Dirty Laundry

Last night, the WALK, a main emphasis of our church's college ministry hosted the first WALK service on our church campus for the fall semester (last week the first WALK of the semester met on the World's Fair site in downtown Knoxville). To begin this semester, our College Pastor Tim Miller, is leading a series called Dirty Laundry, looking at things in our life that we try to ignore until we finally have to deal with them. To try to vividly attempt to help "change the way you view church" (a slogan our college ministry promotes to students), over 300 volunteers in our church had agreed to wash a bag of dirty laundry for a college student. For free. For a stranger. Just to help them.

Only 50 or so students actually brought bags to be washed. Some people may see that as a disappointment, as if the number of bags washed was somehow the measure of success or failure of the Dirty Laundry campaign. But I see Dirty Laundry as a huge success: over 300 people volunteered to help someone they didn't know, offering to help meet a need; two small groups and one bible fellowship class helped with processing the laundry from the students to the "washers" and then receiving the clean laundry back at the church; members of the church's disaster relief team set-up their laundry trailer and were prepared to wash laundry all night long if necessary and, while they weren't called into service, dozens of people toured the trailer and learned about this unique ministry; and 200 or so people showed up at church at 9:00 PM "ready and willing" to wash laundry but were able to go home and get to bed much earlier than they otherwise would have.

The best thing about Dirty Laundry: over 900 college students were worshipping together at the WALK last night.