Super Bowl Party @ 33rd Street
Every Sunday night (7pm-9pm), Summit @ 33rd Street’s team has the privilege to go into Orange County Jail’s Horizon 4D dorm to lead the inmates there in worship. The lively singing & praise by the men would lift anyone’s heart! Every Tuesday night we also lead them through Summit’s reGROUP curriculum to help them discover how God can restore their hurts, habits, and hang-ups. This has given the Summit @ 33rd Street team the opportunity to personally get to know many of the inmates and encourage them to follow Christ! Because the jail has strict rules about visitation, we do not get opportunities to visit outside of these meeting times, unless they are approved and do not interfere with other programs going on there.
So we were very blessed a few weeks ago when Good News Jail Ministries (the ministry we partner with that serves them men in Horizon 4D) and the Orange County Jail agreed to let us move the worship service to the early afternoon so the worship service would not interfere with the Super Bowl game that night. What was more amazing is that they agreed to let some of our team come back to Horizon 4D that night to minister to the men and watch the first half of the Super Bowl game with them. We were really getting to know some of the men there so we were very excited to be able to go back and hang out with them!
Just a week earlier, Rene Vazquez, the Campus Minister for Summit at 33rd Street., spoke to the team and inmates at Horizon 4D about how Christ taught us to humbly serve each other out of love, by giving and receiving — and that lesson was remembered. When we came back that night, we were greeted by a group of inmates that were starting to become our friends. They told us that they were honored that we left our family & friends to be with them that night, so they wanted to serve us. They arranged special seating for us and used what little they had to buy some snack food from their commissary for us. Kyle Cox, Marco Randazzo, and Scott Pausal, who lead Summit’s worship band at 33rd Street, all remembered Rene’s teaching and realized by accepting the snack food from them, instead of refusing it, they were honoring our friends by accepting their gifts and validating the dignity that God has given them all.
They were all following Paul’s teaching in Philippians 2:3-5, which says, “Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others. In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus.” Thank You, Lord, for helping us recognize the great dignity we all have.
by Bill Behr
Category Campus Insights