Demonstrating the Love of God in New Ways

An Interview with Pastor George Spangler of Turning Point Church

by Lance Finley, CGGC Executive Director

Since the very beginning, Turning Point Church (https://www.lesspew.com) has demonstrated a commitment to sharing the love of Christ with their friends and neighbors in the area around Mechanicsburg, PA. I sat down with their lead pastor, George Spangler, to learn more about how the church has lived out Christ’s call to love their neighbors.

Pastor George Spangler

George was quick to point out the theological roots of the congregation’s commitment to loving people well. Early in the life of the congregation, they drew a deep understanding of the nature of God’s love from the Apostle Peter’s sermon in Acts 2:14-39: God’s love for people, demonstrated through Jesus, was intentional— verse 23 states, “This man was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.” God’s love through Christ was uninitiated—in other words, humankind did nothing to provoke or initiate God’s love, but rather God was the initiator. It was the Father who acted, who initiated in order to demonstrate His love for humankind. Lastly, God’s love was unconditional— God sent Jesus to live and die for sinful humanity. There weren’t conditions on this love, but rather it was offered freely, without conditions.

George shares, “We understood that we’re to love others like God has loved us. If God’s love for us is intentional, uninitiated and unconditional, it just makes sense that if we’re to love like God, then we need to love others in ways that are intentional, uninitiated by them, and unconditional as well. We want to love others in a manner that reflects the nature of God’s love.”

As a result of this theological foundation about God’s love for humanity, Turning Point Church spent a lot of time in the early days asking, “What could we do to express God’s love to the people of our community?” Pastor George also shared that the book Guerilla Lovers: Changing the World With Revolutionary Compassion by Vince Antonucci helped to provide some of the initial ideas or inspirations for practical ways they could share God’s love with the people of their community.

One of the ways in which they have demonstrated God’s love in their community is through something you might describe as a “guerrilla love” breakfast or lunch. George explains that they would become aware of food service workers with specific needs: perhaps a single mom working as a waitress or someone else in the hospitality industry that was facing a difficult time. “We’d work with the management at the restaurant to make arrangements to eat a meal in this person’s section, and then we’d put out a call for folks to meet up for breakfast or lunch, clearly communicating one expectation: we’d like everyone joining us to come prepared to leave a tip of $20 or more on their individual meal. We’d have ten or fifteen people gather for a great meal and a time of fellowship and at the end of the meal, we’d get to bless our server with a card and a tip of several hundred dollars for waiting on our group. It was just a way to encourage someone and show them what God’s love is like.”

There were some pleasant outgrowths of these efforts. “We’d take nominations from our church body. People would become aware of a hospitality worker who was struggling to make ends meet and we’d work with their employer to set up a breakfast or lunch. The beautiful thing about it was that you didn’t have to go to Turning Point to be a part of this effort. I’m bi-vocational and I’d invite my coworkers along from my day job. People would invite their friends and neighbors to join us as well. Sometimes, we’d even have people who weren’t Christians join us at a guerrilla love breakfast or lunch. We’ve seen this catch on and grow beyond our organized efforts. We have folks who now mark their birthday or other special occasions by going out to lunch and leaving an extraordinarily large tip to share God’s love with their waitress or waiter.”

Over the years, the folks at Turning Point have found additional ways to demonstrate God’s love for the people of their community. One such way has been curtailed during the past two years of navigating the pandemic, but George hopes they’ll be able to pick up such efforts moving forward. The congregation recognized that there are many folks who are required to work over the holidays, particularly Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. As most congregations are accustomed, Turning Point would celebrate the birth of Jesus with special services on Christmas Eve. At the conclusion of the service, the people of Turning Point would be given containers with two dozen cookies with instructions to deliver those cookies to the many folks in the community who were working: hospital workers, nursing home attendants, the workers at the local Sheetz gas station, first responders and retail workers. As the body of Christ dispersed through out the community, they delivered these small gifts as an expression of God’s love to the people of their community. “God sees you. You are appreciated. We’re grateful for the important work you do and love you.” Many families over the years have shared that this small act of love had become a favorite family holiday memory: parents and children demonstrating God’s love to someone in a small way as a part of celebrating the birth of Christ.

In their early days, Turning Point established a good relationship with the local school district and the superintendent. They understood that there were many children in the district who received both breakfast and lunch at school because of their family economic situation. When it came to their attention that snow days could mean that some kids might not receive a nutritious meal since they weren’t able to go to school, the church found a way to help step in the gap. They began working with a nearby apartment complex to provide Snow Day Lunches on the days when school was cancelled because of inclement weather. When the pandemic started in 2020, they found even greater opportunity to help meet the needs of their neighborhood kids by helping provide lunches two days a week and working with the district to expand their home lunch program.

Turning Point has hosted a variety of community events, all designed to be simple demonstrations of God’s love for the people in their community. These range from block parties with food, games, petting zoos or public safety demonstrations to trunk or treat parties with school supply giveaways or hygiene supplies through the pandemic. Turning Point also operates a concession stand for the recreation park next door to their building and reinvests all the earnings back into the park. In 2022 they plan to use the earnings to provide picnic tables for the park.

One thing that became apparent in our conversation was the intentional work the folks at Turning Point have done to understand their community and love them well. For instance, Turning Point, like many congregations, hosts an Easter egg hunt for the community each spring. They host their Easter egg hunt and breakfast on Easter Sunday morning because they want to connect with the folks who don’t normally attend church on Easter Sunday! They’ve designed their experience to have a special area of accessibility for children with special needs. They also serve about 200 breakfasts that morning, but no ham or sausage is on the menu because they know their neighbors well (their area is home to a growing population of Somali and Arab Muslims who do not eat pork). George points out that their hotdogs are always all beef for the same reason. Love pays attention!

There are many other ways the church has worked to demonstrate love to the people that God has led them to over the years. When they learned that a 16-year-old girl had never had a birthday party, folks in the church hosted a party for her birthday with cake, balloons, gifts and music. When a single mom graduated from dental hygienist school, the church provided several outfits of scrubs to celebrate and help her prepare for her new career. The congregation has helped raise funds to provide families with reliable transportation. There have been many spontaneous opportunities to help meet needs with gas or groceries.

George relates one particularly creative approach to loving well. “We have a lady here at Turning Point who is from Cameroon, but most of her family still lives in Cameroon. She had wanted to visit family but the expense for the trip was prohibitive.

We realized that most of us don’t know much about this west African nation and so we hosted an event and invited her to give a presentation about the country and prepare some food from her homeland. At the end of the evening, we took up a love offering to support her effort to visit her family. It was a wonderful evening! A group of 50 of us got to learn about a place we didn’t know very well and experience a little bit of its culture and the love offering helped cover the expenses of her trip home to see her children and grandchildren.”

George offers that they regularly remind folks at Turning Point that “our church doesn’t exist for the folks who are here, we exist for the benefit of the people who aren’t here. Certainly, we care for one another, but we also care deeply about the people of our community.”

When we asked George to share some of what he’s learned from years of working to love others well, he offered several pertinent observations. “I’ve learned that if you do these kinds of things with the desired outcome that people will become a part of your congregation, you’ll be disappointed. We’ve seen a handful of people come to our church through these efforts over the years. If you’re doing this just to build attendance, you’re going to be disappointed!

“If you’re doing this because you want to share God’s love and generosity with the people of your community, there are incredible opportunities to grow in your discipleship in Jesus. We’ve seen lots of folks grow in their faith as they’ve learned to love like Jesus.

“If you want to see spiritual fruit in the lives of people, it takes relationship and relationships take time. You need consistency over time, not just onetime events.

“You have to disciple your people to love well. We have had to teach them that we’re not just giving hotdogs away, we’re here to show people that we love them and that we care for them. We are representing God’s love! If we’re not treating people with the patience and kindness of Jesus, then we’re not communicating the right thing. Sometimes we can be very dedicated and hardworking and allow disruptions to make us lose our focus of loving people well.

“The outcome that we’re looking for is that folks might walk away from their interaction with us and know that they are lovable. If we want to represent God and His love, then we need to love whoever shows up so that they get a taste of the love that God has for them. We’re representatives of His love. As much as we may love you, He loves you even more! That’s our goal, that through our actions, people might come to understand God’s love for them in a real way.”