Don’t Serve an Empty Jesus

IMGP8135“How long do the soles on these shoes last?” I asked the sales girl nervously. I stepped from one foot to the next, rocking side to side as if the room were moving and I wanted to steady it.

“Well, I don’t know,” she answered. “I imagine they last quite awhile. These are good shoes.”

“Oh…” I paused awkwardly, trying to remember the things I’d been taught about sharing my faith with strangers. I needed a unique way to start the conversation, but this suddenly felt like it was going a very strange direction. Taking a deep breath I decided to plunge forward with the plan.

“Did-you-know-we-have-souls-that-will-never-die-and-that-Jesus-died-on-the-cross-for-us-so-we-could-live-eternally-with-Him?!” I sort of blurted the sentence out,  a verbal vomit that left the poor sales girl looking entirely confused. Were we talking about shoes or were we talking about Jesus?

WHO COULD TELL!

This story is not one of my finer moments in life, though I will say the sales girl in Payless was extremely kind. She put her arm around my shoulder, thanked me for being bold enough to share my faith and asked me if I really needed any shoes. I didn’t so on I moved.

This was part of a mission weekend with my church youth group. The premise behind the weekend was a good one – let’s teach young people how to be bold in sharing their faith. I have no problem with this message and I am grateful that it was taught to me.

But the practice of sharing our faith is so much more effective when it’s actually lived out in front of people, isn’t it? Canvasing malls and neighborhoods and beach boardwalks yields little effect for so many reasons. One, it’s just plain awkward. There’s nowhere to go with a conversation that messily tries to equate the soles of shoes to the souls of man and then throws Jesus inside that blender for a healthy little punch.

Although you absolutely can feel free to pat me on the back for my clever little play on words there, thankyouverymuch.

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There’s a lot of negativity surrounding the idea of short term mission trips that floats around the internet. I get where it’s coming from, I really do. Much of it is written by people who grew up a lot like I did, in a day when short term missions was often defined as dropping a group of youth students on the side of the road in matching t-shirts, hands stuffed with the Four-Spiritual Laws, hell bent on saving people’s soles souls.

There was little sacrifice to be made in such endeavors. In fact, two hours of “sharing your faith” on  a sandy beach often yielded a full day of play time and boy did you feel good about yourself because you shared Jesus that morning, yo!

IMGP8330A short term mission trip should serve only to bolster the local church or a local body of believers that can continue the work that was supported by a mission’s team. It does no one any good for a group of people to descend upon them for two weeks like a spiritual tornado if there is no one left behind to help explain what all the pieces of this faith mean. Throwing Jesus at someone who’s stomach is empty, who’s house is made of nothing but sticks and corregated metal, will more often than not be an empty Jesus.

Short term mission trips must meet the physical needs of those they’ve come to serve, and not at the detriment of the local economy. Don’t take away work from the locals. Don’t try to serve Jesus verbally to children who are starving, to mothers whose hands are raw from digging and working and scraping the ground in order to put something in their children’s stomachs.

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Show them Jesus by meeting their needs. Serve, backs bent over, next to the day laborers. Relieve their burden, feed their stomachs, hug the children who ache for physical touch. Be Jesus. Be His Hands as you serve them, His Feet as you walk next to those in such desperate need. And when you leave, make sure the local church is empowered so that they can tell the people who Jesus is and give evidence of His Love for them.

There are so many organizations that are doing this well – so many people who are coming alongside local churches and communities and orphanages all over the world and bolstering them in the areas of physical need so that they can more readily meet the spiritual needs of their own communities. If you’re looking for an organization to support and perhaps even take a short term mission trip with, start by looking at one of these organizations. While there are many doing this very thing, I can personally endorse two of them if you are looking for an organization to join on a short term mission trip.

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Servant’s Heart Ministry is based out of Nashville and they work primarily in Dominican Republic right now. They are doing just what I laid out – they work closely with local pastors in the villages they serve to make sure that the children are getting what they need from a physical standpoint (food, proper nutrition, health care and dental care) and they are telling the children that they aren’t forgotten by God.

IsleGo Ministries is working to connect the Church as one body all over the globe. They work closely with churches all over the world, but most specifically in the Caribbean. IsleGo takes hundreds of families, pastors, youth and college students every year to their numerous established locations where they work to meet the needs of the local people, to connect hearts with one another and to strengthen the Church as a whole.

Both of these organizations are doing short term mission not just right, but extremely well. And for those of you with young children, both of these organizations offer short term mission trips for families with children as young as 5, and what a blessing it is to serve alongside your young children.

I know this post was long so thanks for sticking with me. What are your thoughts on short term mission trips? How have you seen lives impacted by a short term mission?

Wordless Wednesday: Out of the Mouths of Babes

No words from me today. I’ll let the kids do the talking. I’d love for you to come back tomorrow when I talk about why I think Short Term Mission trips are a GOOD idea. Short term missions have gotten a lot of flak lately, but there are good things happening all over the world as a result of short term mission groups.

But first…today. The kids have shared their thoughts on what they learned and what stood out to them on our trip last week. Prepare yourselves for a little bit of heart melting.

Photos of a blessed week

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The boys handing out bags to the kids coming to the fun day we had planned for them. From crafts to snacks to music and dentistry, these kids had the opportunity to receive trinkets that will likely become treasured possessions.

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Kids lined up to receive their food. They are fed a hot, solid meal three times a week inside this dirt floored church – the Body in action meeting needs.

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We lost count at how many teeth were pulled this day. A combination of poor nutrition, lack of hygiene and zero flouride means most of these children had a mouth full of painful, rotting teeth. Education and prevention are some of the things Servant’s Heart is working to provide for these precious kids.

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My son talked the pastor of the local church into taking him on a motorcycle ride. Huge highlight of the trip for this boy.

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Kyna – our rock star dentist.

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Gorgeous countryside.

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Who found Dominican Nutella? THIS GIRL!!!

 

My 5-year-old painting flouride on teeth. Who says good things can't come in small packages?

My 5-year-old painting flouride on teeth. Who says good things can’t come in small packages?

We are exhausted and my head is a jumbled mess as I try to process everything we saw and experienced this past week. There were so many beautiful things that happened and so many difficult things to see. The impact of this week will settle on all of us in different ways.

Today however, instead of trying to articulate some of the scrambled pictures in my head, I just wanted to share some of the real pictures. I have thoughts to mull over and ideas to share, but today I want to say thanks for the emails and the tweets and the Facebook messages that so many of you sent. It is good to know you’re covered in prayer and it’s a wonderful feeling to know you’re loved so much. You guys are the best.

Happy Monday!

Because He Loves Us

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We drove through gorgeous countryside today. Looming mountains painted against vibrant blue sky, palm trees swaying in the breeze as rows and rows of banana trees buzzed by our windows. The landscape was marred only by the absolute poverty that dotted each hillside.

Tin houses stand testament to the fact that Dominican Republic, though beautiful, is very much in need.

We did what little we could today to help meet the most basic of needs. We fed children a hot meal. We sang songs and played games and taught them the very basic importance of taking care of their teeth. We showed them how to brush and floss and through an interpreter explained the reasons why we need to take care of our teeth.

Then the dentist in our midst calmly looked in each child’s mouth and, with the permission of their parents, pulled teeth that were so rotten they caused intense pain.

There is nothing magical about what we’re doing, nor is it really all that inspirational. We’re just meeting a need – an easy need. Food, hygiene, love, laughter and at the end we told them why.

We love them only because Jesus first loved us and He loves them because He’s God.

If you know of anyone who needs to see love today, don’t hesitate to act. Don’t wait or think about it or even “pray” about it. Just do it. Look for the needs, the ones near and the ones far, and do something. I’m saying this to you, but I’m also saying it to myself.

And when you do it, take your kids. They’ll surprise the heck out of you.

Blessings.

To read more about the people at Servant’s Heart Ministry who are leading this trip, and who are meeting the basic needs of hundreds of children in Dominican Republic, click here.

Dominican Republic with Servant’s Heart

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Tomorrow morning we will board a plane with our children and hop over the blue waters to the Dominican Republic. It’s not a vacation, though Lee and I have vacationed there in the past. It almost makes my stomach churn to think of the exorbitant amounts of food we ate in one short week when just outside the walls of our resort children were starving.

We are heading to Dominican with Servant’s Heart Ministry purely out of obedience. I told you earlier that I initially didn’t want to go on this trip. It’s not that I didn’t want to serve, but I felt an enormous amount of anxiety at the thought of spending the money to go to Dominican when my heart still longs and hopes to adopt.

But this trip is about obedience. It’s about realizing that while the door to adoption is temporarily closed, there are needs to be met and we have the ability and resources to meet them. This trip isn’t about me and what I want – it’s about following through with an opportunity that was placed before us.

It’s about saying “Yes,” and in my yes, God has been good to ignite and excitement for the trip. I am really excited to leave tomorrow.

Servant’s Heart Ministry began in 2008 when a group of men in Nashville joined with a passion to change as many lives as possible through Jesus. Their mission statement reads:

To impact and change the lives of children around the world through missions for Christ by providing life sustaining necessities, sending, supporting and maintaining mission teams, construction and the sponsoring of children in order to lead them to Christ and break the cycle of poverty.

 

This week we are headed south to serve the least of these. It’s a chance for our children to see that life is very different outside of their own little sphere. This will be a stretch for them – it will be a stretch for all of us.

caliThis will be a different sort of family trip. Judging from the amount of complaining that’s gone on the last twenty-four hours (I’m tired of walking! My legs hurt! I don’t wanna eat this food! It’s hot out here! Me! Mine! Now!) I think there will be plenty of opportunity for life lessons. It won’t make them perfect children.

It won’t make Lee a perfect dad.

It won’t make me a perfect mom. (I mean, I’m practically perfect already, you know? How do you improve on that?)

(I am kidding!)

(Seriously…that’s a joke. Don’t send me nasty emails.)

What this week will do is offer vivid pictures to be committed to memory, a moving reel that can be tapped into when the monotony of life just seems to be so much. And maybe this will be the week that the Lord speaks to Lee and I as we continue to seek Him for what the next step should be.

I will be blogging this week during the trip. I want you to see what is coming of this vision cast several years ago by men who also wanted to obey – men that chose to say “Yes.” What an impact we can have in this world when we choose to step into the things that make us uncomfortable and we say “Yes” to serving others.

If you’re interested in learning more about Servant’s Heart Ministry and the work that they are doing in the Dominican, visit their website and stop on by this week! I’m excited about the opportunity to keep you all posted (Haha! Get it? Posted? Hehehe…Aaaahhhh, blogging humor. It is the best.)

Have a blessed week, everyone! 

 

Disclaimer: Lee and I chose to take this trip with our kids. I am blogging about it because I want to, not because I’ve been asked to. I will post my opinions based upon what I see and learn. 

 

Servant’s Heart Ministry

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Missions Week – Day Three: Servant’s Heart Ministry

Sometimes, it seems that if you listen closely enough, you can hear the hollow strains of an orchestra in the forground.  If you stop, open your eyes and strain your ear intently, you’ll hear the soft beat of a well played harmony…

I can testify personally to the heart behind this amazing new ministry based out of Nashville, Tennessee.  One of the founders, Rob Dublin, is a dear friend and is someone who, along with his wife, Kyna, has a deep love for missions.

Servant’s Heart Ministry has a unique focus.  Primarily working in the Dominican Republic at this time, Servant’s Heart is working to empower and support the work of a local church, and in doing so, is impacting the lives of children and families.

Sshhh…listendo you hear the strings?

Born out of a love for orphans, the founders of Servant’s Heart Ministry all met while actually doing ministry together.  In 2006, Rob Dublin, Rex Sexton, Kenneth Hill and Jay Weinstein worked together in the country of Ukraine building homes for orphans.  Upon returning to the US, they continued to meet with one another regularly and encouraged each other in their shared passion of ministering to the orphans of the world.

Add the bass…

After learning of the plight of children in the Dominican Republic, the idea of Servant’s Heart Ministry bubbled forth.  With a little bit of research and a lot of planning, the four men planned their first trip to the Dominican Republic where they witnessed firsthand the cruel fate of an impoverished people.

But how did they get to the Dominican Republic?  Well – that’s where the cello starts humming a harmonic continuum.  Can you hear the sounds?

In a small village, roughly 45 minutes from the booming town of Santiago, people are living in extreme poverty.  Children go to school where they spend roughly 4-5 hours a day learning, but receive only a small cup of milk and a piece of bread. 

Sometimes that’s all those children will eat all day long.

A local church, run entirely by Dominicans, recognized the rampant hunger of the children and established a program for the kids to come to the church after school and receive a solid meal as well as spiritual training.

It’s a simple concept.  Nourish the body and develop the heart.  Immediately the church noticed the impact they were able to have in their community.  But how would they sustain this program under such harsh conditions.

In rolls the timpany. A beautiful thunder of sound is beginning to resound.   

Servant’s Heart Ministry is now working in conjunction with this local church, partnering with them to establish a feeding program, as well as providing training materials for the children, school supplies, school uniforms and so much more.

They are also working to develop a clean water program, providing filtration systems for the church and local water catchments.  The money they raise will go toward power generators and food storage (refridgeration), building supplies and whatever other needs arise within the community.

Listen to the sounds.  The symphony is beginning!

For now, the focus of Servant’s Heart is concentrated in this one small town in the Dominican Republic.  But the vision is much grander.

In time, and as the orchestra gains momentum, there are plans to expand this model to other villages, towns and countries.  The goal is to support locals – to provide them with the materials they need to minister to the people in their own backyards.

The best part of this story is that you all can be a part of the grand symphony that God Himself is conducting through this amazing ministry.  There are so many ways to be involved:

  • Prayer.  Will you pray for Servant’s Heart Ministry as they work to bring about the vision that God has laid upon their hearts?  Your prayers are the whispers that drive the beat of the symphony.  They are the measures within which all the notes are contained.
  • Donations.  Of course monetary donations are always welcomed and appreciated.  Funding is important in helping provide these churches and children with the things they need, like water filtration, power generators, uniforms and, most importantly, food.  But Rob told me that there is also a need for supplies.  They need Spanish books, literature, scriptures, coloring books, supplies for water filtration, anything that you can offer that would allow the church to better serve the children.
  • Your time.  In 2010, Servant’s Heart will be taking a second trip to the Dominican Republic and they would like to take a team of people with them. Let’s face it – when you are living life, sometimes, going on a foreign mission trip is difficult. One of the benefits of serving on a mission trip with Servant’s Heart is that, while it is to a foreign country, it is relatively inexpensive and easy to get to.  The trips last only 4-5 days and the cost is much lower than many other overseas mission trips.  This makes a trip with Servant’s Heart much easier for many people.  Perhaps you are one of those people? 
  • Table Sponsorship.  For Nashville residents, Thursday, October 22 is the first official fundraiser for Servant’s Heart Ministry.  This would be a fabulous event to attend (it will be held at the spectacular Factory at Franklin).  I encourage you to attend so you can hear in person the heart of these dedicated men as they cast their vision for the Servant’s Heart Ministry.  Table sponsorship is available as an option to show your support (and you don’t even have to be a resident to do that.  Wink, wink…)
  • For more information, please visit the Servant’s Heart Ministry website (again, I have left you a bajillion links so there’s no excuse for not at least clicking over). 

    You can also check out the beautiful video they put together of their first visit on their very own YouTube channel.  Or, you can join their Facebook Fan Page.  Or follow them on twitter.  The possibilities are endless!

    To contact someone personally about how you can be involved with Servant’s Heart Ministry, or to get their address so you can send supplies, click here.

    God, the Almighty conductor, has lifted His Hand, tapped the music stand and begun waving His Arms, inciting a glorious melody.  And, through the involvement of others, that melody will swell and grow, making something beautiful out of the ugliness that is poverty.

    Will you consider joining Servant’s Heart Ministry as they change the world one child at a time?

    Missions Week – Day One

    Missions Week – Day Two