Dino Rizzo: Healing Place Church, Baton Rouge, La.
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Dino Rizzo is the lead pastor of Healing Place Church in Baton Rouge, La.
CONNECTION TO OUTREACH MAGAZINE: Rizzo was one of the National Outreach Convention speakers featured in the September/October 2010 issue; he participated in a panel discussion featured in the article "The New Realities" in the January/February 2010 issue; he wrote a guest column in the March/April 2009 issue; his church's response to Hurricane Gustav was highlighted in the November/December 2008 issue; and his church was included in a January/February 2006 feature about Christians' response to Hurricane Katrina.
DINO SAYS:
What role does service (showing) play in sharing the Gospel verbally (telling)?
Serving others often is the very thing that opens the door of opportunity to tell someone about the love that compels us to serve. When we serve, we show people the love of Jesus, and it’s a huge win when that develops into an opportunity to tell them more about it. It would be totally inconsistent if our “telling” was not surrounded by demonstrations of the love we’re talking about.
What has been the most difficult, challenging service project you personally were involved with and how did you work through the challenges?
Probably the toughest serving situations for us have been the hurricanes that have hit us at home here in Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina changed Louisiana in a huge way, and just a few years ago, Hurricane Gustav gave us a direct hit in Baton Rouge. These times when our own people have been hit so hard and we ourselves are without electricity and have trees in our homes, that’s a challenging time to serve others. But the amazing thing is how the more we serve even during our own need, the more the love of Jesus is spread. And it totally demonstrates the truth that together we are better. We depend on each other and we are there for each other. And that, by God’s grace, allows a lot of challenges to be overcome.
What has been the most successful, rewarding experience in your ministry to date?
One of them would have to be the very same situation I referred to in the previous question. It is so true that the greatest challenges we face are also the greatest opportunities for God to do something huge.
What has been your most fantastic mistake? What did you learn from it?
One that comes to mind right off is also one that, thankfully, I was able to recover from and make the correction. God had spoken to me about changing the name of our church (originally Trinity Christian Center, which wasn’t a bad name, but didn’t really reflect our passion and our DNA very well). He had given me the name Healing Place Church as the new name. For whatever reason, I got a group of our key leaders together and ran the idea by them and they didn’t like it. So we didn’t change the name of the church, until one day God asked me why I had disobeyed him. It was so clear and so totally convicting. The next Sunday, without any heads up to our staff or anyone else, I just told the church right before the sermon, “Oh, by the way, from now on, we’re going to be called Healing Place Church. Turn in your Bibles please to the book of John ...” And that was that. Today, looking back, it has been such a right thing for us to carry the name Healing Place Church. But in those moments, it was totally a step of obedience that at first I failed to take. Thank God I was given mercy to have a second chance.
What areas of growth have you experienced in your personal spiritual life in the last year?
As my children get older, I’m learning a lot about my own need to depend even more on my heavenly Father to help me be able to be what I need to be as a dad. The other big area is in my own appreciation for the reading of the Word of God. As we as a church prepared to move into our new worship space, the first thing we did was read through the Bible in that facility.
What has been the greatest obstacle to spiritual growth for you in the last year? How have you overcome it?
I think it is interesting that our greatest challenges are also our greatest opportunities to grow. Such a simple truth, but that’s the story for us big time. We faced a huge challenge in finally move into our new worship space. And it was a very personal challenge for me. The greatness of that challenge demanded that I get beyond my own ability and my own resource—and just depend totally on the grace of God. And by His grace, we did overcome that challenge—and learned a lot along the way about depending on Him totally, not just when things get difficult.
HOW TO LINK: Connect with Dino at Healing Place Church; through his blog, DinoRizzo.com; and on Twitter at Twitter.com/DinoRizzo.
BOOKS BY RIZZO:
Servolution: Starting a Church Revolution Through Serving (Zondervan)
Turning Points (Healing Place Productions)
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