Janet Busman cares for a young girl while her parents shop in the rummage sale as part of Operation Inasmuch.

ATLANTA – In 1994, Snyder Memorial Baptist Church in Fayetteville, N.C., was a military-town church ready for a new challenge. David Crocker, Snyder’s new pastor, and the church staff worked on ideas to help revitalize the congregation. They envisioned a short local missions blitz with the ambitious goal of involving more than half of the people attending Sunday morning services.

Blending military and biblical terminology, they called the project "Operation Inasmuch" (OIAM). With inspiration from the parable and the words of Jesus in Matthew 25, the developers of Operation Inasmuch set out to involve as many people as possible in a one-day effort to minister to "the least of these" in the Fayetteville area. The first event drew 450 participants from the church — two thirds of the average Sunday attendance.

"The day after the first OIAM, some members came to me and said, ‘that’s our idea of missions,’" Crocker said. "Operation Inasmuch became the heart of the church’s mission statement. It changed the identity of the church in the community. From that point on, the church was sold on it."

And so, apparently, were a lot of others. More than 300 churches representing many denominations now participate, as the idea has spread from North Carolina into Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, and even across the Atlantic, where the Burton Latimer Baptist Church in England held an Operation Inasmuch last year. "When you start something like this," Crocker said, "you have no idea where it’s going."

Crocker believes all ages gravitate toward expressing their concern for missions in local and personal ways. "They want hands-on involvement," he said.

Operation Inasmuch attempts to get church members outside of the church and into the community. But it’s not about church image. "It’s about doing what Jesus said," Crocker explains. "It’s practicing what we say we believe. I grow weary of how often we gather in comfortable places and talk about doing missions. And I know that when you offer a way to do missions, laypeople in particular are very enthusiastic about it."

And Operation Inasmuch events give them a lot to be enthusiastic about. A spring event in Knoxville, Tenn., where Crocker is now pastor of Central Baptist Church of Fountain City, included Presbyterians and Methodists and provided hands-on missions activities for almost all age groups. That is a key to involvement, said Martha Johnson, a registered nurse who has been Central’s volunteer coordinator for three Operation Inasmuch efforts.

During the April event, children in the church were part of a pizza party given for residents at a Ronald McDonald House. The children also packed personal-care kits that were distributed to people in local homeless shelters. Senior adults participated in light assembly projects.

Other church members prepared and froze 112 casseroles for the Fellowship Center, an organization that houses out-of-town families of local hospital patients. Central sponsored a baby shower, with all gifts donated to a home for unwed mothers. They prepared 500 "compassion bags." Each item inside had a Bible verse attached. Church members sorted food and clothes that had been donated to the Fountain City Ministry Center, an interdenominational project of eight churches that is housed at Central Baptist.

Youth and adults, working under the direction of project leaders, completed 20 construction-related projects during the Saturday event, including painting, roofing, landscaping and the installation of a wheelchair ramp in a home.

Even when construction is involved, the costs are kept to a minimum, Crocker said. It’s often possible to partner with local groups that are "pass-through organizations" for HUD-funded projects. "HUD makes money available to almost every community in the nation for repair of resident-owned property for people who are unable to do the repairs themselves," Crocker said. "These organizations are looking for volunteers. Our proposal is, ‘You provide the materials; we provide the volunteers.’"

The Operation Inasmuch churches provide lunches for all participating volunteers. And churches must purchase items to be used in the personal-care kits. But the average out-of-pocket cost for Central for an Operation Inasmuch with approximately 500 volunteers has been only $3,000. "So often people are willing to donate things," Crocker s