Some of you already know this, but I spent last week in St. Louis in the company of 160 adults and teenagers fixing up houses as part of World Changers, a ministry of the Southern Baptist Convention. It's Mission Statement is simple:
World Changers seeks to provide Christian youth and adults with opportunities to meet the physical and spiritual needs of others through practical learning experiences that teach servant-hood and personal commitment to missions.Now that's very professional and clinical, so let's cut through all the fancy talk and talk about what really happened.
The world changed.
Wait, you didn't notice it?
I don't mean that mountains crumbled, or temperatures cooled (ya, right), or politicians suddenly respected each other and worked for the common good. I mean lives were changed- some forever.
An 8th grader in our group led FOUR neighborhood children into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
A high school sophomore girl noticed people living and working in the street, and now that she's noticed them, she talks to them.
A teen aged boy realized that there is a difference between doing the religious rituals of some church traditions and really living and working for and with Jesus.
Adults came to new appreciation for teenagers, and vice-versa.
People shared their stories, their gifts, their food with each other and with strangers.
We worshiped and we worked. We swung hammers and opened bibles. We prayed and we painted.
We sweated but God worked. And when God works, the world changes.
But maybe the most practical change (forgive the word; I know all of this is practical) was the reason we paid money to work for strangers. When asked why we would do this, we were given a GREAT answer.
We're doing this because we love Jesus. Can I tell you about Him?
No comments:
Post a Comment