Kingdom News, Outreach

Don’t overlook your own Jerusalem!

February 17, 2022

Description

In my conversation with Bill we talked about the power of worship evangelism, upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas events hosted by Because We Care, and a brief reminder not to overlook your own Jerusalem.

Transcript

Nathan 00:16
Welcome to another Faith Horizons Kingdom brief. These are short podcast between 5 and 10 minutes. The purpose of a kingdom brief is to share highlights from ongoing Kingdom activities and announce events in Kansas City. In my conversation with Bill, we talked about the Power of Worship evangelism, upcoming fall and Christmas events hosted by Because We Care, and a brief reminder not to forget your own Jerusalem. Here’s my conversation with Bill Otterness. So how do you see worship evangelism? How is it changing the way things are done?

Bill 00:52
The worship experience itself is intriguing to people. Because it moves them in a whole new way where they can just stand there and hear the music and, and slowly get pulled into it, and then they can actually participate in it. Whereas if you’re watching a show, whether it’s a dance show, or you know, Sights and Sound Theatre in Branson, which is amazing stuff, but you’re not really participating in it, they bring it around you, but you’re not participating in with like worship evangelism. You participate in that. And before you know it, it doesn’t it, it’s just a matter of the worship leader. Just making a statement of you know, this is how the Kingdom of God is if you would like to be a part of that come forward in the stage, and they’re there. They’re just they’re credible. Yeah. And I’ve seen that happen on several occasions. And so I think that more of that is going to happen, obviously, we’ve seen that happen with Shawn Floyd. And so I want to be a part of that. I want to I want to ride on that wave. Evangelism comes in a lot of different ways. It’s not so much somebody on a microphone preaching. It can come through worship, or I would just mentioned, come through worship music, it can come through worship, through prayer. We do a lot of that. When we’re prayer walking on Tuesday nights, we’re just walking and worshiping the Lord through our prayers. And through that we’ve been able to see a lot of people come to the Lord, we’ve seen a lot of people get physically healed. And we’re not doing anything special in the world’s eyes. Just in God’s eyes, we’re doing something very special for Him. We’re just walking through neighborhoods and praying. Another way to really worship Him is through compassion for the people in the community. So we have a few events of that nature. We’ve done some this year, we got some really big ones coming up this fall and winter.

Nathan 02:57
Like could you say compassion?

Bill 02:59
Yeah, you know, let’s help the needs of the community. And there’s another one coming up, which will be I believe, that’s November 20th. And that’ll be Because We Care event for the Thanksgiving season and looking to giveaway about 1000 turkeys and all the fixings to do an entire dinner, you know, so awesome. Yeah. Yeah. So we need a lot of help with getting those resources. You know, 1000 turkeys, you get some donated, and then you purchase the rest. But then purchasing them can be somewhat of a challenge, because where do you get 1000 turkeys without depleting someone’s supply? So it’s true, you almost

Nathan 03:44
have to work with, you have to work with work with organizations.

Bill 03:49
And so if anybody would like to chime in on that, that would be great. If you have a connection in that in that area, with the grocers, and then with the Christmas event coming up, and that’ll be December 18th will be Because We Care Christmas. Last year, we gave away 2000 toys. I remember that and pray for 600 vehicles. Yeah. I think it might have been more than 600. But pretty sure about about 600 vehicles come through there. Because some of them were carpooling. And there was yeah, there was about 2000 toys you’re giving away plus all the other a lot of other stuff that people could use, you know, hats, gloves and things like that for Christmas. So that’s those two ministries that I work with year round. I don’t jump on every project they do but these ones coming up in the fall are very critical outreaches for the community I believe.

Nathan 04:57
I know that ministries are contacting you specifically for help. What are they contacting you for? What type of things are coming towards you?

Bill 05:10
Very interesting one. I was contacted about helping to put together a parade. Oh. The funny thing about that was we were in a parade on Monday. We were in a parade on Monday that we partnered with Kansas City Police Department for their Faith In Blue week. That’s awesome. And so Genesis 1:1, we put the, the, what was the route that you guys ran? Well they ran it through Ruskin. Oh, ran it through. Yeah, they ran all the way through Ruskin and everything, because there was a beginning was at the bingo hall on Blue Ridge. And then we came back to that location and had a celebration with music and everything. And they had hot dogs. So that was all put together by KCPD. And, you know, South patrol, we have some great CIOs, which is our community interaction officers. So they put that together. We come back, we parked the truck. I get out of the truck, I get this phone call. And they’re like, Hey, I got this crazy idea. Do you have a minute? I want to run it past you? It’s like, sure. Yeah, I got a minute. And I said, but I just I said, uh, we got to be real quick, cause I just finished a parade. And I just parked the truck. Like, what do we mean, you just finished a parade? Well, I was just now in a parade. And we parked the truck. So um, we got to get organized, because we’re gonna have a little thing right now. And they’re like, hey, that’s crazy, because I’m calling you because I want to put together a parade. I want it to be a Christian parade where we have this stuff. And that’s exactly what we just did. One thing Julie and I started doing when we moved into the Ruskin area, we would get out on our front porch, and lit a fire in like a little fire pit thing. And put a table out on our front porch, put a bowl of candy right in the center of the table. And then just put Bibles and other different ministry tracks. And, and just material like that. CDs, maybe music CDs, or teaching CDs. In the bowl, or no, we’d put it all around the bowl or so a bowl is sitting in the center of the table, and we would light a fire. So everybody knows oh, these this family is open to having us come by. So we just sit there and you know, the World Series is on my take my television outside and watch the World Series on the porch. And, and and you know, around the fire. And people come up. And you know, they see the bowl of candy. But they always ask almost every time they ask about the Bibles. Are these free? Can we take these too? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. And then now, sometimes they yell back to the car that they’re with. And hey, they got free Bibles come grab one of these. And then they’ll get out of the car and come up and look around the table and just grab a bunch of the stuff that we have for them. And they take it with them. Yeah. And then I tell them sometimes, hey, don’t forget your candy.

Nathan 08:12
No, really, that’s really good. It’s really good.

Bill 08:15
It, it, we did it one year, the first year we did it. And we thought wow, this is amazing. Little outreach. And so we do that every this time of the year is real big with outreaches Yeah, whether they’re giving away socks and hats, or they’re engaging with the schools and doing some sort of ministry, you know, it’s just really been, it’s a really compacted time of the year for Christian outreach at every level. And I say this, because that means that the giving picks up, and you know, and you see that, you know, obviously everybody gets these, get these asked to help with you know, we need some finances for this or that and you know, it’s a lot of year end stuff going on. And I just want to keep that in, you know, people actually pray and give to some of these organizations that I mentioned. Because they-including Otterness Missions. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, where my wife and I are full time missionary so we live on monthly giving, and a lot of the stuff that we put together, it comes out of our own bank account. You know, we give a lot to the ministry that we do and to other people’s ministries, you know, unlike this the Because We Care the you know, looking for 1000 turkeys, a lot of that’s just going to get purchased so they’ll need money some of that I get donated but they’ll go buy the rest. And just, you know, just in general and what we do with the money that we take in is we usually use that to you know, after our rent paid and everything we’re giving it to these other ministries that help them with some of the stuff that they need. Okay, I just wanted to throw that out there for us and all the all the ministries out here locally in Kansas City. Don’t overlook your own Jerusalem and help give to them as well.