I remember waking up to this song blaring through the PA system one morning a couple of years ago when I went to Memphis, Tennessee for a week with a group from The Rock on a mission trip. Although completely jarred from my slumber and despite the fact that I was in no way shape or form ready to get up at 7am, I was looking forward to the day.
The Rock has had a partnership with Service Over Self, a ministry which provides free major home repair in the projects area of Memphis, Tn for several years now. We send a team down there over a weekend in the fall and again in Spring Break for one of their urban camps. Just a couple of weeks ago, Pastor Ed Courtney led a team of 16 students, 9 of which had never been, to serve with SOS over this year's Spring Break.
Each group is lead by a construction manager (a staff member of SOS) and sort of adopts a home for the week. They spend about four full days working on whatever the project seems to be and if the owner is home part of the time, attention is definitely given to getting to know him/her and their family. Half of one of the days is spent doing something fun in Memphis. Each night there is an evening service at the SOS facility, where the team stays all week. One evening is spent with one of the SOS staff members, hearing their story and why they are passionate about serving in an urban ministry.
Ed's team served a 60-year-old man whose wife and son were in conditions that required constant care. They put in a new floor, new doors, repaired the porch and painted in the house and on the porch. They also met and talked with a man who had been living on the streets one day. Ed shared with me this:
"One day we got to talk with a guy who used to be homeless and a crack addict, but he said he had been clean for 5 months. He was off the streets, but it sounded like he was pretty much mooching off an elderly lady and living with her. He didn’t have a job and seemed quite content with the fact that he was off drugs and “only” drank 2 beers a day. Marlon (Big Dog) asked him how many days a week he drank, and he said 7. It was good because the students could see that this guy was basically settling for a life off the streets, but was unwilling to acknowledge or go to rehab for a drinking problem. He didn’t seem to mind not having a job or really providing for his daughter. It was good because people then made the connection that often they settle for less in their lives when God probably has more for them."
Shelley Arnsman, a great friend of mine, has been deeply impacted by this ministry as well. She has been to SOS a few times, spent last summer doing an internship with the program an
d recenlty went to Ethiopia this past January with the program. She shared with me last school year how serving in that way had really affected her and she talked about what it means for us as Christians to address social injustices such as poverty. I asked her what she thought she could do with this passion while at school. She told me how she just wanted to talk with people about it so that others would be aware and so they could bounce ideas and thoughts off of each other. She ended up leading a discussion group that met in one of the dining halls each week - it grew at one point to about twenty people. After she spent the summer working with SOS, she told me how she had really been challenged in her faith and believing the Bible as the inerrant word of God as well. But that story is for the next prayer letter...The trips to Memphis can really get the ball rolling in waking people up to new ways to serve and be Christ to people using their hands in this sort of way. Sometimes all it takes is sacrificing a week, driving 500 miles and opening our eyes to a completely different world than we are used to to change our perspective forever. I know that dozens of students have had this happen through trips to Memphis, I know I have, and I know each trip is just another drop in the bucket and another opportunity for it to happen again.
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