People find redemption, rejection with Celebrate Jesus Mission

               Photo by Michael Wacht 

LADY LAKE — Dick Clewell, lay leader at Lady Lake United Methodist Church here, said he “wasn’t thrilled” about the prospect of his church being involved in last month’s Celebrate Jesus mission.

“I don’t like the idea of someone knocking on my door, selling their religion to me,” he said. “The thought of going into the neighborhood scared me a little bit. I was not up for that kind of exposure.”

What Clewell found in the community surrounding his church was overwhelming hurt and needs.

“The first night I was overwhelmed at the number of prayer requests,” he said. “Everybody out there is hurting so much. They need prayer, but they don’t know how to pray themselves.”

Clewell was part of the Leesburg District’s Celebrate Jesus Mission, a weeklong evangelistic effort that took place June 24-29.

Through a Celebrate Jesus Mission local churches decide how they will reach out to their community. They set their own goals, design campaigns and recruit members to participate. A visiting team of laity and clergy coordinated by Celebrate Jesus organizers helps members of the local church with their mission projects.

Clewell said his skepticism was not limited to his fear of talking to strangers about his faith. His church is involved in a building project, and he and other church members were worried about spending additional money on the mission.

He said he was also concerned about the church’s “block party” for the community on the last night of the mission. He said he didn’t want the party to turn into an all-you-can-eat affair because “we don’t have enough money…we can’t feed the world.”

But Clewell said the weeklong mission changed his mind about Celebrate Jesus. “If we only have two children come to the church, whatever we spend is worth it,” he said.

Clewell said church members had made a decision in the past to exclude children from the church. The Celebrate Jesus mission represented a change of heart. “Our primary focus is to start a young people’s Sunday school class,” he said. “We’re focusing on the young, but we’re not neglecting the old.”

The Rev. Matt Wallis, pastor of the Leesburg District’s Altoona and Paisley United Methodist churches and pastor of the visiting team at Lady Lake, saw how the change at the Lady Lake church was received in the community.

“I talked to one woman who told me ‘Twenty years ago, when I was eight, the church asked my parents to leave because they didn’t want children in the church,’ ” Wallis said. “She seemed pretty excited that that was different.”

Youth experience rejection while serving

While the change of heart in Lady Lake received a warm reception, an effort to serve people in Eustis met some resistance.

A team of youth from Muncie, Ind., worked with members of First United Methodist Church, Eustis, to give away free bottles of water to people in front of the local K-Mart store.

Despite temperatures in the 90s, fewer than half the people the youth approached accepted the cold water. One man told Matt Helton, a member of the visiting team, he would accept the water “if you’ll put some vodka in it.”

Visiting team member Nikki Wright said she expected the rejection. “We’re teenagers giving out stuff,” she said. “It looks suspicious.”

Wright said the rejection didn’t hurt her. “It makes me feel bad for others,” she said. “Our peers give us a bad reputation, and people are judging us.”

Peter Gill, a member of the Eustis church youth group, said he and the other youth were “doing our part to change the reputation.” He said the rejection was “discouraging, but we get over it.”

Helton said he didn’t take the rejection too personally, because he was just being a servant of Jesus. “I feel kind of low because people won’t take the Lord’s water, but we’re just serving,” he said. “The rejection, it’s okay. I think one day people will find the Lord.”

Israeli sees Celebrate Jesus healing the church

Rubén Barrett, a member of Lord of the Harvest Ministry from Jerusalem, Israel, was part of the visiting team at First United Methodist Church, Eustis. He said he had heard about Celebrate Jesus and was interested in seeing it firsthand.

He said his experience visiting Eustis homes and businesses gave him an opportunity to “see what the community thinks of the church.”

“The church has become a business,” he said. “People look at the church like businesses.”

Barrett said God is giving a new spirit to the church through efforts like Celebrate Jesus. “God wants to restore the church as a place of healing…and unconditional love,” he said. “We see a vision of what God is doing here.”

Barrett’s experience “has been very positive. The people we’ve met are open and honest,” he said. “You find a lot of people who are backslid, not in church and in trouble. And people don’t normally share their problems with you.”

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