The inaugural national Faith in Action Sunday was held on October 14th, the culmination of a four-week church-wide campaign. Regular worship services were cancelled that day; the congregations, in turn, engaged in service projects in, and with, the community.
The Faith in Action campaign is a partnership between Christian humanitarian organization World Vision, Christian publisher Zondervan, and Outreach Inc., a provider of church communication resources.
The campaign grew out of a Faith in Action Study Bible that World Vision and Zondervan had designed, aimed at highlighting Scripture passages that elevated service and compassion for the less fortunate. Over the last two years, Outreach joined the partnership to establish an outlet for churches to embody the teachings and take action through a Faith in Action Campaign Kit.
More specifically, the Faith in Action campaign is broken down into 28 daily devotionals, four weeks of small groups, four sermons and services and one cancelled worship service replaced by a day of community service, followed by an evening celebration.
Although the national observance was held last month, churches are at their own discretion when they want to take part in the four-week outreach and beyond.
Steve Haas, vice president of World Vision, says, the main premise behind Faith in Action is to ask individual churches to mobilize and "be the church" by practicing their faith in a way that uniquely serves their immediate community.
"James, I think, said it so well in the first chapter in which he said, don't just be hearers of the Word. Do what it says. There's over two thousand verses that talk about the under-resourced and the poor. It talked about people in need. And that is how we express our faith -- by doing those things that God called us to do."
Haas said, his hope is that churches will unite and show their community a true "servant's heart."
"It's a church-based program that helps the church realize just how powerful is their ministry when they begin to look outward into their community. It's a four-week program in which,on the final Sunday, they actually cancel church services. And instead of worshipping inside the building, they actually worship through service, to those around them.
Outreach and Zondervan have come alongside, realizing that there's something the church needs. They not only need to be worshipping in the pew, but they need to be worshipping outside the church as well."
Haas noted that a number of churches have celebrations on Sunday night after doing their community service project.
"Many of the churches say, the level of excitement in the community literally just lifts the roof off. It's the level of excitement that we're hearing from church leaders across the country who have engaged their congregations in this process of looking outward into the community that is the most exciting. Churches that are coming alive as they put obedience at the forefront of the church agenda," Haas said.
Dean Sinclair, director of Church Engagement at Zondervan, said, "A church that puts its faith into action focuses not on themselves, but on Christ's teaching and His divine example of compassion. Our hope is that churches across the country will unite and show their community a true servant's heart."
Lynn Marian, a spokesman for Outreach, Inc., told the Christian Post that Faith in Action is "worship" in a different way.
"This campaign has been transformational. It has taken people who have just been sitting in pews for years to help them understand this is really what church is about. One of the most integral parts of Faith in Action is that those objectives of serving and meeting needs and sharing the love of Jesus are intricately woven together in this particular campaign.
It's up to us individual Christians to know when and where to preach the Gospel with words and when to preach it with action," Marian said.
The community service projects are varied.
At Christ the King Church in Vestal, New York, there was a contingent called Chainsaws for Christ, which split and distributed firewood to elderly and disadvantaged households that heat with wood.
The church's pastor, Rev. Mark Ridley, noted, "The good Samaritan was willing to be interrupted to help people that he didn't even know; we're interrupting our time of worship to help others. I hope, as a congregation, we're crossing a line from just writing checks (to pay for others to help the needy) to actually coming face-to-face with people in need."
Grace Community Church of Wesley Beach, Florida, held a Faith in Action "Make a Difference Day" earlier this year. Congregants spread mulch over the local school grounds, painted picnic tables at a home for foster children, assembled AIDS caregiver kits and cleaned up yards for senior citizens.
Pastor Jeffrey Olsen quipped, "The Faith in Action campaign is aptly named because it takes faith that God will provide both the funds and the projects to act! And for us, well, we were literally living out Ephesians 2:10: ‘For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.'
We had only one month to prepare those ‘good works,' but what we discovered was that, at every step of the way, things were already lined up for us...and through it all we saw that it really was God's project–all we had to do was respond," said Olsen.
Dan Jacobs, family life Pastor at West Seattle Christian Church, liked the concept of canceling a Sunday service to perform community service work.
"It's totally unexpected. People don't expect us to be out on Sunday mornings. I like pushing people out of their comfort zone somewhat. It's almost a wake-up call.
Over the last few years, there's been a resurgence of identifying needs in the community; and really living out the idea that our faith calls us to love God, and secondly, to love our neighbors as ourselves. And service is an outflow of loving our neighbors.
We teach about how God values everybody. It's time to act like we believe what we're teaching," Jacobs said.
Some churches credit their growth, in part, to participating in the Faith in Action Campaign.
When Sanctuary Church in San Juan Capistrano, California, started with about 20 members, the congregation went to a local senior living home, and read aloud to residents, helped women apply their makeup, chatted in small groups and sang door-to-door.
The church has since grown to 126 members.
Pastor Jim Yelvington said, "We launched this church two weeks before entering the Faith in Action program, and service is now built into the very DNA of our church. Serving is now part of who we are."
Yelvington says, church members now visit the Brighton Gardens senior living home once a month.
"They enjoyed serving because it helped them understand that being a Christian is about helping others and doing things for others. It's all about others, not about us," Yelvington said.
At Mission Hills Church in San Marcos, California, nearly half of the congregation's 400 members went to the local high school, where they landscaped the grounds, made over the playground and painted several walls.
Pastor Carlos Sales said, a teacher from Foothills High School began attending Mission Hills church as a result. "She saw what we did and decided to come to church. A lot of parents and students were playing soccer in a nearby field and saw us working–they couldn't believe we would come and clean their school.
We want to have our people outwardly focused on serving the community," said Sales, who has seen the church grow to 14 hundred members.
The concept of canceling worship services to perform community service projects does have some critics.
David Fischler, assistant pastor for Church Planting at Faith Evangelical Presbyterian Church in Kingstowne, Virginia, wrote on his blog, "Canceling worship for the sake of these perfectly fine projects is, essentially a publicity stunt, so I guess it's no surprise that there are two media companies sponsoring it.
But whatever the reason for it, it's wrong, and it's a misplacement of priorities," adding that worship is the central purpose of the church.
In response, World Vision's Steve Haas said, "The purpose of foregoing a Sunday gathering at a local church in favor of that same fellowship ministering to their local community is not in any way intended to denigrate worship, the church or its mission."
Haas added, "Worship was never to be confined to a single time of a single day during the week, but a whole body experience of faithful obedience to a risen Christ."
Sponsors of the campaign, among other things, hope churches will make Faith in Action weekend an annual event, continue service ministries started through Faith in Action on an ongoing basis, and open doors to new outreach initiatives.
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