In part 2 of our conversation with Lead Pastor Luke Uran, we talk about being an outwardly focused church, and the June plan for a full month of serving opportunities.

A few of the sermons from John’s gospel have mentioned stepping out in faith in different ways and serving people. Are there ways you’re seeing opportunities play out with our church family?

One of the things I’m always encouraged by is to hear stories of people who are serving with some of the Reach Rockford ministries we’re involved with. Stateline Youth for Christ or the Pregnancy Care Center or Carpenter’s Place or Carpenter’s Corner or Rockford Rescue Mission or Rock House Kids. The list goes on and on, with opportunities to serve and be involved in the community. But then there are also those who aren’t serving in those organizations, but who are serving in their neighborhoods, caring for their neighbors,  encouraging and lifting up other people who aren’t part of the First Free family, maybe who don’t even know the Lord. They go out of their way to encourage, support and care for them.

Those are things that, rightfully, we’re not always posting on social media or trying to gain attention from as individuals.  But the Lord sees it, the Lord celebrates it and he certainly is honored by it.

So it’s a matter of encouraging and celebrating that kind of service?

It’s about getting the church to understand that shift from thinking, church is what I come to, versus church is what I live out. I close every service with “You belong to Christ. Now go tell and show his love.”  That’s what that is. It’s living the church out throughout the week and then coming back celebrating, being recharged, refreshed and refueled, and then going back out telling and showing the love of God in the community and around the world.

What’s happening in June to keep this mindset front-and-center?

During June, one of the things we’re going to be doing with the congregation is putting together a 30-day calendar. Just a small challenge for our church family every day. Maybe it’s individuals, maybe it’s family units, couples, singles, maybe it’s Life Groups that want to do this together, or even Adult Communities. Maybe one day it’s buying flowers and randomly giving someone flowers, just saying, “I want to be an encouragement to you, want you to know that the Lord sees you, that he loves you.” Or maybe it’s inviting someone to come to a Sunday service with you. Maybe it’s going on a prayer walk throughout your neighborhood and praying for your neighbors. Maybe it’s cleaning up trash in your neighborhood. Or introducing yourself to a neighbor you’ve never met. I’m truly shocked by how many of us don’t actually know our neighbors by name. So it’s going across the street, knocking on your neighbor’s door and just saying, “Hey, we’ve never met before. Just want you to know who I am and introduce myself to you and get to meet you.”

So just small challenges like that. Some people may not know where to start. What does it look like to go tell and show the love of God here in my community and ultimately around the world?  Well, here are some small steps, some little challenges that all of us can do.

There’s encouragement and strength in that corporately sometimes. How do we take this from individual acts of service to a church-wide movement?

We really want to see some of those stories develop, and then talk about and celebrate those stories together. Here’s an example. A number of years ago, my mom started doing something the week of Christmas. She would buy a really nice bouquet of flowers, and then walk around the grocery store, or around the parking lot in the middle of a Minnesota winter, and give it to someone that she sensed needed it.

When my daughter, Amelia, was maybe 4 or 5, my mom brought her along for this. So Amelia pointed out a woman to my mom in the parking lot. My mom went up to her and said, “My granddaughter and I want to give you these flowers.” And the woman broke down in tears, sobbing in the parking lot because she had lost her husband and son within the past year. And it was a very difficult Christmas for her. We truly believe that the Holy Spirit led my mom and our daughter to give those flowers to this random stranger they’d never met.

Fast forward a few years. My wife, Jessi, and Amelia did it again this past year here in Rockford. They went to Meg’s on Alpine. And they handed these flowers to a woman. Jessi tells the story much better than I do. But she was expecting these fireworks to go off. You know, the same kind of story as before. And the woman just said she was just getting out of her house for a break. She had a kid who’s sick at home and a husband who just came home sick, too.

On the way home, Jessi had a moment where she was kind of like, “Oh, that was kind of a bust.” But then as she was still driving, the Lord just kind of spoke to her and said, Do you think I see or value this woman who just needs a break any less than the woman who years ago broke down in tears? I love her just as much as I love the other woman. And both needed this encouragement.

So, to hear stories of people who have the opportunity to reach out and truly love the Lord our God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength and literally love their neighbor as they love themselves. We have an opportunity as a church family to do just that.

Maybe it’s Scandinavian stoicism or something. It seems like people hesitate to share those stories because it feels like bragging. But it’s bragging on God, right? And then that can encourage a whole church family to take steps of faith like this.

The moment when you make yourself the hero of that story, that’s when it’s not pleasing to the Lord. But any time and every time you make Jesus the hero of the story, that is always an act of worship. Always.

And so for us to not share those stories, I think, can be displeasing and dishonoring to the Lord. Because throughout Scripture, what are we seeing? We’re seeing stories of God’s people and how God is working and moving among his people.

I read a really interesting piece recently by David French in the New York Times. He said most churches tend to visibly lean toward either “fear the world” or “love your neighbor.” Would you agree with that? And if yes, what do we do about that?

If we’re missing opportunities out of “fear the world,” yes, that’s a problem. In today’s culture, extremes are what gets the press, right? There’s really no middle ground. And so to truly navigate and understand that yeah, there is brokenness in the world, there is hurt, there is pain, there’s crime. All those things are real in the world. It’s tempting to react to the brokenness around us with fear and retreat. But the darker the world gets, the brighter the light of Christ shines within us and through to us. It’s an opportunity for us.

We want to be a church that acknowledges that brokenness, not with despair but with hope and with urgency. So we don’t just sit back. We’re not called to withdraw from the world, but to bear witness to Jesus within it. And part of that is equipping people to live faithfully without fear, remembering that we’re secure in Christ and that every hard moment in culture is also an open door for the gospel.

And as I’ve reminded the church several times, the world is desperate for hope. That’s why we see people clinging to things that only lead to death and don’t offer life. They continue to dig in deeper into that thing, only to find more brokenness, more despair, more death. But we have within us the key to life. We have hope through the resurrection of Christ. And yet, we’re tempted in those moments to shutter up and hide. We’re called to be a city on a hill, light and salt. We can’t lose our saltiness, and we can’t hide the light.

Read Part 1, about summer worship services and the current sermon series.