Art and the Landrymat

Our Vineyard was located in the basement floor of a small shopping plaza and adjacent to our little space was a laundrymat and the owner's name was Art. Art was a man in his mid 50's and Art started coming around during our Sunday morning worship. he would stay in his laundry mat most of the time but he liked to listen to the music that we played on Sunday.

The Vineyard was very high on a program call servant evangelism at the time. Servant evangelism was all about showing God's love in a practical way. Some Vineyard's would serve hot dogs at turn pike exits or rake leaves for the elderly during the fall season. The ideas were endless and the non-religious aspect was very appealing. At our Vineyard we thought that we would start our servant evangelism by ministering to Art and honor the Lord's commandment to love your neighbor as yourself. Art had a very shabby looking sign for his laundrymat and we had a guy in our fellowship that made signs for a living. He made a sign for Art that was about 8 foot in length and about 3 feet wide and it was beautiful. We decided to give Art this sign after church one Sunday and so Ron, the signmaker and a few of us unveiled this new sign to Art.

Art was taken back by this. His head was bowed and he didn't know what to say. He mumbled something like, "nobody gives this stuff away". He wanted to know what we wanted for the sign. We told him that the sign was free and a blessing from God for his business. He started to shake a bit and got a bit teary eyed and looked at me and said, "Dave, I have to pay you for this". I confronted Art with this, "Art, you will rob all of us and yourself of God's blessing if you give us money for the sign." "You have to keep it!" He walked away very humbled by it all. Art was a man full of pride and not used to receiving anything feely. He put the sign up and it looked great and Art became a very close friend of our little Vineyard.

That was a good experience for all of us and got us to thinking about what else we could do in the community.

up next

"The Great Christmas Wrap"