EVERETT — The people make the church, not the building.
Members of New Life Church in Everett set out to put that idea into action Sunday. They shut the doors at their normal house of worship and gathered instead at Everett Memorial Stadium. They prayed en masse —some 1,000 or more—then fanned out across town to work on community service projects.
“This is what the church should look like in public: A group of people who love and serve their community,” Lead Pastor Jim Romack said before the event.
New Life is part of the Foursquare family of Pentecostal churches. It was founded as Everett Foursquare Church in 1940. Members typically meet at their building on Everett’s Highland Drive, near Madison Street.
One Day is what New Life calls its community service blitz. They’ve been at it for years, as have other Foursquare churches. This was the first time New Life gathered to worship at the stadium. Romack, decked out in a baseball jersey, addressed his flock from the infield where the Everett AquaSox season would get under way a few days later.
Sunday’s 20 or so projects included weeding at schools and parks. Some churchgoers helped nonprofit agencies package food. Others stuffed infant care kits full of items such as diapers and shampoo. Children made hand-tied pillows for domestic violence shelters, while senior citizens wrote thank-you notes to police officers and firefighters.
Neil Kelly, of Snohomish, came off a 48-hour shift as a firefighter in south Snohomish County to oversee work building new vegetable gardens near the Everett Mall. Tenants in the Everett Housing Authority’s Pineview Homes will have the chance to use the 24 raised beds.
“Really, our goal at New Life is to help the community to show them that we love them and care about them,” Kelly said.
Work there started around 8:30 a.m. More than two dozen volunteers toiled in the sun, tearing out old, rotten lumber before hammering new beds into place. Soon, they would fill the planting boxes with a mix of donated soil and compost.
Another company delivered the dirt for free.
“This is an amazing gift,” said Mary Nicholson, a church member and retired landscape designer from Snohomish.
Her husband, Ernie Nicholson, said the work fits with New Life’s mission of putting faith into action every day.
“Our pastor teaches that church is just as much (about) Monday morning as it is Sunday,” he said.
A couple of miles away, about 55 people from New Life picked up litter and weeded at Everett’s Evergreen Middle School.
“We just want to beautify the school and make it a place people are proud to come to every day,” said Tammy Dowell of Everett, a former teacher at Evergreen. Her four children also have attended the school, including the youngest, Rachael, 12, who still goes there.
Robyn Carey, a church staff member volunteering at the school, said their work that day followed the Christian example set by their Savior.
“It’s our way of showing to the world that we’re the hands and feet of Jesus, because this is what Jesus would do,” Carey said.
Noah Haglund: 425-339-3465; nhaglund@heraldnet.com. Twitter: @NWhaglund.
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