Servolution

By Dino Rizzo

Over the past couple of decades a major shift has taken place that has gone unnoticed by many established congregations. I’ve never had a good word for this shift until today when I read Servolution by Dino Rizzo, pastor of The Healing Place. More and more church leaders are doing what Dino is doing -shifting their focus from building their church to serving their surrounding community and world in the name of Jesus. And guess what? When you focus on the lost, the least, the hurting, God will fill up your church, a lesson Dino shares in his book.  It was before us all the time ‘whenever you do it to the least of these, you have done it to me.”

Whereas mainline churches have been talking about doing social justice for a long time and avoiding evangelism, these new church leaders are learning how to merge the two.  And along with this shift the mantle of social justice has been passed from mainline to the emerging group of missional, kingdom minded churches.

Dino Rizzo has a lot in common with Steve Sojgren and Mathew Barnett, pastor of the Dream Center in Los Angeles, and now Rick Warren pastor of Saddleback. Steve was one of the first pastors to build a mega congregation around random acts of kindness which he called Servant Evangelism. The Dream Center sends out hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of food and medical supplies each month to the people of Los Angeles. Now Rick Warren has turned his attention to the AIDS epidemic.

But I want to say a good word for the book Servolution.  Just like Steve’s website, this book is chock full of helpful pointers on how to join the Servolution as well as dozens of examples of how to get started being a serving congregation.  Get the book. And if you can read it without a tear in your eye and joy in your heart something’s wrong. It’s that good.