We "Go to Church". At Walmart.

To paraphrase a famous movie quote: "being a house church means never having to say you're sorry" as in: "we're sorry to inform you that the church has left the premises and relocated to Walmart".  Yet, that is just what we did a couple weeks ago.  Specifically, we spent the normal Sunday morning American "worship hour" combing the aisles of Walmart in search of merchandise.  

Arms of Love Home received our 2009 Christmas gifts in February of 2010!

To be sure, we had breakfast first (as always!).  We also gathered for a time of singing and praise as is our usual fashion.  Afterwards, we piled into several vehicles and pointed them towards the nearest shopping center.  We were on a mission from God to buy gifts for the entire population of the Arms of Love children's home in Bohol, Philippines.  That's over 60 kids if you include staff kids (we did).  

In the checkout line...

Last year, we were not aware that it would take over two months for the boxes of Christmas gifts we sent to reach their destination.  After all; we're new at this stuff.  But we had photos of each young person and some ideas about what they would enjoy getting for Christmas.  We thought we were doing well to get stuff packed and to the shipper in early December but it didn't arrive until February.  This year, we were determined to get the proper head start.

Now, the thing about a house church - one of the things I love most - is that we do ministry together.  All kinds of ministry.  We lay hands upon one another and pray, from the youngest kids right on up to our most, um, mature adults.  We eat together.  Worship together in song.  Make decisions about spending, hold neighborhood festivals, swim, prayer walk the neighborhood -- everything!  To be sure, there are special breakout times for the teens and children, too but a lot of what we do we do as a family.  And so it was that, a couple weeks ago, we broke up into groups of kids and adults and began to clean out the Walmart.

Of course it takes a lot more than a group our size to "clean out" a Walmart, but we certainly gave the checker a run for his (our) money.  The result was that we got the lion's share of the shopping done on that Sunday morning and prepped, wrapped and boxed the next Sunday morning.  

Our church teaches men to shop.  Scary...

I love this about our house church.  We are the church at the house.  The church at the Walmart.  The church wherever we roll.  We read the Word, study it, discuss it, apply it and DO IT and that is really satisfying.  I love that our children and teens are being discipled in this kind of church milieu.  They are learning important lessons about The Faith in all of these various hands on, high-participatory experiences.  Waaaaay cool.  

Our host mom made these observations:

"I loved watching the teenage girls shopping.  Picking up each item and deciding on style, color, etc.  The boys cracked me up!  By “boys” I’m referring to a few teen boys and 2 grown men.  They were just throwing stuff in the cart and crossing the items off their list.  Not any different from how men shop for themselves.  Another group looked completely lost (2 men, of course) and whined to me “We don’t know how to do this.”  

"I loved hearing the report from my younger daughters (ages 11 and 7) who were on the team shopping for the younger girls how they picked out sweet baby dolls for the super young girls and my daughter, Danielle, excitedly showed me a cute Groovy Girl type doll for an older doll that we had found out had never received a doll before.  She picked out a darker skinned one with black hair.  She thought the girl would appreciate a doll who looked Filipino.  I’m sure she will!"

Shopping experts dish out good advice to novices....

So, next September, if you see a lot of noisy, crazy people running amok at your local Superstore, don't panic.  It just might be the members of Vineyard at Home prepping the next shipment to an Arms of Love children's home.  But let me give you one small piece of advice: don't get behind us in the checkout line.  We'll be awhile....

All done for this year.  Bye, bye!

See us at www.vineyardathome.com