Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Students serving the world

It use to be I would have a ton of students show up for the fun stuff we did like bowling, laser tag or whatever but in the last 7 years or so I have seen a real shift. We now have twice as many students come to our community service Saturdays as we do to any "fun night" we do and these Saturdays have become our best way to invite new people into our ministry. I believe there are several reasons for this, one is that most schools now require community service hours to graduate the other is that students care about the injustice they see in the world. Most of our students live in a culture where their parents do most things for them, they really do not have to do much for themselves. Providing places to serve is different though, students like to be needed they want to physically do things but they really do not know what to do and so they often do nothing. That is why things such as Invisible Children have really taken off. It is flashy and cool and it is empowering to students that they can be the change they want to see in the world. IC taps into the things they are already doing such as facebook twitter and other social media. Students today have incredible resources at their finger tips the problem is that we as a society have never really asked them to do something productive with those resources. They just want to see the difference their giving makes and it inspires them to do more. Our largest challenge is connecting what they are doing with how they live as Christ followers in the world. It is more then just a good deed , we love others because God first loved us. When we can make that connection this Service Revolution will revitalize the Church.