By Monte
I am interning at a youth group up the road: the youth group of a very small, family-like, close-to-the-country, Evangelical church. I love it. I really do. And it's mainly because it's something I would have never have pictured myself doing. I grew up in a much different church: a big church where Sunday mornings are like a family dinner where everyone in the family takes there food back to their rooms and eats alone. You enter, shake a hand or two, worship, listen to a sermon, maybe briefly catch up with some familiar faces, then you leave. Like eating a wonderful meal all by yourself. But out at Colbert, this congregation knows one another. They feast together: they know what's going on in one another's lives, and thus Sunday is not the only day they come together, it's just about everyday.
This past Wednesday, we were going through Philippians 2, because I wanted to get across this idea of mission that I began thinking about through this class. So what does it mean to be "one in spirit and in purpose" and then also to emulate the kind of obedience to the Father and sacrifice that Christ shows us through his life, death, and resurrection? And I asked this question to our group of about 15 junior highers and high schoolers, but of course in a more understandable, clear way. "If we feel so blessed in the community that we are in, and we know that we must seek to be like Christ, what should we be doing here in this community or in Spokane?" Kids came up with lots of ideas: canned food drives, visitin
g nursing homes or the children's hospital, serving the homeless downtown, etc. And I could begin to see a kind of excitement they had over the possibilities of what we could do. The goal for this
month is to get across the idea that service is not just a one time thing. It's not just a mission trip to another country, a one-day service project, or a collection of our neighborhood's canned foods. But it's a lifestyle, and a daily exercise of sacrificial living.
One of the greatest things about instilling a lifestyle of mission is that it creates transformation. God does not just desire us to give ourselves away to our communities so that we'll know what it's like to lose something, but that we might be transformed in the act. If we have the opportunity, the calling to fly across the world and give our time and energy to others, then we should. I would encourage the kids in my youth group to do this, of course. But more importantly, I would encourage them to listen to the call of Christ: to be transformed daily. A life a mission can begin now, today. All we have to do walk next door, start a conversation, and we will begin to see the deep need in the world and the beginning of transformation.
