An Ohio megachurch has taken an unorthodox approach to showing the love of God to its community — by pumping gas. The Liberty campus of Victory Christian Center celebrated its 10th anniversary by dishing out the free fuel to over 100 lucky motorists.
The Assemblies of God congregation, which has eight campuses across Ohio and Pennsylvania, spent over $3,200 to purchase the gas as a way of giving thanks to a community it has had the privilege of serving for the last decade. The initiative was led by Pastor Lock P. Beachum Jr., who teamed up with local police to coordinate a team of 30 committed church to pump some gas and bless the Youngstown area community.
Beachum said that it took his team just over an hour to fill up 112 cars with $30 of gas — 10 gallons for 10 years — each.
“Many of these folk were going to get gas anyways, they were gonna spend money, and so maybe that money will be diverted to doing something special for somebody else,” Beachum told WKBN-TV.
“I actually heard about a couple of people who cried. They were just so blown away of this act of kindness,” the pastor told The Christian Post. “Our church is in a distressed area, so [for] a number of folk just being in the situation of life that they are in, that [meant a lot]. It equated to 30 dollars.”
Despite the pastor and his team being determined to keep the whole operation under wraps, the word did eventually get out.
“All the people waiting in line were, I’m sure, calling all their friends and telling everybody they are getting free gas,” the pastor said.
But these kind volunteers didn’t stop at filling up fuel tanks — they also dished out free snacks and water to the drivers as they waited.
After the plan was hatched, a number of people felt led to donate to the cause. As a result, the congregation was able to bless even more people in the community with free gas.
“One of the folk that got the free gas, they said, ‘Thank you for the incredible blessing. I feel so blessed that I want to give some money to the ministry,'” Beachum said. “We took that money that they gave us to the ministry and we put it towards more gas. So we ended up servicing 112 cars rather than 100 cars that was planned.”
“We thought it would just be an incredible way of showing the love of Jesus that would be beyond some of these other acts that we have done.” Beacham said that he’s been thinking up these incredible minstry ideas for a number of years, and is excited that some of his vision has finally come to pass.
“I’ve been dreaming about doing stuff like this since I was a kid,” the pastor told WKBN. “I’m a former football player, never made it to the NFL, so I get to do something pretty special through the blessings of our community and the folk of our church.”
(H/T: The Christian Post)