A new motivation

I had a wonderful time with my students and adult volunteers in Huntington, WV, at World Changers this past week. I went to my very first World Changers in Memphis back in 1993 and over the years I've participated in at least 10 projects. If you don't know what World Changers is all about, I'll do my best to briefly fill you in.

World Changers is a branch of the North American Mission Board (NAMB) of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC). It is a series of weekly mission opportunities (usually during the summer) where students and adult volunteers convene in cities both nationally and globally to do mission work. There are construction projects that I take my students on but there are also projects geared toward reaching the community via VBS-style techniques and community outreach. Youth groups come together, work crews of usually between 10-15 people are formed with students from the various youth groups, and houses are painted/roofed/sided/etc., for an entire week. The cities that host World Changers help to select the houses or other buildings that need help and they also front much of the money needed to fund the projects.

It is usually very hot and tiring work and we are usually housed in a local school for the week where we sleep on air mattresses on cramped classroom floors and cram into locker room showers to get clean. Each day begins early on the job site and each night ends with worship as a large group. Without a doubt, World Changers is my all-time favorite student mission project because not only do we get to share the gospel of Jesus Christ in the community with our words but we also get to demonstrate it with our hands.

One of the aspects of this week that I treasure is the change that takes place in the lives of those who participate, myself included. Away from the distractions of home, we find that God has a more direct route to our hearts. As we serve in communities that are different than ours, we see a different perspective on poverty and hurt and our hearts grow heavy with that burden. God begins to give us a new vision for those at home whom we may have overlooked because we couldn't see beyond ourselves and we go home motivated to find ways to help beyond our own sphere of comfort. Simply put, we come home different.

Will everyone come home motivated for Christ? No. Among those who do how long with that last? I have no idea. But the important aspect of going on mission is that once change takes place in the heart, then the heart is permanently changed. Even if a student makes a commitment and then seems to forget it weeks later, that experience is still etched in his heart for eternity. My goal is not to recreate a World Changers experience every week for the students that I serve but rather I strive to draw them every day to a deeper commitment to Jesus Christ. World Changers helps me to do just that and it also moves me toward a deeper level of commitment and renewal as well.