November 6, 2000
Car wash leaves clean & shiny witness
___By Dan Martin
___Texas Baptist Communications
___PORTLAND--About 60 people--some of them not even church members--showed up from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, Oct. 28, to help Oak Ridge Baptist Church build bridges to its community by cleaning cars.
___Plan A was that the church would provide a "ladies only" oil change service, butorganizer Mike McDowell said logistical problems moved things to Plan B, which included washing and detailing automobiles for all comers.
AS PART of Celebrate Corpus Chisti, Oak Ridge Church in Portland, conducted a car wash.
___"We already had arranged for the oil, so we gave everybody whose car we washed six quarts for their next oil change," he said. "That will help them that much."
___The Oak Ridge event in Portland, across Nueces Bay from Corpus Christi, was part of a series of events in the region aimed at bringing the gospel and the good times to the community before and during the annual session of the Baptist General Convention of Texas, Oct. 30-31 in Bayfront Convention Center in Corpus Christi.
___The church was "looking for something that would benefit residents of our community, and we came up with this," McDowell said.
___Pastor Mark Miller paused in his soapy work of washing a minivan to explain that he sees such efforts as "bridge-building events which will help make the church better known."
___The congregation of about 200 members advertised the event with a mailer to 10,000 residents in the Corpus Christi Caller-Times. It also advertised on local-cable access channel.
___In addition to advertising the free car wash, the mailer promoted an emphasis in the church on "How God meets your deepest needs."
___Miller's sermon series will emphasize how people can find the hope they need--healing hidden wounds, living joyfully, finding the path to personal peace and how to live when circumstances are difficult.
___While people were waiting for their cars to be washed, they were invited into the church's fellowship hall for conversation, coffee and muffins.
___"One of the first people to come got to talking with some of our women, and she made a commitment to come to the ladies' Bible study," McDowell said.
___One of the gratifying aspects of the event was that about 60 church members showed up to help. "We emphasized that nobody can do everything, but everybody can do something," Miller said.
___Two volunteers who worked hard at car washing were a couple of men stationed at the nearby naval air station. Neither Brandon Hartwell nor Brian Saulmon is a member of the church, but both like the fellowship and came to help however they could.
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