I'm back. I have no excuse for my lapse between blogs, and I won't waste your time with a bunch of excuses as to why... so I'll just for for it.
Included in The Lord's Prayer are these very powerful words, "May your Kingdom Come." Since we started River Stone, one of our most fervent prayers has been for the Kingdom to come in our town. We want the blessings of God to rain down on our community. We pray for it to be a safer place, we pray for the schools to continue to improve, we pray that people would be compelled to live here, we pray that we would take the Gospel to the people through our actions and attitudes and not expect the people to come to us, we pray that God would use us to demonstrate His love and His Kingdom to our community. As a result, we're always looking for ways to be involved in this type of thing. Read on...
A few months ago at breakfast with the mayor (the mayor usually invites clergy to a breakfast once a month, but it sounds important, doesn't it?), she requested that someone from the ministers group volunteer on the volunteer committee for something called "Bobcat Build." I was very familiar with the event. It is a one day community service day where college students volunteer to serve their community. They recruit job-sites that need paint, fixing up, cleaning up, clearing out, etc. They spend an entire Saturday doing this. The college kids have kind of a bad reputation in town because they drive crazy, listen to loud music, party a lot, and make the lines at HEB and Walmart really long. Many people in the town don't talk favorably about the college students. So, how do they repay those who think that way about them? They serve them. They go to the homes of the poor, the needy, and the places that reach out to the poor and the needy. They call all the churches to see if they need any work done. This year, over 2,500 college students will work at over 100 job-sites. They're working to building bridges with the community. They're working to make their community a better place. They're blessing those who persecute them. It's truly one of the most beautiful things in a community that I've ever seen, and I've been honored to serve as a part of the planning team (I was the only minister who signed up, in case you were wondering. And, I don't say that to toot my horn, I just think is disappointing). Moving on...
Here's the revelatory paragraph that you've been waiting for. As we've been praying for the churches to work together to bring the Kingdom to San Marcos, the people who are actually doing it are the college students. I've never seen 2,500 Christians assemble in our area to perform acts of love and kindness just because it's the right thing to do. The churches are the ones being served by the college students -most of which don't even go to church (random fact - only about 1,000 of the 28,000 college students at Texas State go to church). My heart breaks that a secular (even though I don't believe in sacred vs. secular - everything that God made is good) institution of learning has a greater perspective on the Kingdom coming than the churches. I pray that the Church can exist for something more than trying to get people in the doors, and I pray that we would learn that we have a message to take to the people, and that message is love and humility by service.
Thank you, Bobcat Build for living out something the church has been teaching for years. May we learn to do the same. May there come a day where the university learns from the churches because of the tremendous examples of love they are to their community...instead of it working the other way around.
If you're reading this before March 31st. Please pray for favorable weather for the Bobcat Build work day. The coordinators of this event asked me to pray for it, and I would like to ask you to do the same. Thank you.
