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Youth from Louisville help with Heritage VBS

June 26, 2007|Randall Patrick

After a big dinner of barbecue chicken, sweet tea and ice cream, Josh McFarland, the youth pastor of Maple Grove Baptist Church in Louisville, said a quick prayer without asking the diners to remove their cowboy hats.

He asked a blessing on the families that the teens and their adult companions would be visiting in the Bellevue subdivision.

"God, reveal yourself to them through us," he said, that they might see Jesus' love for them through simple acts of kindness.

Then, to the group he ordered: "Load 'em up and move 'em out!"

Members of Heritage Baptist Church in Winchester then piled the kids into church vans, cars and pickups and headed into the neighborhood armed with squeegees.

It may have looked like a cattle drive, but the purpose of the mission project was to round up children for Heritage Baptist Church's vacation Bible school, which is going on this week at George Rogers Clark High School.

Members of Maple Grove were visiting Heritage to help with its vacation Bible school and door-to-door visits Monday night.

McFarland said he learned from the Boone's Creek Baptist Association that the new church, which meets Sunday mornings and Wednesday nights at the high school, wanted the help. He said Jesus "ministered to people's physical needs" before helping them with their spiritual needs, and the mission team wanted to use that model in its witness to others in the community.

The teens introduced themselves to the neighbors, offered to wash their car windows, take out their trash and do other work, and invited their children to vacation Bible school.

"They're a godsend," said Frank Johnson, senior deacon at Heritage Baptist, when asked about the youth from Maple Grove.

The vacation Bible school, "Avalanche Ranch," meets from 9 a.m. to noon this week at GRC and is for children from preschool age through fifth grade.

The churches had some 40 children attend Monday morning.

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