The morning of Saturday, February 7th was a beautiful morning! Perhaps you were out in Victory Park that morning as well. We were setting up for the February 8th Old-Fashioned Church Picnic the kick-off to the Capital Campaign Fund Drive.

I have seen pictures and heard stories about the church picnic, but I didn’t quite know what to expect when I arrived to help with the picnic preparations. I somewhat felt like I was getting ready for a wedding reception—there was talk of food preparations, canopy set-up, table moving, and chair arranging. Of course the picnic will have a water balloon toss and I have never personally been to a wedding with water balloons, but I can still be surprised!

The wonderful thing about the picnic preparation was the excitement. People were laughing and joking, planning and arranging, and coming with their own unique talent and vision. It was ministry in action!

There was one point in the picnic prep where we had to put up the awe-inspiring, colossal, circus replicating, king canopy. It was a tent! It was a gigantic tent with several poles, numerous connecting pieces, and a very large canvas roof. The slim to nil assembly instructions added to our feeling of discontentment. This tent was a challenge! One of the assemblers noted, “well we’ve been able to assemble the other canopies, so let’s try to do this one.” The tent lay in pieces all over the ground. We looked at each other with tentative expressions and began to wonder if we could succeed. We were called to the task, but were we up to it? Yes! It was now the time to raise that tent!

One by one we stepped up to the challenge and started saying—well I have this piece, what piece do you have… oh I think this piece can be used here, what do you think? When the giant job first grabbed our attention there were four of us trying to do the work. But soon many joined in, coming together, stepping in to help, lending a hand, offering a perspective, and keeping spirits high. Eventually there were 10-12 of us working on the giant task.

But then we discovered a snag in the challenge. There was one too many long connectors and one too few short connectors. What did we do with this challenge? The group came together and with creativity and intentional modifications made the tent work. As one large group we raised the tent top together and put it in place.

This is God’s call to us. We work together with intent. We are called to share Christ that all might live victoriously and we do this by working together in ministry. We all have our talents—some of us have the vision to plan, others to see the connecting pieces, some to instruct, and some to think creatively when there’s a snag in the plan. Now is the time for our energy, enthusiasm, faith, and teamwork to come together so that Christus Victor may spread God’s good news to our community and the world we live in today.