Service = Vitality

Several years back, our Bible study group at my church made the biggest mistake of our collective lives. It also turned out to be one of the biggest blessings any of us have ever experienced.

Because we were young, inexperienced, woefully ignorant and extremely idealistic, we took on the FULL responsibility of building a Habitat for Humanity house for a single mother and her daughter in a 12-week time period.

If you knew me, you would know how ridiculous it was for me to lead a project of this magnitude. I have trouble driving nails in straight, not to mention taking the lead in building straight walls, making sure everything is properly insulated and seeing that windows are securely installed.

I am essentially MR. I HAVE NO IDEA HOW TO FIX IT!

Fortunately, I had several very good friends who were there to guide us—my fireman friend Dave, my structural engineer friend Rodney, and my friend Rich, who is the master of all known building trades and is the most patient person I know. We would not have succeeded without them.

We wrestled with working in rain, mud and cold. We struggled with getting the right supplies delivered to us on time. We had armed combat with busyness—fighting to just get all of our people out to work when we needed them. We battled with rolling and cutting insulation without scratching ourselves to death. We were spared major injuries, but we sent several to the doctor because of the improper use of power tools (nothing too serious).

But with God’s Spirit fully surrounding us we finished on time and we had the profoundly joyful experience of handing keys to a new home to Krystal and her daughter Danielle. It made every one of the 1,000 setbacks and challenges over the course of the project seem woefully insignificant. Today, even though many of our group members have gone on to serve in many different areas of ministry in our church, they all still talk glowingly of the experience of allowing God to use us in order to give a wonderful family their own home.

Now, here’s my challenge to you: If you want the young adult ministry to flourish in your church, do something similar and do it regularly. Do it locally, do it 250 miles away and do it on other side of the world. Call it missions. Call it service. Call it whatever you like, but make it a part of your young adult ministry DNA.

Do it because Jesus Christ called us to minister in His name. You can study more intentionally about this in our new Bible study Get Uncomfortable, which is a great preparatory study for groups who are about to embark on any kind of missions or service project.

Do it because God has built loving and giving to others into the design of your heart and mind. He is the supreme giver of unbelievable gifts—most notably salvation through Jesus - but also an infinite number of tremendous blessings in everyday life.

Do it because people in this world, whether it is around the corner or around the world, need your help. If Christ-followers won’t help, then who should?

Do it because God wants to use you in ways that you cannot imagine. He wants to accomplish more through you than you have ever dreamed about. He wants to stretch you quite a bit, just to be honest with you. He wants to show you WHAT HE CAN DO.

Finally, do it because your ministry should be an example to the world.

When we were interviewing young adults outside the church as we began the Threads project, we had a number of fascinating conversations.

One of them sticks out in my mind.

A young lady who had turned her back on evangelical churches asked us a rhetorical question as she drove home her point. I can’t give you her exact words, but it went something like this:

“This church across the street has been here 16 years. In the whole time it has been here, I have never seen this church do anything to improve the community. The church hasn’t tried to improve the poverty situation, hasn’t tried to feed the hungry and hasn’t tried to make anything better in the world right next door to it.

Why would I want to be a part of that church?”

She asked a tremendous question.

She deserves an answer. The world deserves an answer.

Give the answer by making service an essential part of the young adult ministry at your church.