My week at the Bowery

This past week I was able to spend a week serving the great city of NY. I took about 19 young adults and high school students with me. We decided to briefly move into the Bowery mission which has been serving NYC since 1879 (primarily the homeless community). We lived, broke bread, shared stories, laughed and served with some amazing people who God was in the process of restoring. I prayed for divine connection for the students to connect with God in a powerful way by most importantly serving Him. As we got there I read to them out of Luke where Jesus is talking about the heart of servant hood, and how the wise servant is the one who is always in the mindset of serving the master (Luke 12:35-47). I encouraged them that these too were God's children, that God loved us no more or less then He loved them. I told them something quite bold as well. The main reason I love working with younger generations is they are daring, bold and courageous. I told them they were on a trip most adults (including most parents) would never dream of going on. There's nothing magical sounding about "lets go live in homeless communities". But there is something beautiful in the experience. I do believe we all received just as much as we gave on this trip. This group was beautiful. Nothing fazed them. When you "move in" with a broken community, the beauty is what you can add to it. It's like if you've ever seen a black and white photo, with just a dab of red in it. At times it was draining hearing so many heartbreaking stories, yet being able to minister to the hurts, the pains, and to be able to encourage people that society would rather forget, to me, is exactly on target to who Jesus was. I felt alive. I felt like I was honored and privileged to wake up INTO ministry everyday, as opposed to having to try to create ministry. It was an amazing time, and I'm honored to have been apart, and can't wait to return...