Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

| by archiveworldraceblogs

One of the church members Ken came and spoke to our group about evangelism, prayer, missions, and healing before we headed out into the city to talk to people. Most of us are anxious doing this type of ministry because we have seen it hurt so many people in the States. In thirty minutes he had managed to present one of the most impactful representations of what those four words meant than I had heard in my fifteen years of church leading up to it.
 
Sometimes I feel like our contacts minister more to us than we have been able to do to them. The generosity they have shown to my team by welcoming us into their lives and church body has been a gift. A hot meal and roof at Megan’s or Sean’s is a blessing when your budget consists of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and rain is a commodity. I can tell our contact Jimmy knows that parts of the World Race can be overwhelming and exhausting to always be pouring out on others without taking opportunities to enjoy the places we have the opportunity to travel in. I mean, we are in Ireland how cool is that?! The “Emerald Isle” as my mother would call it. I’m learning that I trust Adventure in Missions because of the contacts they choose to stand alongside with. I’m learning what true evangelism and missions mean. 

Our squad leader Jacob gave me one of the best books I have read in the last five years called “Friendship at the Margins” written by some of the founders of a group called World Made Flesh that seeks to build community and friendship alongside the poorest of the poor in society. It talks about a model of missions that includes: relationship, friendship, and reconciliation. I want to be clear about something. What I am on right now is a short term mission. Eleven months of ministry is short term. A month in each country is short term. But I am trying to resist the messages our culture has sent that “more is better and new is best.” Getting rid of comforts is a step in the process for me. “Friends who are poor challenge our lifestyle of consumption when they build generous and gracious lives out of very few material resources. Doing advocacy without knowing any of the people for whom you advocate leads to a sterile and distanced kind of helping. It’s not what ‘we’ do for ‘them,’ but an opportunity for all of us to be enveloped in God’s grace and mercy. In God’s economy, its less clear who is donor and who is recipient because all are blessed when needs are met and when individuals receive care.” I am learning more of what community means as I live with five other people that I no longer call strangers but call family and trust with all my heart.

John 17:21-23 states, “So that they may be one, as we are one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

I am reminding my team that we don’t do acts of service for a pat on the back or a thank you. We do service because faith without deeds is dead. “Gratitude is directly related to service, but if we minister with hope of being thanked or with the expectation that those receive our help will be grateful, we will not be in a good position to respond when they are not. Life-giving ministry flows from lives that are full of gratitude to God, not with the expectation of Gratitude from others. In community we can support one another, affirm contribution and yet also trust that our work is sustained by grace.”

I want to encourage my community in Fort Collins to continue to be intentional about building community, because you do it well, and it works. I continually think of you. Be encouraged! Be bold in stepping out to find people living on the margins of society, because you will be blessed by them and them by you.
 
United! Clap-Clap-Clap (Green Street Hooligans Reference for Sam Payne),
 My-Mother-Plays-The-Pipes Salley