Rose Sunday Blesses Community with Symbolic Expression of God's Love

For 15 years, members of Christ Community Church A/G in Crawford, Nebraska, have prayerfully and purposefully handed out roses to friends and strangers around Valentine’s Day to convey God’s love for them. The evangelism tradition touches hundreds in a town of around 1,000 in the far northwest corner of Nebraska.

“God’s love resonates with people,” says Steve Mallery, a native of Kentucky and a former pastor there who brought the idea tradition with him when he became the pastor of Christ Community Church. “I don’t know of a better economic investment to encourage people to witness than paying a dollar for a rose and releasing them to go share their faith.”

Crawford sits at the foot of scenic buttes and amidst a number of Old West-related sights and attractions, including a famed military fort and a former fur-trading post. Each year on what the church dubs “Rose Sunday,” preceding the holiday, Mallery buys hundreds of roses of various hues, sets them in vases on the platform and preaches a message on the subject of God’s love. Congregants respond by coming forward to select any number of roses to deliver to specific people.

“I tell them, ‘Please pray for people and faces that God would put on your heart,’” Mallery says. “It is such a rich Sunday in our church. The sense in the sanctuary is profound. People linger and want to be around each other.”

Adherents of all ages participate, spending the week before Valentine’s Day asking God to bring to mind people who need to receive a representation of God’s love.

Mallery says that he asks congregants to present the roses on behalf of God and His love for them, not on behalf of themselves. He encourages intentionality in the presentation of the rose and instructs his congregation to allow the Father’s love to flow from them to others in the community who need it most.

The gesture — which surprises most and brings many to tears — is “a simple tool that has made evangelism profound,” he says.

One community member who felt the love and joined the congregation as a result is Donna Norgard. She and husband Roy —lifelong residents of Crawford, where both were born and married — started “investigating” and then attending Christ Community Church after a friend gave Donna a rose without knowing how badly she needed an expression of God’s love.

“I had been having some problems, and for some reason this woman seemed to sense it, and she brought me a rose on a Sunday afternoon,” Norgard remembers. “We talked and talked, and cried and cried. It was pretty emotional. It was a friend but we hadn’t talked about what I was going through.”

Since that day around 15 years ago, the Norgards have attended the church — and since coming they, too, have handed out roses to others each year.

“We dove right in,” Norgard says. “It seemed like the thing to do. God tells you who needs to hear that they’re loved. It’s a pretty special time.”

The offer of a flower is always met with “a little bit of surprise, but then always a hug or a thank you after that,” Norgard says. “People know about it all over town. When it happens to you, you know you’re thought of.”

Rose recipients often post about their gratitude on social media. One church congregant brought three roses to the home of a couple who had just suffered a miscarriage — one rose each for the mother, the father, and the miscarried child.

This year the church of 85 handed out 300 roses, but the Valentine’s week outreach is far from the only time they bless the community. Throughout the year, Christ Community works with local schools to paint playgrounds, donate backpacks and snack room supplies, and host “Taco Tuesday” once a month for the public high school and junior high students whose schools sit a block away. The church also bought chairs and a sound system for the community center so it could host larger group events.

“Through these continual demonstrations we see people want to come be a part [of the church],” says Mallery, an Evangel University graduate now working on his master’s degree at Assemblies of God Theological Seminary. “They grow in their faith and come to the Lord.”