Why a Weekend of Service?
For those of you who have received our newsletters for more than a year, it may feel like old news that every February we take students on a weekend service trip where we help with kitchen and grounds work at a YoungLife camp. Every February we take students. Every February we take the same pictures that look almost identical year to year. Every February we tell you about it. Why do we do it? And why is it exciting?
Let me tell you! Each year our vision has been to specifically recruit freshmen for this weekend and to use it and the car ride there as an extended time of spiritual investment and community building. There are unique open doors into a person's heart that arise when you labor, sweat, and freeze alongside someone all to serve campers that we don't even know! Students often leave with a deeper sense of community and we staff have more knowledge and opportunity to speak into a students heart. Exciting! But that is not what excited us most...
What is most significant is that students choose to come at all! For many this weekend is symbolic of deep sacrifice and a growing commitment to the gospel. Not actually because they are serving at YoungLife... but rather because they are giving up a weekend at Shippensburg. The life of most college students is one consumed by chasing after different things that vie for their attention. Grades, friends, acceptance, family, prestige. These are all good things, but when elevated above God the Scriptures would call these things idols. They are things that students find their identity and worth in. Things that they worship instead of the Lord. To leave Ship for a weekend means that these students are choosing God over idols that they may struggle with worshipping. It means that they will not have any time to do homework. it means they will not have any free time for comfort and fun. It means no parties and no drinking. It means no visiting family. And it means saying no to many opportunities with friends. It means missing out. But when they miss out on those things, they get something better. Jesus.
So please join us in praising God that these students gave up the things they hold dear in order to spend some time growing in the Lord. Please pray that God continues to soften their hearts and that they continue to pursue Him over all other things.
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