Customer Reviews

Servolution: Starting a Church Revolution through Serving (Leadership Network Innovation Series)

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This new book by Dino Rizzo will give you a place to start. Most people are out and about just wondering, "How do I move from where I am to where I need to be?" Dino models the way with beautiful simplicity to all readers with his stories and principles included here. He shows us how to just begin with of open hearts, minds and hands that are willing to be directed by God. If you want to know what to do just start giving stuff away the way Dino and his crew did and you will soon have a flow of life happening in your midst. He shows this is not rocket physics. Life begets life. Dino shows us how to get onboard with life - the rest is just details.
Thanks for a beautiful book Dino.

The cold rain was unusual for Baton Rouge in December. Yet even in the dark, we pulled the van in to the parking lot at the Alamo Motel. The same motel where drug dealers and hookers are the nicer people you'd meet. Where a 47 year old stabbed his 76 year old cousin to death. Where a serial rapist found refuge until he was arrested. Where girls under the age of fifteen are raped or sold for sex.

A group from Healing Place Church, where author Dino Rizzo pastors, and I checked in on Miss Ella - a grandmother who was taking care of her six grandkids, and a dog, in a 300 sq ft motel room. If you could even call it that. She had a roof over her head and a few mattresses, but that was about it.

During the time I spent in Baton Rouge with the people at Healing Place Church -- one thing was for certain. This church was living out the message of love and Christ in their own backyard. From the places where they were rebuilding from hurricane damage, to Dream Centers that housed anyone from the homeless to the domestically abused to the kid who didn't have anyone to go home to. While we were out, we saw another van delivering meals to the widows in this community. We visited strip clubs to give flowers to the dancers and earlier that morning, set up tables full of a warm breakfast for anyone who needed it. And there were several hundred who were fed.

Pastor Dino Rizzo and his team have been friends, encouragers, and champions in my own ministry. I'm so green and new at this, but they don't care. They challenge me, love me, pray for me, inspire me, connect me with others I can learn from, and they love to learn from others too. I don't have much to teach them, but their attitude of openness and servanthood is beyond what I could possibly describe in a review.

Pastor Dino has a book out called Servolution. If you could package the DNA of Healing Place Church this book does that. I am not exaggerating when I say every single believer out there needs to read this book. We are called to transform the world with the love of Christ and Dino has been so gifted to share what he has learned along the way.

This book will change the world. It will change the world in you. I guarantee it.

I am very honored to count Pastor Dino Rizzo as a friend. I had the opportunity to ask Dino one question about his new book Servolution on my blog, www.shawnwoodwrites.com:

Shawn:
Dino, the thing that blows me away about Servolution is how much YOU own it. In fact, what has Servolution looked like THIS week at HPC?

Dino:
Shawn - it's an honor to have someone like you be a part of this tour. You're such a great writer and I have enjoyed your book 200 Pomegranates and an Audience of One tremendously. Thanks for doing what you do for the Kingdom.

Servolution this week at Healing Place Church... well, it certainly doesn't stop. It isn't something we have set aside until another 7 Days of Servolution. We can't do that because the needs of the poor and hurting don't stop. Yesterday, one of our pastors was at the hospital visiting a lady who was badly burned. This morning, some of our young people went and served breakfast to some homeless people downtown. Earlier this week, we had a team serve at a nursing home. We have about 20 college students and young adults who just landed in Mozambique, going to serve the poor and hurting in the community surrounding our campus there. Today, people have already come by our pantry to pick up food.

Here's the point... Jesus told us that we'd always have the poor among us. And because that's true, the need to serve them-the opportunity to serve them-is with us all the time. Jesus loves the poor and we have learned that if you want to be where He likes to be, go where there are people in need. You'll find Him there.

------
This is what makes this book so great. Pastor Dino lives what he writes!

Servolution is full of incredible stories and practical ideas of how to serve your community and reach lost and hurting people. Real and down to earth, it is an essential for any church staff, volunteer, small group leader or anyone who wants to serve and make a difference for the Kingdom.

Phrases like social justice, community transformation and servant evangelism have recently become trendy in the church world, but Dino Rizzo and Healing Place Church were the hands and feet of Jesus long before it became popular. In Servolution Dino outlines how HPC from its very inception has been a healing place for a hurting world. For any leader or church who wants to do more than attract people to weekend show Servolution is an essential read.

My husband and I have been a part of Healing Place Church for over 10 years. I have known Dino and Delynn for over 20 years. A lot of what I read about in Dino's new book Servolution, I actually was a part of. I even got to read rough drafts of the book and give input on it over the last year, BUT I still cried last night while reading the final product.

I remember Katrina, being at the New Orleans Airport the week after, helping people that had been taken there from roof tops and over passes, filthy, hungry, being sent to a strange new city with only the clothes on their backs. I also know many people have been shown the love of Jesus at Midnight outreach, Homeless Breakfast, The Baton Rouge Dream Center, etc. etc. SO, reading about all this and much more, is very personal to me.

When my husband was at the recent Healing Place Men's conference he sat on a row with friends and acquaintances of his who were a former pimp, an ex drug adict, a disabled man, two homeless guys, two inner city teen boys, a preacher and an upstanding wealthy business man. THAT is HPC, all the time and it's because Dino has decided that all people are valuable to Jesus not just the rich, not just the poor but all people. AND he has also made Serving and reaching out to all aspects of society a priority for HPC, year round, everyday. No exceptions from the crack house to the country club, all people matter to God.

I believe this book is for this generation. Everyone is talking social justice, Hollywood talks the loudest but Christians unfortunately are not know for being active socially. We are more known for all we are against. Even though there are many great organizations serving in the name of Jesus around the world and locally, I believe this book will help church leaders learn tangable ways to serve their community daily, each memeber, all walks of life, all the time and how to be salt and light to all who see.

This book is a tool, a God given tool, for the body of Christ to get their hands on and see how to start a revolution by serving others. Serving is a basic Jesus principal, He started it.

Here are some of the parts that I loved the best..

...it means noticing who is on the bottom of everyone's list and putting them at the top of yours. It's giving and serving with no strings attached. And yes, that means serving them even if they will never step foot inside your church.

We are nothing. He is everything. He became nothing and served us as though we were something. He laid down his everything for our nothing. How much more should we, being nothing, serve those He considers to be something worth everything.

Matthew 20:28 "the son of man did not come into the world to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." When He moves into our lives, serving becomes part of our DNA. We really can't ignore it or shove it aside; that would be denying our own hearts, because it is now who we are. Being a Christian who does not love to serve is like having a crawfish boil without the crawfish.

As a book review blogger for Zondervan I get to pick the books I want to review. But the book I wanted was not available, so I got Dino Rizzo's book instead, Servolution: Starting a Church Revolution through Serving. My expectations were pretty low. I had never heard of this pastor, nor his church, Healing Place Church, and I'm just not in the market for church growth books. But I am interested in the local church becoming the hands and feet and mouth of Jesus Christ to those around them. That is the church Rizzo set out to be. His church is based in radical generosity, not just in material, but in time as well. I listened to a sermon today from John 13, when Jesus washes his disciples' feet. Rizzo seems to get Jesus's lesson from that example.
12 After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, "Do you understand what I was doing?
13You call me 'Teacher' and 'Lord,' and you are right, because it is true.
14And since I, the Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other's feet.
15I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.
16How true it is that a servant is not greater than the master. Nor are messengers more important than the one who sends them.
17You know these things -- now do them! That is the path of blessing. John 13
He has also found that as they served, God provided more opportunities and more resources to fulfill those opportunities. I'm familiar with some of the opportunities he's described as I've been with our church to the same places, New York City after 9/11/01 and the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina. However, I was also inspired and encouraged by the local outreaches they do, from handing out bottled water to drivers stuck in traffic on hot summer days to block parties, where everything is given away with no strings attached. Their generosity has led them to provide training for released convicts so they can find jobs and stay out of jail. They help and encourage widows and single mothers. They also have reached out internationally, from Africa to Haiti. They do more than water bottles. They have set up mobile medical clinics in Louisiana. They built houses in Haiti. They've dug wells around the world for the poor. Rizzo's focus is on the poor, yet, somehow, money keeps coming in and the church keeps expanding and more and more are served resulting in more and more becoming part of the kingdom. They spread the good news through word and deed. This culture of serving results in new ministries forming by those in the congregation coming up with new niches to help, both locally, at 2AM when the bars close, and internationally, in Mozambique. With such a huge impact from such a simple philosophy of ministry, I think any believer would benefit from reading this book.

Thank you Dino Rizzo for writing it and for Zondervan for giving it to me for review.

Amazing read on how todays church needs to develop an attitude of love and servitude. The love that the writer has for people will bring you to tears!

I knew my church leadership had read this book so I thought I would do the same. I wanted to see where they were coming from. Once I began reading SERVOLUTION I soon realized that this book was amazing. Are you having issues at your church? Learn to serve - but don't serve to get - serve because we are asked to do so in the bible. By reaching out and serving the people in our communities God will bless this work. SERVOLUTION is about serving, reaching and loving those in your community and other places as well. Its about meeting needs that you and I can clearly meet in some form -we just need to take the step towards serving....

Although this is Pastor Dino Rizzo's story of how he started Healing Place Church in La. you will learn great insight into serving and loving. You will clearly see how God moves when we move and how this church is full of people with the same loving heart and desire to reach out. Serving is in their DNA!!!

This is a great read for Christ followers that are looking for inspiration in the area of service. Healing Place Church is a great example of how the hands and feet of Christ should approach their community.