SM
I've written about SM, our high school pastor, at least once before. He's the real deal. At CpR, we do outreaches every other Friday night, where kids are encouraged and challenge to bring their friends, be part of the team putting the whole night together, etc. It's pretty cool, and was one of the big things that impressed me when we first came to GCC. Student led, leader driven, kind of thing. Kids are up front in the band, leading worship, in the dramas, sharing how God is leading them, doing the Gospel presentation, etc. It's really indigenous leadership, if you think about youth as a totally different culture, which I do. So, in terms of a mission mindset, if I am the outsider coming in to 'plant a church' per se, I've got to reach a set of people in the culture, win them to Christ, and have them share with their own culture, and build a church that resembles and respects what their culture looks like. I like to think that CpR, and specifically SM (since it was his whole idea) are on the right track.
So much of how God has grown it is the foundation for SPACE, for at least what a service-missions focused piece of ministry looks like at GCC. It's cool to see. And the feedback from people about us engaging kids in community service has been overwhelming. People love it. Even more, kids love it. We are ministering, and enabling, a generation that doesn't want to just sit around when it comes to spirituality. They need to live it, express it, model it. It's a breath of fresh air compared to when I was in high school. Like, how much of a loser was I? The kids these days are on a totally different plane.
So I digress... Last Friday, we had the All Around the World Party, as one of the CpR outreaches. They decorated the main sanctuary (big church) into Italy, Mexico and China, and had all this food, drinks, waiters and waitresses. It was really incredible. All told, they had over 100 adult volunteers to help put it together, all the food details and clean up. When it was over, the kids went back across the street to the Warehouse and these people just packed it up and cleaned it up. I was left with such awe, because they did whatever they needed to so that other adults could go back over with the students for the rest of the outreach night... GCC loves their high schoolers!!
I did some magic tricks during the eating part, it was kind of cool. The two tricks I did were tricks that sort of told the Gospel story, in small tidbits. It was neat to really try it out on a lot of people, and I think it worked - people listened, it got their attention and they really listened to the point. And my overall goal was really to talk to new people, and have the friends that brought them be able to follow up about a conversation about spiritual things.
When the whole thing was done, SM asked me to continue to give him feedback about how these outreaches go, what they should look like, etc. It was very flattering. He said, "You have an evangelists heart like me." That was quite unexpected... I don't think I really do, I don't stay up late at night thinking about bringing people to Christ, do I? I do stay up thinking about how to engage the students we have into thinking the right way about missions, about what this summer's missions trips are going to look like, about how much fun I'm going to have with some of these kids that are so precious to Jesus...
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