In West Virginia this month, Greater Mount Zion Pentecostal Church threw its fourth annual Summerfest — a back-to-school giveaway that brought a whole community together. Backpacks, supplies, food, music, and neighbors standing shoulder to shoulder in a parking lot. It is the kind of small, ordinary good news that never makes the front page, and yet it is exactly the kind of thing the Kingdom of God is built out of.
Here in Ravenna, we know what the back-to-school stretch of August feels like. Store shelves picked over. Lists of supplies pinned to the fridge. Parents doing the math. Kids somewhere between excited and nervous. And a church, watching all of it, asking a simple question: what can we hand our neighbors right now that actually helps?
Faith walks out the door with them
There is a temptation to think of faith as something that happens inside a building on Sunday. But Scripture never lets us keep it there. Listen to how God tells His people to carry His words: "And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).
When thou walkest by the way. That is the school bus. That is the drive to practice. That is the kitchen table at 7am. God never intended faith to be sealed off from the parts of life where it gets messy and rushed. He intended it to be woven right into the ordinary walking-by-the-way of a family. A backpack, of all things, becomes a little parable: something you fill, and then send out into the world.
Why the giveaway matters more than the supplies
A pack of pencils will not change a child's life. But a child who learns that a church noticed him, prepared for him, and welcomed him without asking anything in return — that child is learning something true about God long before he has words for it. The Holy Spirit works through kindness that has no strings attached. A family that shows up skeptical and leaves cared for has just met the love of Christ in a language that needs no sermon.
I have spent years leading people, in the church and before that in business, and one thing holds true everywhere: people can tell the difference between a program and genuine care. A giveaway can be either. What makes an event like Summerfest holy is not the volume of supplies but the presence of the Spirit in the people handing them out — praying quietly over each child, believing God is at work in that neighborhood, expecting Him to move.
Preparing the ones we send
Every August we send children into rooms we cannot follow them into. We cannot sit beside them at the lunch table or stand with them in the hallway. That is a hard truth for any parent, and it can stir up more worry than we admit. But Scripture gives us the better response to worry, which is not control but committal — handing our children to God in prayer and then trusting the One who goes where we cannot.
That is part of why we gather. This Friday, August 14, at 7pm, we are holding a Prayer Night at Outpouring Worship Center, and I can think of no better thing to carry into that room than the names of our students and our teachers. Bring them. Say them out loud before the Lord. If you are a parent whose stomach knots up this time of year, come and lay that down among people who will pray with you and not just at you.
The God who sends prepared people
Jesus did not keep His disciples in a huddle. He filled them and sent them out. That is the rhythm of the whole Christian life — gathered to be filled, scattered to carry Him into ordinary places. A church loading backpacks is doing in miniature what God has always done with His people: preparing them, then sending them out ready.
So as the school year begins, take heart. The God who fed sparrows and clothed the fields has not forgotten your children, your worries, or your neighborhood. He is present, He is at work, and He delights in going with the ones we love into the very rooms we cannot enter.
Join us this Sunday at 10:30am — Outpouring Worship Center, Ravenna.