How Young Do You Need to Be to Change a City?

I haven't written in a couple of weeks. There are two reasons for this: last week was vacation. A vacation from the computer, from the internet, from the phone. A time to spend with my wonderful family - uninterrupted time.

The week before that was spent with a fabulous group of missionaries taking time each day to reach out to a hurting city through practical acts of kindness. On Sunday July 12th a group of 40 young people assembled together, set up camp and prepared for a week of service projects at homes in what to many could be considered as a wealthy, middle class city. What is not as readily apparent to most people is that behind the shiny veneer that many people put up, behind the front doors of many of the homes in this city are untold stories of pain, and heartache, and disease and death. This city did not take long to travel to for most of our team, in fact, for 95% of the team this city is where they call home. July 12th - 18th was our 2nd annual StreetReach mission week into our own city. We set up camp, real tents, organized work crews and for the entire week we served, served, served. we worked in 40 different homes during the week from small jobs like planting trees, to complete yard transformations and removal of fallen trees. Our team worked their hearts out. They smiled as they worked, they sang as they worked and they even prayed as they worked. Throughout the entire week they showed the people of our city that God loves them.

The whole point of StreetReach is to take the love of Jesus out to a hurting world and to show people through acts of kindness that they are special in the eyes of God and that He loves them.

I think that through the week I was most impressed with the attitude of our team. They just got up each day and set themselves to serving. They rarely grumbled, they rarely argued. There were an increasing number of water breaks taken as the week progressed, but they served their hearts out.

I think that the thing that caused me most concern through the week was that we still did not seem to engage the adult church much. Sure there were a large amount of youth that were engaged, but I was struck by the lack of adults who came out to serve for a even just one day. There were a few, but most days the adults could be counted on one hand. Maybe I just need to accept that people have limited vacation days and taking one to help out on StreetReach just is not a priority. Or maybe the adults don't know how much they are actually needed. This year we were very limited in terms of our adult (over 18 yrs) volunteers. We had 4 who were there every day. we even had to ask one of our adult youth leaders to sleep in the camp and then go to work each day because we needed an adult female to stay in the camp. We only had 3 people old enough to drive the vans we were donated, thankfully we only had three vans. It became very apparent to me that we need more adult help for next year. If we grow next year to the same extent that we did this year then we have to have more adults.

How do we engage people over the age of 25 to get involved? How do we get this demographic to join the youth and truly have the whole church actively involved in reaching our city with the love of Jesus? Over the next few weeks I need to consider how to reach the adults in our church to engage them to reach out with the youth.