When I was a child, I loathed shopping trips to the grocery store with my mother. She would linger too long at the produce. She would read each label in the canned food aisle. She would hem and haw, and I would do gymnastics on the grocery cart.
The one redeeming quality of these grocery trips, however, was the promise of getting samples from vendors set up at the end of the aisles. It was there that my mother and I were introduced to more exotic food items than we were accustomed to consuming. From fancy mustard to pasta salad, and from linguine with pesto sauce to fruit roll-ups, I lived for the moment when someone in an apron in front of the bread aisle would offer me a bite-sized morsel of tasty, goodness.
What’s more, the samples frequently succeeded in getting my mother to place a new product in the cart and to add a new meal to her repertoire.
The science behind samples is sound. When given the chance to try something new, the likelihood that someone will have a good experience with it goes up ten-fold than if a consumer simply relied on its attractive marketing. The basic premise of offering samples goes something like this:
“Our product is so rich and so extraordinary that if people just try it they will be hooked!”
Thus, free samples continue to reign supreme in our grocery stores. There are risk-free trials for cosmetics and health gadgets. There are 7-day free periods for apps on our devices and the first few chapters of the New York Times bestseller are available for free on a digital platform. Samples, put simply, work.
Giving people the chance to experience something new firsthand is a much better proposition than trying to convince them of the superiority of one’s product with words.
The ‘Have Mercy Challenge’ that we introduced in worship this past Sunday is trying to tap in to this phenomenon. That is, we want you to experience a morsel of mercy-infused ministry to whet your appetite for bigger mission projects in the future.
As you may recall, the ‘Have Mercy Challenge’ offers the chance for you to participate with others to provide mercy or loving kindness to the people groups mentioned in the Bible and explicitly referenced by Jesus.
In the Old Testament, Zechariah 7:8 states that God’s people should show mercy and kindness to one another, and to not harm the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, or the poor. In other words, the prophet of ancient Israel wanted God’s Holy Nation to care for the most vulnerable among them.
In the New Testament, Jesus states that when others provide care for the hungry and thirsty, those who are poorly clothed, the stranger, the sick, and the imprisoned, they are actually doing it for him. Care for the ‘least of these’ becomes the qualification for entering the Kingdom of Heaven.
The ‘Have Mercy Challenge,’ therefore, invites you and your family to identify but one of these people groups to which you would be willing to provide one act of mercy in the coming weeks and months. In response to this invitation, the vast majority of our congregation identified one of the people groups on the bulletin insert we provided and placed it on the communion table as an offering to God. In the weeks to come, teams will emerge from your willingness to serve, and each team will be directed to imagine a specific way that you can show mercy to that group of people, whether you selected the orphan, the prisoner, the sick, or the others that God specifically identifies.
We are providing this ministry opportunity as a sample blessing that we will experience when we seek to be obedient to God’s command that we love kindness. And we are so confident that this experience will change your life, and the lives of those you serve, that we are offering this opportunity free of charge!
Supplies are limited and time is running out, so act now!
No, this mercy-infused ministry is not a product on aisle 4, and it is certainly no gimmick. Just the same, feel the urgency that God’s words elicit and sign up to serve sooner rather than later.