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Story | Othello Church of the Nazarene

Faith in Action Changed Our Whole Town

Free lawn mowing service to the community...

If you draw a big “X” over the state of Washington, right where the two lines intersect is Othello, a rural farming town of about 8,000. If you’d visited there before their Faith in Action service day Oct. 14, 2007, and then again afterwards, you couldn’t help but see the changes that happened during the community-wide Faith in Action Day. But those changes weren’t just visible ones.

“It totally changed our town,” said Tim Taff, associate pastor at Othello Church of the Nazarene. Tim and his senior pastor, Bob Luhn, first heard about Faith in Action back in the summer, and invited pastors from all the churches in the area to meet together and plan for the community-oriented service day. Seven pastors showed up and got to work. “Since there were so many of us in this small town, someone knew someone on the city council, the school board and major business owners. So we were able to choose projects fairly easily,” said Pastor Tim.

During the four weeks leading up to their service day, the seven churches used Faith in Action small group materials and sermons. They also held a community canned food drive, collecting 1,500 pounds of food for the local food bank.

Some 400 workers showed up to serve on Sunday morning, all sporting the same brightly colored t-shirts emblazoned with “Don’t Go to Church. Be the Church.” One church that had elected to hold service and then work afterwards, revised their t-shirts with magic markers to read, “Don’t JUST Go to Church. Be the Church.”

“Every volunteer list for every project was filled,” said Pastor Tim, who was in charge of the projects. “So people started making up their own projects. Several guys went door-to-door with lawnmowers, asking if they could mow lawns. The desire to help and to serve was definitely contagious!”

One team, armed with 40 gallons of yellow paint, painted curbs around town. “They literally painted the town,” Tim quipped. Another 50 people showed up at a boys’ ranch–a foster care facility–where they mowed and weeded a baseball diamond and performed various fix-it projects involving plumbing, electrical and carpentry. “We brought the facility out of mothballs,” said Pastor Tim.

Teams built wheelchair ramps at two private homes. Others finished a Habitat for Humanity home that had been in limbo for a year, painting the exterior and building a dormer over the front door to cover the porch. Still others mowed and trimmed around an elderly lady’s home and painted the exterior of her house.

Service projects were also planned for those who were not as mobile as others, Pastor Tim reported. One group made baby blankets that were then distributed to the local hospital and also to a mission in Tecate, Mexico. Others collected supplies for Operation Christmas Child, filling 150 boxes. Local kids wrote and colored notes to the 150 children who would receive the gifts.

The local food bank was thoroughly cleaned in preparation to receive the 1,500 pounds of donated foods. Volunteers even attacked loads of gravel that had been sitting for months, spreading it out over a quarter mile of road.

Lastly, the joint groups organized and hosted “Free-for-All”, a free yard sale. “At least 10 pick-up loads of items were donated,” said Tim. “We invited lower income families to come and take what they needed. At the end of the day, nothing was left.”

Afterward, the teams met at the local junior high school for a barbecue, testimony time and worship service. “One person said, ‘That’s the most spiritual experience I’ve ever had – watching all those pastors sing and pray together,’” said Pastor Tim. “Neighbors were greeting each other with ‘Oh, you go to church?’ It was wonderful to recognize each other, everyone wearing the same t-shirts, without any church boundaries. The walls came down. There were a lot of tears, a lot of spiritual lives touched,” he added. “Now, you can’t go anywhere in town without seeing the impact of our service day. And people are still talking about it, months later.”

What’s next for this bighearted group of Othello churches? “Pastors have told me, ‘No matter what you do, next time we’re in,’” said Pastor Tim. They already painted the inside of a senior center in January. And in April, they plan to hold another community-wide service day, concentrating on the needs of agricultural workers and doing some “extreme home makeovers.”

“This was truly a town-changing story,” concluded Pastor Tim.