How It All Began

If you have been a part of serving here at Blue Ridge you’ve probably heard of our serving values. These are a list of biblical principles that are core to how we operate as we serve one another. This is the start of a series of posts where we will share these values as well as the stories behind them...

This story begins with me meeting a group of people who had an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ. I grew up believing in God. But then I met these people and they definitely had something I did not have.

Long story short, I realized that I had believed in God my whole life, but I didn't belong to Him. So I surrendered my life to Christ and everything changed.

Before long, I was asked to serve in the children's ministry, checking in kids. The problem was, I was reading my Bible a lot and learning what it looked like to serve Jesus, but what I was seeing in Kids Community wasn’t matching up.

This was very confusing to me.

Some things happened and I entered into a leadership role very early on. (We know it’s not a great idea for a new Christ follower to be in leadership, but the elders stayed close and it all worked out.) So, there I was in a very small leadership role.

In all the jobs I've had outside of Blue Ridge, I've had leadership positions. So leadership itself was not scary to me. I could do that. But this was a God endeavor. I started thinking, "I don't know if I can do this." That made it very different than anything I had ever experienced before.

I got on my knees and said, "God I'm scared. I don't think I can do this."

As I was down on my knees, I realized, "God this is all Yours anyway. The whole place — Blue Ridge, Kids Community — it's Yours. You care more about it than I could ever dream of caring about it. And You do know what You're doing, so God, You lead Kids Community and I will follow as You lead."

The first thing I heard very clearly from God was about the importance of prayer.

Coming early to pray

At the time, Blue Ridge’s services were being held in a public middle school each week. We came very early in the morning, because there was much cleaning and setting up to do before we opened. Of course, we all prayed individually. But once we got there, we hit the ground running.

However, He was calling us to come and sit before Him before we started, before we even set up. So I needed to go to this little team and ask them to come in even earlier — while it was still dark outside. To my surprise, they said, "Yes."

They came in, but the problem was that we had our children with us. I had a 2-year-old I was holding, mainly trying to keep him quiet so others could pray. That just wasn't working out. I thought it would be very hard to get somebody to come in that early in the morning to take care of our children so we could pray.

Well, the first person I asked said, "Yes."

She came in to take care of our kids, and that was the beginning of what we now call our COPS program — Children of Parents Serving — where parents can place their children as they pray with their teams. It's a huge program now — because we believe prayer is the most important thing we do.

I have to tell you that when we did that, when we came before God while somebody else took care of our children, everything changed.

Within a couple of weeks, Kids Community doubled in size. People were coming, so many kids were coming. I remember cleaning out classrooms and buying carpet just so we could have enough room for the kids. They were coming and tons of people were flooding the ministry wanting to serve.

Back then, I thought, "Isn't that nice?" Now I know it was a miracle! People don’t usually flood children’s ministries to serve!

How we changed

It’s very difficult to describe how we changed during that time. Our understanding changed. Our hearts changed. God really did meet us at that little kids' table as we gathered around to pray on those early mornings.

He poured into us His perspective of what it meant to serve Him, of being His child serving Him. He taught us what was at stake and what a privilege it was to be a part of this.

Our prayers changed. Our prayers changed from things like praying for our husband's lost job to praying for our lost friend. It wasn't about us anymore.

That's nothing I did as a leader. I was there with them as He was pouring His perspective into us. And during that time I remember we heard a quote: People try church thinking they have tried God. And that really stilled me.

So we agreed. We didn't even know each other offline, just on Sunday morning, but we agreed to hold one another accountable to our attitudes on Sunday morning — to be able to take Him seriously in this. We did that and we do it to this day. We hold each other accountable for our attitudes.

When we did that — started taking God that seriously — we started getting stories. I believe that they came from His blessing on us for our obedience to Him.

Hear some of these first stories in my next post.