Here is what a Love [Your City] event looks like:

Click here to contact us about getting involved!

Friday evening – kick-off
Gathering the participating churches for a time of worship, prayer, and a reminder about why we’re doing this! (and to have fun together – getting creative!)

Saturday – around 10:30am to 12:30 – Kindness Explosion
Churches sponsoring their own Servant Evangelism projects all over the city.

Saturday evening – worship celebration
Gathering the churches again – coming together after serving together, to worship together!

Prayer
Worship
Servant Evangelism
Unity

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PRAYER

Sometimes we do before we pray. While God has grace for that and is faithful to work in spite of us, prayer definitely needs to be the #1 priority!

Though the focus of this event is servant evangelism and worship, prayer needs to be at the heart of it from the beginning, or even before the beginning. At around the same time we started planning our first Love Abbotsford event, a weekly interdenominational prayer meeting started – every Thursday at 5:30am! The timing of these two things seemed to be God reminding us that prayer needed to cover everything we do.

Things to pray for:

1. Is Love [Your City] something that should take place in your city?
   
   While we think everyone should be doing a Love [Your City] event, it obviously needs to be God’s idea first! Pray for His green light before you do anything.
    
2. Is God calling you to “run with this thing”?
   
   You may be the person to head things up, or there may be someone else in your community that God has prepared to lead this, with a team of course! It’s so important to walk humbly in this, but with confidence if you’ve been affirmed to take the lead. Pray that God gives confirmation to the one He’s chosen, and to the team He’s raising up to make it happen.
    
3. Is corporate prayer happening among churches in your city?
    
4. If it is, great! Bring this idea to the group (hopefully “groups”) for confirmation of whether the time is right or not. If corporate prayer isn’t happening, that might be what needs to happen first, or God may want to use this event to raise up prayer groups as you go.

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WORSHIP

The Love Your City event is powerful because it is a practical expression of Jesus’ response to the question, “What is the greatest commandment?” He didn’t answer with one commandment, but with two: to love God with everything, and to love people.

Getting together with the sole purpose to worship is awesome. But something special seems to happen when we serve together through practical expressions of love towards the people of our city who desperately need God, and worship together.

(Here's info a recording that came out of one of the first Love Abbotsford worship celebrations. You don't have to go all out with a CD project, but it's just an idea you may consider sometime...)

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SERVANT EVANGELISM

What is it?

When someone asks us “Why are you doing this?” our response is, “We just want to show you God’s love in a practical way.” That’s all it is – doing simple acts of kindness to show God’s love with no strings attached. In the case of a Love Your City event, it is groups of Christians from many churches meeting together on a Saturday morning to do a free carwash, hand out free cokes, pick up garbage, clean restrooms of small businesses, give out free hot dogs, or visit the sick at hospitals and senior’s homes, etc. Along with the free gift or service, they hand out a business size card that says: “We hope this small gift brings some light into your day. It’s a simple way of saying that God loves you – no strings attached. Let us know if we can be of more assistance.” On the back of the card is the participating church’s name, phone number, etc.

Find more great resources for servant evangelism from our friends at www.servantevangelism.com, and in our resources section (login required for some materials).

Picture this – a kindness explosion!
Imagine someone driving down a street in your city on a Saturday morning and this happens – they receive a free Coke from Christians handing out free drinks at a couple of intersections, they get their car washed by more Christians conducting free car-washes throughout the city, they get a free hot dog and coke downtown, and along the way they see folks picking up garbage wearing the same white T-shirts with a big red heart on the back. All just to show God’s love – no strings attached. What would their view of Christians be? What would their view of God be?

The idea is to saturate a community with God’s love – expressed by many practical acts of kindness – with a massive co-ordinated explosion of kindness that results in literally thousands of lives being touched.

Servant Evangelism is more than just doing nice things for people. It is expressing God’s love in practical ways, either by meeting a need through a small gift or by a humble act of service. As hearts are touched, barriers are broken down and bridges for receiving the good news are established. The fact that you are doing this together, representing many churches of the city, can speak powerfully into people’s lives.

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UNITY

Before we did our first Love Abbotsford event, God was already working among the pastors and churches of our city, drawing us together in different ways, and showing the need to love, encourage and support each other. But many will also say that Love Abbotsford is a tool that God is using to express greater unity in our city. We can all agree that we need to love our neighbour in practical ways. While a lot of the “results” are unknown as we don’t always see all the lasting effects that servant evangelism has on people in our city, one of the immediate results we do see is the powerful expression of unity, through serving together and then worshipping together.

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