Church cancels Sunday service to do acts of service

By Sue Nowicki
snowicki@modbee.com

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Crossroads Grace Community Church in Manteca will have a Sunday service next week. But it won't be inside the walls of the church.

Instead, the traditional worship service is canceled and church members are scheduled do be out doing acts of service in Modesto and Manteca.

"We're not going to go to church; we're going to be the church," said Ed Applegate, Crossroads' pastor of spiritual formation.

For the past 18 months, the church has had a monthly program of hands-on community service called "2nd Saturday." It averages 50 to 100 workers, Applegate said. The church also has several small groups of people that meet weekly for fellowship and that choose a work project three times a year.

But having a Sunday morning service project, he said, "was the best way to mobilize people. They already have set aside that time on a weekly basis to attend."

As of Wednesday, he said, 350 people in the church of 1,100 adults had signed up to serve.

"Jesus said, 'Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father, who is in heaven.' " Applegate said. "We're going to let our light shine, not so that (people) say Crossroads is a great church, but that they might say, 'Your God is a great God.'

"We've been building trust with the community. We want them to see that we care for them."

Many other area churches have held work days to help individuals, organizations and neighborhoods; this may be the first church, however, to cancel Sunday services to do so.

Planned projects include planting 250 trees along the Tidewater Bike Trail in Manteca.

"The city had enough money to buy the trees, but not enough to plant or maintain them," Applegate said. "We're going to do that."

There also will be volunteers at Second Harvest Food Bank, doing handyman projects for the elderly, painting fire hydrants, visiting people in rest homes, clearing weed-strewn lots in a mobile home park and cleaning up a stretch of the Tuolumne River.

Bee staff writer Sue Nowicki can be reached at 578-2012 or snowicki@modbee.com.