in the PEG group is to strive to live with an intentionally evangelistic mindset. We encourage each other to go through everyday activities and live our everyday lives as God given opportunities to reach out with the gospel. Do we fail at this task? Often! But evangelism is a requirement for Christians and the joy that comes from living out our God given potential to share Jesus is unmatched! AT PEG we have been focusing on both equipping individuals for sharing the gospel and for fostering a church family that loves and reaches out to their community.
Some of the events that we have done in PEG this last year have been specifically through a desire to reach out with God’s love. The Valentines Project 2010 was one of these events. We created fifteen gifts as a practical way for people in our church to show Christ’s love to those around us. In March another activity of love was opening up our church to show the movie Hoodwinked. We offered popcorn and pop and designed it as an event to build relationships with our community. In May a great basket was put together for the Emo Walley Classic Penny Table. In addition to being an act of service & love for our community, it was very encouraging to hear how much the person who put the basket together enjoyed doing it.
A couple more major events of the year included the Emo Fair Rest Station and the Wilderness Day. The Rest Station included a lot of Church members who did a lot of work to make this event a success. At some times, the booth’s function was a simple as providing water and rest to tired people. At other times it was a place where relationship building happened and discussions were started. The Wilderness Day was the other major event. All the people involved seemed to really enjoy the event and although it was a new event this year, it is one that we would love to host again.
Some of our events have more of an evangelistic focus that others, but all of them are events that we have prayed over and God has been involved it. It is a joy to reach out to, and build relationships with, our local community. PEG is a group that everybody in our church is a part of. “God is at work in the world, homes, around us- our job is to watch, listen, pray and engage where God is working.” (Pastor Kevin Vincent)
In addition, this year provided some changes with me taking over a bit of organizing the event planning as well as Carmella leading evangelism learning sessions and Debbie pushing us to pray more faithfully. Josh also led some Gospel learning sessions with Conrad leading the rest of them. Overall though, there were many, many faces of the church involved in PEG in one way or another. It is awesome to see people with a desire to reach out to their community in love and to share the gospel with them. PEG has had a good year and stretched many of us in new ways. God is good.
By Christina Goodman
