Mission work is often about expecting the unexpected. It's about showing up to serve, and going with the flow when things go wrong. It's about getting out of the way, and allowing God to show up.
But what happens when you take 142 teenagers on a mission trip, and you can't talk about God?
That's exactly what happened on a recent trip to Johnstown, Pennyslvania. A young service organization came with one goal in mind — leave a place better than you found it.
While the work they accomplished in Johnstown is astounding …building wheelchair ramps, finishing a skate park, replacing siding and insulation, various projects at a sustainable farm, repairing a church, and the list goes on… what they really did was change the people of the town.
Regardless of their non-religious background, the teenagers that flooded the streets of Johnstown changed a town's mind about the power of youth — the youth that give up a spring break in highschool, to serve a town in need.
Regardless of the fact that they didn't evangelize by the book, hold a prayer service, or play worship music in the street. These kids served with everything they had, with every day they were given, and never gave up.
Regardless of the constraints on our speech, or our teachings, what I really saw was an unhinged, unabridged version of Jesus — wielding hammers instead of bibles for the betterment of a town, their future, and my faith.
A lesson in acceptance; looking beyond face value, embracing the teachable moments when they arise, and remembering what it felt like to stand in their shoes, at their age, indifferent and unaware.
But there were the small moments that reminded us of God's character — the recovering alchoholic, thirty years sober embracing his new identity, the fourteen-year-old girl accepting that beauty and strength can coexist, and the leaders, myself among them, who learned to follow.
So what really happens when you show up, and have to shut up? God shows up — unhinged, unabridged, and un-silenced in 142.
