Our annual church picnic turned out to be a big hit in more ways than one.

We hold a picnic every year in June; we’ve been doing it for years. This year, however, there was a little hiccup to putting it on.

We normally get a permit to hold it in the park. That permit gives us control of the large stone BBQ pit and covered pavilion … oh ya, and access to the baseball diamond.

This year we couldn’t get the permit. Some other organization must have beat us to it.

Our options were to either just show up at a park, bring our own BBQ’s and have our picnic, or to hold it at our church. We have a large lawn behind the church with trees along the edges.

Well, we decided to go with the church lawn as the site of this year’s picnic. It was easy to get people to come since we hold it right after our service on Sunday.

But the downside was that we don’t have any of the features of a park, like a climbing centre for kids or a ball diamond. We don’t even have swings.

So we purchased a jump and slide castle for the little ones, and came up with several games we could play on the field.

The week before the picnic, I sensed God speak to me about inviting the people around the church, and giving out free hamburgers.

I told the congregation and everyone thought that was a great idea.

Since our church boarders on three streets and we are across from a shopping centre, there is a lot of vehicle and pedestrian traffic that goes by our church.

What we decided to do was put up signs along the road, that just said, “Free BBQ. Come on over.”

Not only did our congregation get to enjoy hamburgers, salads, cake and desserts, but so did many people from our neighbourhood.

Maybe what put a smile on my face more than anything else was seeing people in our congregation interacting with those who stopped by.

People weren’t shy to chat it up, and the fact that the food was free made them all the more curious to talk and ask questions.

Several moms came with their kids and, of course, the kids wanted to jump in the castle and play the games.

The one thing we didn’t have, though, was a petting zoo. … Apparently there were a few moms and kids who came because they had seen on Facebook that the church had a petting zoo.

That was unfortunate for the church around the corner. I guess we got some of their potential guests.

When it was all said and done, it was a great day. People were well fed, had fun, socialized and we made contact with a lot of people we might never have met.

Maybe next year we need to offer pony rides. Just kidding.

Here’s the thing: Sometimes in life you can get discouraged when Plan A doesn’t work out and you have to resort to Plan B or C. The thing is our Plan B might just be God’s Plan A all along and we didn’t know it. God can turn any plan into the right plan if we choose to listen to His direction.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: Have you had a Plan B that turned out to be Plan A? Leave your comments below.