We will tell the next generation the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord, his power, and the wonders he has done... so the next generation would know them, even the children yet to be born, and they in turn would tell their children. Psalm 78:4&6
There is a church in Chicago called Chatham Fields Lutheran Church. Its members are mostly African American, as are the residents of the surrounding neighborhood - which is rather safe, but as any resident would tell you, "You're still in the city."
The pastor of this church is Kenety Gee, a native of Liberia who has lived in the states with his family of nine for about 13 years. I came home this past Friday from spending a week living at the parsonage of this church, along with an average of 23 people - 16 of them students from the high school I went to, and the rest chaperones like me. It was the third January mission trip I've been on with my high school - the first year as a student, and the second and third years as a chaperone. If there's one thing you come to expect about going on mission trips, it's that each trip... probably will not be what you expect.
The overall goal of the mission trip was to show up and serve. My pastor, Chris Navurskis, who leads the trips, doesn't like to plan everything out and end up caught in red tape; he prefers to latch on to the urgency of Matthew 28:19 and "Go!" As long as he takes a few planning-oriented people with him (like myself, for example), everything always works out.
The students were an eclectic group of seniors, a few juniors, and a sophomore. The mix of chaperones changed throughout the week depending on everyone's availability - a pastor, two college students, a teacher, a mom, a nurse, a lay minister, and a seminarian were around at different times. Our first main accomplishment was creating a youth room in the basement of the parsonage for the church's youth, including a hand-installed tile floor, freshly painted walls, a long free-standing room divider, and a gorgeous mural (which Allie is painting in the picture above) on a perfected wall. The second was re-plastering and painting the pastor's office at the church, as well as fixing his rotting floor and ancient toilet in the adjoining bathroom. I won't bore you with every detail, but because this blog is all about blessings, I want to share some snapshots and themes of the trip that were blessings to me.
My main prayer going into this trip was that God would help me touch the lives of the students somehow. Connecting to high schoolers has not really been easy for me, even when I was in high school. I tend to take life seriously and they tend to NOT, and that ends up being a stumbling block for me when it comes to finding initial grounds for relating. Did he answer my prayer? Of course. Did I have a deep, soul-sharing conversation with every one of them where I got to proclaim God's grace to their inner brokenness? Yeah right. In fact, I'm not sure I got into a very deep conversation with any of the students at any point during the week. I did with a few of the leaders, though, which I praise God for. And while I was actually rather quiet throughout the week, I was extremely comfortable in my own skin, which is an incredible blessing. And I felt strong. Kenety Gee talked about having a strong spirit and shining our light on others. I don't know if I've quite reached the 'shining' part yet, but I know a light inside me is growing and being fortified.
One of the main things Pastor Chris wanted us all to get out of this trip is to learn to ask the questions, "What's my address, and what time is it?" He means that we should learn to take notice of who the people around us are
, and really get to know them, so we can reach out to them better with the Gospel. Not necessarily in a stereotypical, "Hi, my name is Megan, and I'm going to tell you about Jesus now" way, but that's the whole point - knowing who people are so you will know how to reach them. We got to see Kenety's ministry, and his vision that his congregation would have a focus on raising up the next generation in Christ (we chose the Bible verse for the mural because Kenety had just asked his congregation to memorize it). We visited the second-oldest LCMS church in Chicago and learned about its history and its legacy of embracing the people in the surrounding community which, for example, now happen to be Asian immigrants, so they're holding conversational English classes. We visited Willow Creek, the megachurch, and we discussed the kind of people that church is designed to reach. Ministry means something different wherever you are. So ask. What's YOUR address? And what time is it?
Ironically enough, on this trip, the bathrooms were far less blessed than the one in our dorm. I mentioned already that the floor under the pastor's office toilet was rotting. Besides that, our parsonage had only one shower and two toilets for all 23 people, and at different points throughout the week they each managed to overflow and/or plug up. Yuk. :P Oh well.
Hmm, I feel like this blog post could have been written much better...but perhaps that's my
perfectionist nature coming out. Maybe I'll edit it later. But for now, I want to share. Praise God for blessings and struggles that all come together in one package.
Soli Deo Gloria.
Megan
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