Preparing To Serve

This picture warms my heart as it captures the very heart and DNA of The Gathering.

We don't run our Soup Kitchen as an evangelistic outreach, and we put no conditions on who can or cannot receive soup, we serve all comers.

The reason for this is that we use our weekly Soup Kitchen as a way of thanking God for all He's done for us and as such we want to share those blessings with others. 

T Is For Thankful Thursdays

T is for Thankful Thursdays

I know it's Friday today, but sadly April hasn't been too cooperative with its alignment of days and letters.

Ever since we planted The Gathering we have encouraged the church to join in with our Thankful Thursdays in which we focus on giving thanks for all that God has done and is doing in our lives.

Rough Night

"Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes

and see how good God is" 

Psalm 34:8

Thursday was a nasty day weather wise, it was very cold and very wet, there had been 49mm of rain by 9am and it didn't ease off much for the rest of the day, and the snow on the mountains just added to the chill factor. All in all, not a great night to be sleeping out rough.

But that was the reality for a group of regulars at The Gathering's Soup Kitchen. It was a bit quieter than usual because of the weather, so we had time to chat with them. We've known some of them for a few years now and we knew a few of them were homeless, but I have to be honest I was shocked to hear that two of the smarter looking guys were also now homeless. I guess I was judging them on their appearance, they certainly didn't look homeless. Shame on me!

Sunset & Blessings

It was such a blessing to open The Gathering's Soup Kitchen again last night to serve our regulars and it was great to blessed with such a spectacular sunset just before we began serving.

What's really blessing me at the moment is our growing relationship with the local Neighbourhood Watch.

The Generosity Is Real!

Following on from yesterday's post I felt the need to salute the generous heroes (locally & abroad) who quietly give to make it possible for The Gathering, My Father's House, the Night Shelter and countless others to be able to reach out to the most vulnerable and provide them with food parcels, soup kitchens, sandwiches, food vouchers etc.

The generosity is real, as is the desire by many to help in whatever way they can to ensure that the most vulnerable are cared for, particularly in provision of the most basic human need of all.

Last Day Of Freedom

South Africa goes in to full lockdown at midnight tonight and it would be easy to rant and rave about the govt's ineptitude in their handling of the lockdown before it's even started, but it would be far more fitting on our last day of freedom to focus on The Gathering's last Soup Kitchen for at least three weeks.

Future Plans To Present Realities

When I was in the UK earlier this year I was really excited to talk about two future plans we had for The Gathering's weekly Soup Kitchen.

The first one was our Christmas Lunch for 120 of our regulars and the second was taking our soup up from 70lts to 100lts, but we were really going to need some miraculous blessings for these to happen.

Thankful Thursdays

Having launched The Gathering a few weeks ago we've wanted to spend time working on the DNA of church and what it means for us in our daily lives.

So last night we gathered for an amazing time of praise and worship and then we launched our Thankful Thursdays Challenge.

Ask for nothing, 
Give thanks for everything!