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When people ask me what is the biggest lesson I've learned over the past year, I always talk about prevenient grace.
Prevenient grace may be an unfamiliar word to you, but it's a common word in our faith tradition to talk about the grace that goes before. The grace the Holy Spirit extends to people, before they make a commitment of faith. The grace that brings about good, truth, and love in places, maybe without even recognizing that God is the source of good, truth, and love. We believe that it is ever present and that it is a gift for everyone. That it calls to everyone. That it is at work always, in lives and communities throughout the world.
One of the beliefs we came into this adventure with, is that God is already at work in this community through the prevenient grace of the Holy Spirit. There is sometimes this misconception that when someone does missions work of any kind, at home or abroad, that "we are bringing Jesus to them". That we somehow own the monopoly on Jesus and that he is not present in that place until we show up.
That's completely not true.
We know that the Holy Spirit is moving in ways beyond our understanding. That when Jesus came to earth, he brought the kingdom of God to earth as well, and though it's not fully realized yet, it is still very present.
So, when we arrived to Hammond, we approached it with the idea that we would look for where the Holy Spirit was already at work in the community, and we would jump into that.
We had no idea what we were in for. Because while we could articulate what prevenient grace is, and what it might look like in a theoretical sense, I don't know if we would have given you concrete, astounding, almost miraculous examples of that until we dived into this adventure of Church planting.
When we first moved, there was a tremendous amount of work to be done. The yard needed to be cared for, the buildings needed some TLC, and we spent the first couple weeks we were in our house, working on putting everything together. Since I had shingles, we received a significant amount of help from family.
While they were out weeding and doing other lawn care one day, a couple of ladies stopped by to say hello. My mother in law came back in and said "You have some skeptics. They keep asking what's going to be different this time." So, we prayed, that our skeptics would not only lose their skepticism about us, but that they would become our biggest supporters, and they have!
One of the ladies who was unsure of who we are and what we were doing, has become one of our biggest advocates to the neighborhood. She vocally supports us, and offers her help whenever she is able.
Prevenient grace.
After our building got cleaned out enough to be usable, I came home one day after work, and Mac told me that some ladies had come by to ask if they could use a room in our church for Al-Anon meetings to take place. I met with them, talked with them, and it was a great fit for both of us. We didn't seek them out, they sought us out. Now, women are finding hope and healing, and our building is being used more than once a week.
Prevenient grace.
Prior to moving, I read that 2 out of 3 of the libraries in Hammond (a city of nearly 80,000) had closed. I knew that access to books is one of the big determining factors in school success, drop out rates, and subsequently, poverty. So I thought it would be amazing to install a Little Free Library on our property. After moving, I realized just how far away the remaining library was from our neighborhood. We had a substantial amount of books left in our building, and so we thought it was worth a shot to offer this to our neighborhood.
We didn't have the money for a while, but then I remembered that someone had gifted us some funds shortly after we moved. Using that gift, along with some mission trip funds, we were able to purchase a library and install it in front of our building.
There has been no end to the positive impact this has made. Neighbors have brought their own books to swap in and out since the first day. I've met multiple neighbors, and had many conversations with them at our little library. I've had several neighbors tell me how grateful they are that we put it in, how much it made their children's summer, and what an asset it has been to the neighborhood.
Prevenient grace.
This summer, we planned a Vacation Bible School. We had absolutely no idea how it would turn out, but we decided just to test it out. The first night we had 0 kids. We prayed, we passed out more flyers, and by night 4 we had 13!
Prevenient grace.
The kids felt so loved and cared for at VBS that many of them started coming to church services on Sunday, on their own! They get up, and walk to church, with little to no parent intervention. Some are so excited to participate in communion, and learning more about the grace of God that extends beyond prevenient grace to saving grace.
Prevenient grace.
At the beginning of the summer we put in a fire pit. It's sort of an out of the box thing to do in an urban neighborhood church yard, but we thought it might just be crazy enough to work.
A couple weekends ago, we had a bonfire with a church that partners with us, and now the kids who have been coming to our church got to be the hosts, and minister to others.
Neighbors walking by stopped by for a hot dog, a s'more, and conversation.
Prevenient grace.
The grace that goes before us, and that calls people is so evident here. The ways that God has brought people to us, the ways that God was already at work, and we were just able to jump in. We didn't set out thinking that many of these things would happen within our first year, and the few things we had thought of, have ended up being more successful than we ever could have planned.
God's grace is present in our little neighborhood in Hammond. The kingdom of God is alive and growing in Hammond, we just keep praying for the wisdom to see it, and the strength to hold on for the great ride. We didn't bring Jesus here, but we are so privileged to get to see him at work in the lives of our neighbors, and help sow more seeds of the kingdom here.
