John 13:34–35 (NIV) 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

We are officially calling Feb. 13-19 Love Week in Bonney Lake. We are striving to inspire more than 100 hours of service, one person…one hour at a time. Every person can give an hour to give back to our city, letting the city know they are loved.

This Valentine’s Day let’s elevate the ultimate love…by loving our city. The result will be a city we love.

Since the thought of starting a church came to us in 2009, one of the driving values we held at Open Life was to be an indispensable resource and benefit to the city.

I had asked Mayor Neil Johnson and a number of City Council members at a breakfast with the mayor event about what churches were doing to impact and engage the city, how they were present outside of the gatherings they held.

Their long pause and look of confusion rooted deeply in me at that moment that we needed to lead a movement of people who were all about finding the needs and meeting them within our city.

The question we ask at Open Life is, if we closed our doors as a church, would the community notice we were gone? What would they miss most about us or would they miss us at all?

When we put any new idea to the table at Open Life we ask ourselves a number of questions and one of them is, “how will this benefit the community?”

By asking that we are putting into practice the love that Jesus himself practiced and commanded us as the church of today to obey. There are opportunities all around us to love, but are we too focused on becoming disciples to love those who will come after us?

The balance we must find as individuals is how we can follow Jesus without losing sight of the reason why.

The most pure form of demonstration of the love of Jesus is passing on that love to others through demonstration of that same love we have received. Someone comforts you, you comfort someone. Others are generous to you, you are generous to others.

So what has made you love this city? And how will you pass that love on to others? What might happen if you would take one hour of your week Feb. 13-19 and serve your city? Go to www.livinglifeopen.com/loveweek for ideas, log your hours and find some generous ways we are giving back to our city to show the love we are all commanded to share.

Follow @loveweekdeals for some generous moments we will be tweeting for those in our city to experience from free coffee to a class for those who are facing foreclosure in order to guide them in making some tough decisions about their reality from the experts in our region.

Join us as we love our city, give an hour…love our city.