Good Neighbor Podcast: Auburn and Opelika
With her genuinely good heart and a wealth of experience behind her, Susannah works to connect local business and non-profit leaders to their neighbors. In a community like ours in which so many have invested their lives, there are fantastic stories all around us that motivate and inspire, often right next door. She hopes to share some of those here, on the Good Neighbor Podcast. Book an interview today at GNPAuburn.com
Good Neighbor Podcast: Auburn and Opelika
Ep.#84: The Way 2 Serve - Serving With Purpose In Auburn-Opelika
We explore how a simple yes grew into a citywide network that offers free home repairs, daily prayer, and ongoing discipleship while uniting local churches. Shane shares the five serving lanes, clears up common misconceptions, and invites listeners to match their time and gifts to real needs.
• mission to share the love of Jesus through practical service
• vision to unify and grow the local church body
• five serving paths: prayer, building, grow, preparation, give
• free home repairs for neighbors who cannot afford them
• saying yes to calling and seeing local need
• addressing misconceptions about cost and time commitment
• lessons from early obstacles and community loss
• everyday service beyond big project days
• simple ways to get involved and onboard
www.theway2serve.org
334-703-0746
Welcome, and with me is Jane Kiles with the Way to Serve Ministries in the Auburn Opalica area. How are you?
SPEAKER_00:Doing well, thank you.
SPEAKER_01:Well, tell me a little bit about the Way to Serve. I did look you up online. Looks like a really awesome ministry you've got there, but tell us about what you do.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so um at the Way to Serve, uh, we like to just share our mission and our vision first. So our mission is we share the love of Jesus in practical ways to build long-term relationships and point those in need to the way, which is Jesus. And then our vision is serving together to unify and grow the body of Christ. So in a nutshell, anytime someone in our local community wants to serve, we can connect them with an avenue to serve. In our name, actually, everything we do, we point people to the way, which is Jesus. So that's why that's that name is there. Um, but the two is in our name because we feel like uh most people are kind of geared or called to serve one or two ways. Either they're a projects person where they like to work out the details or or do do a project like a home repair project for someone, or they're a relational person. So they um we always say relational people could spend time with somebody and just lose time. So those are those two um what we would say categories, and then we just break those down into five areas of serving. Um the five areas that we have at the way to serve is prayer. Um, we always say if we're not praying about it, we're not doing it. So we have an active active prayer team that's praying all the time. Um, and then our building teams are the ones that's out going out and doing home repairs for needy people. Um, and and all the people that we help are folks that can't afford home repairs, and so everything we do is to get people safe and secure in their home. Um, and they're and and it doesn't cost a person a dime, doesn't cost anything. And then that um after the building projects, it leads into our grow part of the ministry where we focus on discipleship and we go out and do neighborhood Bible studies or we follow up with families and just try to get if they don't have a good community, then we try to get a good community around them and we partner with a local church to do that. So we have multiple churches that serve with us. Um then the last two categories we have the uh the way to prepare, the preparation team. So you can imagine uh all the prep work that goes into working on projects or um doing the the work of even helping a person rebuild their lives. So lots of prep work, behind the scenes work that goes into that. And then our last category is the give part of the ministry where people can partner financially and and all their funds that they give um stays right here locally in our community.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, that's good.
SPEAKER_00:That's so that's a a quick rundown.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. Well, tell me a little bit about you, Shane. How did you how did this uh come together? How did you make this uh ministry come to life?
SPEAKER_00:Sure, yeah. Well, um about 20, we always can figure it out with with our children's ages. So they're 23 and 22. And so when our first child, Victoria, was uh 16 months old, Ethan was born. And um about that time my wife and I, Brandy, were serving in the college ministry at our church, and we had gone on several mission trips, and uh and also I was working for the city of Opalika um in a position um doing code enforcement, so I was out in the community all the time, but when I would go on these mission trips, I just always felt like that was a calling that God had on my life, and so um I was praying about becoming a missionary. You know, did God want me to go do mission work? And um, and he led me to a verse in the Bible, um, Romans 12, 1, that says, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. And for me, that just meant to say yes. I'm a I'm a little ADD, and so as soon as something um is presented to me, I need to, God knows that I need to like jump on it real quick. So I I said yes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, me and my wife talked about being missionaries and honestly thought he was gonna send us to the other side of the world, and um, he told us to to meet needs right here locally, and and there's a lot of need on the local level, yes, yes, yeah. And actually at that time, I I did not see it. Um, I was around it all the time, but didn't see it. And then I prayed and asked God to um to let me see what he sees and break my heart for what breaks his. And literally, I quit being a point A to point B person and started seeing my surroundings. So um back then I just I I had in my career, I'd been kind of knocking on doors, giving people bad news. And so when I would see a need, I would just knock on a door and find out that there were people living in broken conditions, um, our neighbors right here in our community. And so we just started putting teams together to uh go out and meet those needs.
SPEAKER_01:Well, you've been doing this for a while now. So have you come across any misconceptions that people may have about uh your ministry or just you know, service ministries in general?
SPEAKER_00:Sure, yeah, yeah. I would say um a lot of families that we help, not all, but a lot of families we help could be in a bad spot, and so they are concerned that that this is going to cost them something that they can't afford, you know, that um we may just be trying to get some information from them and then charge them a fee that they can't pay. And so um we we always are very clear on this not costing them anything. Um, and then that gives us a great opportunity to go in and share the gospel that um our salvation did not cost us anything, but cost Jesus everything. So um so that's a misconception, and then um I think on uh on the serving side, a little bit of a misconception because the needs are so great. Um someone who has just a little bit of time, I think they feel like they can't serve. But but we have opportunities for people to serve whatever time they have. And so um we always say if you've you've got an hour, we can find you something to do that would be meaningful, or uh whatever time you have, you can serve. So I think that's another misconception is we just don't want, I think all of us that mean well, we don't want to um have some kind of commitment, you know, make some kind of commitment that we can't fulfill.
SPEAKER_01:Right. And along those lines, uh, you know, part of the reason why I do this uh podcast is to encourage people to, you know, go into business for themselves or follow uh their dreams or what however you want to say it. And it sounded sounds like you've done that. You follow you've followed a calling really here. So what uh and usually when you're doing that, you're gonna run across some obstacles or some hardships that kind of uh you know could could get in the way, but if you don't let it, it helps you grow. So have you had any kind of obstacles or hardships either personally or in the beginning of this ministry or even currently in your ministry that's made you stronger or the ministry stronger?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I I would say um early on, um just the the whole idea of of having a calling and then saying yes and and not knowing if anybody else is gonna jump on board, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um so I I can remember praying, you know, and and God specifically saying, you just show up, you know, and so our first the first time we had a few families to help, um, it was myself and six college students that showed up. And you know, now we we do a biannual My Jerusalem Day where there's hundreds of people uh that show up and serve. So um so I think early on that was a little bit of a hardship, but it it continues to um to motivate me and others that serve. It's just it you say yes, the power of saying yes, um, and not saying no because we think we can't do something.
SPEAKER_01:Right.
SPEAKER_00:Um and one other thing, like we we serve in the community where some rough things happen um to people from time to time, and so we've seen even some young people um lose their life, it seems like at an early age.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And um, and so that's been tough for our team and and others in the neighborhoods, but we've just just been reminded that um kind of the way we've we've gotten peace about that is that they've run their race. You know, they didn't have another they didn't have another day, and and that's bringing comfort to us to instead of getting very sad and saying, Man, it seems like they lost their life early. Um, we were able to say they finished the race, they just finished before we did. So yeah. So that's a couple of things that's that that's helped us out along the way, and me personally.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, let's talk about you for a second. When you're not when you're not working in your ministry, what do you like to do for fun?
SPEAKER_00:Oh man, we you know, I love serving so much, but um really when I'm not doing that, uh I I love outdoors. Um I could be out hunting or fishing, um, or just spending time out in the outdoors. Me and my wife like to hike uh or go camping. Um so we we love just being out in the outdoors and uh spending time in creation. So probably if I had to pick, probably on the water as opposed to on the water. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Well, what's one thing you wish people knew about the way to serve uh ministry that they may not realize?
SPEAKER_00:Um, one main thing is that we always have an opportunity to serve. We're we're serving all the time. I think a lot of times we get notarized by doing the home repair projects and um having these events um twice a year where we pull a lot of people together, but we're serving um every day of the week. So if someone has a you know a time they know they have available, we can get them serving, like I mentioned earlier. So that's one of the main things is we want people to know we're a we're a full-time ministry. Um so yeah, and there are lots of needs, and um, and we don't like to bombard people either. So if they have one way that they would like to serve specifically, we want to just get them out there serving well um in the time that that God's allowed them for them to do that.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Well, how would one get in touch with you if they want to serve or they want to learn more or however they want to get involved?
SPEAKER_00:Sure, yeah. Um definitely our website, www.theway the number two serve.org. Um, and there's a section in there where where you can go on and and do volunteer onboarding. Um so that can that can get you a meeting with one of our one of the people in our staff or our team. Um we also have an office over on McCoy Street, the Way Building is at 1310 McCoy Street. Uh we spend a lot of time out in the community, so you may go by and nobody's there, but most of the time someone's um around the office. Okay. Um, so those two ways uh definitely would get you plugged in or any of our social media outlets.
SPEAKER_01:Well, Shane, I've enjoyed talking with you today. Thank you so much about telling us uh about the way to serve.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you for listening to the Good Neighbor Podcast Auditor. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to the DNP Auder.com. That's the DNP Auder.com. Or call 33.