Ministry is life, life is ministry.
This is a phrase that our leadership team has been throwing around constantly since training camp. They want us to live what we believe, regardless of where we are or what we are doing. A year ago, I probably would have dismissed this as just another hokey Christianese phrase someone might use to tell you to stop swearing in public. A year ago, I probably also would have limited ministry to VBS programs, serving food at a soup kitchen, or playing on the worship team for Sunday service. Ministry, in my mind, was a tangible, organized event with a start and end time. Ministry was something you went to and participated in, usually followed by fellowship around a meal and sitting in front of the television watching ESPN.
One of my biggest frustrations right off the bat when our work in Colombia started was that there didn’t seem to be a set schedule, and no one seemed to know exactly what everyone would be doing. I learned quickly that I would have to get used to it, as ministry assignments would be given out on a day-by-day basis. There is always a tentative schedule here, but it is subject to change several times before being finalized, so we are never bothered with its details until it gets set in stone. I began to realize all of this coming off of forty straight hours of travel to get here from Atlanta, and I only got more stressed when I didn’t even understand what some of our assignments were. Adding to that, many of the programs we are involved in are brand new, and as such are still in the ‘development phase,’ which means they are not yet super structured.
Let me back up, otherwise it’s going to sound like working here has been miserable. It absolutely has not.
This month we are partnering with City of Refuge in Medellin, Colombia. It began twenty-five years ago by a man named Pastor Douglas, who felt a calling from the Lord to reach out to the local homeless population. This outreach began simply by him bringing bread and water out on the streets, to places where the homeless congregate every night, to bless them in a small way as often as he was able. He prayed over the people he served, and God began to bless his work.
Today, this outreach has bloomed into a full homeless shelter and drug rehabilitation center, offering help for both men and women on the streets. They also minister to children through their on-site school. Up to sixty people sleep at the shelter on any given evening. The people in the program have expectations – a major one being that they attend the mid-week church service every week. Missing a service means missing three nights of sleeping under their roof. Pastor Douglas still faithfully works in this ministry, leading the work and many of the church services. His outreach to the homeless on the streets, passing out bread and water, is still ongoing, and a majority of the people who are currently in or have graduated from the program came in as a direct result of this kindness.
The growth of this ministry has led them to serve in other areas as well, and this is where our group entered the picture. They are working to reach out to the children in their neighborhood with VBS-style programs for different age groups twice a week. We have been helping with the planning and organization of these programs, as well as with getting the word out. Here is one area where I’ve had to make some mental adjustments. This organization has a lot of moving parts, and is stretched pretty thin at the moment, so groups like ours come in as partners to help alleviate some of that pressure. The result is that much of this is being thrown together last minute, and I’m learning to roll with the punches.
A typical day with these programs looks like this: After breakfast at 8:30, a group of us will go out on a prayer walk for an hour. This is a term I had very little familiarity with until last week, and is part of the ‘intangible’ side of ministry I’m not super used to. For the most part, we weren’t interacting with anyone. We were walking a five-block radius around the ministry, praying over homes and businesses there as we felt led. We had some background to guide this – obviously, this city has a huge drug problem. We prayed over that a lot. We prayed over the homeless. We prayed over the children being affected by these strongholds. We prayed over the Catholic church down the street. We prayed over the home two doors down where they shoot pornography. We prayed that walls would come down.
I’ll admit, there was a part of me that thought, at least the first time, What am I even doing? That is the part of me that wants to jump in and get my hands dirty. The part that needs to do something where I can see results and feel useful. The part that has never seen this side of ministry and is uncomfortable with doing something different. Don’t get me wrong – I do pray. I pray when people have prayer requests – when someone is sick or lost a job or when I can’t find a parking space. I don’t do well with the vague idea of a prayer walk, because it doesn’t feel like I’m accomplishing anything. God is working in that, because in my heart, I’m not dumb enough to come out and say that prayer walking is ineffective. It’s actually biblical, turns out. Nehemiah did it when he surveyed the walls of Jerusalem, and the disciples prayed over the cities that they visited.
Anyway, that was a rabbit trail. After prayer walking we spend several hours of the afternoon walking these same streets, knocking on doors, and inviting people to our program. This also makes me uncomfortable, but because I speak Spanish, I am volunteered for a lot of things that I don’t want to volunteer for. I am envious of the people that can’t speak Spanish, sometimes. As I do this, I also find myself asking whether this is accomplishing anything. Will kids actually come to an event the same afternoon they are invited? Don’t families need several weeks’ notice for this kind of thing? They don’t, as a matter of fact. The first afternoon we did this, over twenty kids showed up, and again the next day, and again today. I have a heart for children’s ministry, and that is where I felt led during our prayer walk. I think God heard me through my whining.
The program itself is great, once we figure out what we are doing with the kids that show up. Where my past experience with programs like this says there should be a curriculum of some sort planned well in advance, my current experience says a half hour meeting the evening before we start is plenty. It stresses me out. I’m probably losing years off my life expectancy as we speak. We play games, we do crafts, we sing songs with ridiculous hand motions, and we perform skits where one person on our team has to be the tree for Zacchaeus to climb. It’s just like any other kids’ program in the states, and it’s going wonderfully. These will be my favorite days this month, I think.
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I want to talk about the bread and water outreach (Agua Panela) on the streets some more, because I think this has been the most eye-opening part of my experience so far. One of the first days we were here, they told us about a street where the homeless gather. Hundreds of them. They shoot up out in the open, sometimes don’t wear clothes, and sleep all over the street in piles of garbage. One of our leaders said last night as we stood in the middle of all of this that she felt the presence of demons in many of the people as she looked over the crowd. I believed her.
I don’t say this to make the people here sound worthless – only to set the scene for the kind of places we will be walking into this month, and probably the rest of the year. They are all valuable in God’s eyes – just as valuable as you or I. Seeing them that way is crucial to being able to minister here.
The first night our team went out to this street, led by several locals from City of Refuge, I stayed behind. There are over forty of us here, and we have to be broken up into groups to avoid too much hassle. Half of us went out, and the other half of us stayed at the compound. We weren’t off the hook just because we stayed back, though. You see, in this particular scenario, my old mentality said that the half that left were out doing ministry, and the half that stayed behind would have their time the next evening. Not quite true. We were asked to meet on the rooftop terrace as the van drove away, and we spent the next hour together in intercessory prayer over the work being done that evening.
Again, I do pray. Not nearly as regularly as I should, but I do. Even so, the idea of spending an hour in prayer over something I didn’t entirely understand was not what I had in mind for the evening. This was the first evening of this, and I might have zoned out a bit when it was explained exactly what the team on the street would be doing. I don’t remember zoning out, but when the team came back and shared their testimonies from the evening, I realized that I had been praying for the wrong thing. I didn’t even fully realize exactly what it was about until I went yesterday. I guess you just have to see it to understand. Words can’t properly paint the picture, I don’t think.
Anyway, I realized something that first evening on the rooftop as I heard stories from my teammates. I realized that, even though I didn’t really know what was happening, God still used my prayers. On this street that most people wouldn’t get near if they were paid, our team witnessed salvations through that bread and water. When asked if they wanted to be prayed over, most were thankful and accepting of it. No one on the team felt endangered at any point that evening, and even in the middle of all that chaos, God listened, and God moved. I realized that ministry is not just going and doing. Ministry is whatever you make it, even if it feels weird and uncomfortable. More to come on that later, because I have some stories that there is no room for here.
For now, know that I am doing well. I am learning. I am growing. I am experiencing things that many of you never will, and that’s okay. Just keep following along, because I want you to experience it along with me. And please, as always, keep me in your prayers. I need them.
Thank you, and God bless.
Colby
