“For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give His life as a ransom for many.” – Mark 10:52
Working as the community service news reporter at a small, hyper-local newspaper, every time I talk to someone about why they volunteer, the typical answer usually sounds something like this:
“I get more out of it than I put into it.”
It’s a statement that, as a news reporter, makes me cringe slightly because it’s such a commonly used quote, but as a person, I understand that need, that desire, that fulfillment that comes only from giving yourself to a good cause that you are passionate about.
And being in the position of community service reporter for the past two years at The Villages Daily Sun, reporting on stories and tracking down stories about the continuous efforts of residents to impact their community, I began to want to give back myself.
I’ve always loved volunteering; there were times in high school that my mama had a hard time tearing me apart from my volunteer efforts. But once I reached college, I began to have less and less time to serve.
Now, I know a lot of people tell me that my serving at my church, Orlando World Outreach Center, every Sunday as a member of the worship team is considered community service (since I drive at least an hour and a half, one way, for practice on Wednesdays and sing almost every Sunday morning), but I always wanted to do more, to serve more.
When I got saved in college, the first thing I prayed for from God was the heart of a servant, to have the desire to serve people like Jesus. And He gave it to me, but I found myself not having opportunities to serve.
Until this past Easter, 2016.
When my pastor revealed his God-given vision to have Easter 2016 at the Citrus Bowl, the giant football stadium in downtown Orlando, to call the service He Got Up and to make it a huge day of community service efforts to serve the needs of tri-county area residents, in my mind, I thought, ‘That’s a cute idea, Pastor Tim. But it’s not going to work.’
You can say my faith was small, but I was looking at what was; our church is young and fairly small (I estimate about 500 members strong, but I could be wrong), the Citrus Bowl was under construction and how were we gonna find and serve these people?
I just decided I was going to sit back and watch to see if this was really going to happen. A large part of me was sure something was going to go wrong, but another part – the part connected to my deep faith – told me this would be huge.
“In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.” – James 2:17
My own faith was going to be challenged in more than one way; was I going to remain stagnant, or was I going to grow? Would my own works, my own words, fall in line with the faith that it was going to take to pull this off?
As the next year passed and I watched from the background, as Pastor Tim started a foundation (the Orlando Serve Foundation), held prayer walks every month at the Citrus Bowl, went out into the community to connect with people in need of these services, developed a team, I began to become impressed with what I was witnessing.
Of course, I knew I wasn’t seeing everything, but what I did see impressed me. So much so, that I even began to wonder if there was a way to connect the huge homeless community that I knew living in the Ocala National Forest to He Got Up and recieve the services that Pastor Tim was arranging to take place.
When 2016 came, I knew the main focus was going to be He Got Up. As we fast-approached He Got Up, the excitement of what we, as a church, were preparing to do, infected my faith. I grew more and more excited and I noticed that my faith was growing stronger as well. I was attending prayer walks, my personal social media became consumed by promotions about He Got Up and I was excited to be a part of it.
But, this was a different excitement. In the past, events like this would have been a chance for me to be seen. But this time, I didn’t WANT to be seen, because I knew this wasn’t about me, but about spreading the story of hope to people who needed to hear it; people who had given up on life, people who were reaching the end of their ropes.
Easter fell on the last Sunday of March. And March turned out to be one of the hardest months of my life in so many areas. It seemed that one thing after another after another was going wrong; constant fear and anxiety gripped my heart and soul, I struggled with professional and personal issues, and I was becoming stretched too thin and so stressed out that I wasn’t getting any rest. In fact, the two weeks before He Got Up, I had so much on my plate, balancing work and personal, I almost cut sleep out my life; I didn’t have any days off from life to catch my breath. But all I could see was the Citrus Bowl, full of people receiving services and receiving a word to change their lives forever.
At last, the day came. I arrived at the call time of 6 a.m. (yes, I had to be at the Citrus Bowl at 6 a.m. And remember, I live an hour and a half away. Thank God for friends who lived waaaay closer and let me crash on their couch/floor!) I was so filled with excitement that I could hardly stand it. Dressed in the powder blue shirt many volunteers were wearing and white jeans, I was ready to pour out my heart to the citizens of a city that I had fallen in love with years ago. But more than that, I was proud to be a part of something so large. To see some many services that people needed being offered to them: showers, haircuts, clothes, food, legal services, job fair and more.
“Jesus replied, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself.'” – Matthew 22:37-38
After singing on stage for the actual church service (and wearing out my voice to the point where the very next day, I was croaky, hoarse and couldn’t speak above a whisper), I went and asked where I could volunteer. They put me in the Bag Drop, helping organize people’s bags and items.
Now, you may think that what I was doing was not a huge thing; all I did was make sure people got their belongings when they left. But, during the couple extra hours I served, it was still an experience. Because a lot of the people we served that day were homeless; their whole lives were in the plastic bags, purses, backpacks and suitcases they were entrusting us to watch while they searched for the hope we offered to help them change their lives. A chance to show them love, perhaps the final dose of love and hope they would receive at least for that day.
There was one story that stood out for me that day. A woman came up to get her bags; she had four huge bags. As I prepared to pass her the bags, she asked if we had a way that she could roll her bags away, because she had a growth on the side of her body that made carrying hard for her. Unfortunately, we didn’t have anything, but I felt so bad for her and my heart was so filled with compassionate, that I offered to carry the bag for her to her bus.
As we began walking, we chatted a little bit. She opened up about her situation; she was homeless and everything she owned had been locked away in storage, but she couldn’t afford to pay the storage off at the moment because she was struggling to find shelter. But then, she said she was so grateful to see a church open its heart for the community and serve. Then she asked where we, OWOC, met for church.
“We use a building on Mills Ave called Lake Highland Middle School,” I said.
“Is that that church building behind that 7-11 on Colonial?,” she said.
“Yes ma’am,” I replied.
The lady, named Miss Yvette, stopped dead in her tracks. “I pass by that area three or four times a week. And everytime I pass that building, I feel a spirit coming from it. I’ve been asking people for the past year if a church uses that buiding and people say that only a school is in there. But I knew a church had to be using that building. I always felt the spirit.”
On the inside, I wanted to do backflips; that simple moment, that opportunity to connect had opened a door to minister and make a deeper connection. This was what the day was all about; it wasn’t about the singing and the music and all that; it was about touching and changing lives.
But it’s not the lives that we served that were changed; my own life has been touched. Through this whole past year, looking back, I realized how much God has grown me and prepared me for this moment; how He grew my heart, tested my faith and opened my eyes to the very things that He was doing in me and through me. My life truly is not my own.
He got up to offer hope to the world that we can overcome, but He also got up to give me a faith that cannot be shaken and a heart for people to see them be set free and overcome, just as He overcame, just as I overcame. And if that means serving people like Miss Yvette and the thousands of other people I got to serve that day, I’ll do it all over again.
And again. And again.
He Got Up to save mankind; I’m getting up to serve them, as a part of the overflow of my heart, thankful, grateful and humbled by what Christ did for me.
“Then He said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into His harvest field.'” – Matthew 9:37-38
The Book of James 