Yet as full-circle-remarkable as that conversation was, the day brought a number of other moments worthy of mention today. Here are five:
1. The power of a team. I admit it: my eyes glaze over when people start talking logistics. I wanted to do the project but had little to no idea how to make it happen. Fortunately, our church’s business manager comes from a career in manufacturing process, and he marshaled all the resources together to make it happen. All I had to do was motivate people the week before and stand around on Sunday and look handsome in my red hat.
2. The power of our partners. Whether it was our friends at Stop Hunger Now, the members of the church’s Board of Directors and its Trustees team, or the parents and students of Good Shepherd’s scout troop #167, the partners on this project worked energetically and skillfully to pull it off. It seemed like every time I turned around, another of our church’s allies was stepping in to fill a gap.
3. The power of our guests. The women in the picture below came from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (isn’t that adjacent to the Arctic Circle?) in order to work with us. Said Nancy Reese of Channing, MI: “It was awesome, fun, precise, and well organized. Everyone was upbeat and happy and we made friends out of strangers. If I lived here this would be my church!” In addition, I received an email from a GS friend stating that he brought one of his childhood friends to the event — a man who is agnostic and had not stepped into a church building in 15 years. Well, you don’t have to be sure about God to be certain about hunger.
4. The power of a social media. The metrics for our Facebook and Twitter accounts increased exponentially on Sunday. Throughout the morning, I heard of people who learned about the project through our real time Facebook updates and decided on the spur of the moment to come to Good Shepherd and be part of what was happening.
5. The power of a goal. People really, really, really wanted us to hit 250,000 meals. And, as He seems to do with alarming regularity around here, God empowered us not only to reach that goal but to surpass it.
6. The power of pixels. Click this link for a mind-bending bird’s eye view of what the meal packaging looked like on Sunday morning.