Outreach Update

Sam is ETCBC’s Pastor of Outreach in partnership with Youth Unlimited.  Every other month, Sam sends an update to all his supporters.  We will start publishing these updates on our blog.  Here is the latest one from September 13, 2017.

Thoughts

A summer to remember – youth graduating and inner city camp with my summer interns.  It was busy but meaningful.  As we sent off the youth to university and celebrated their graduations after 4 years of being part of the hubsters, I was reminded of how small I really am – no matter how deep our relationships, how many weeks we’d spent together, there comes a time when the youth move on and I will not see them as often anymore.  There is a limit to how much I can minister to them and journey with them – this is where I need to believe that God is bigger and that He is moving in their lives beyond just the community youth group.

As we (myself and 2 summer interns) participated in Seeds of Hope, the inner city camp (described below), I was reminded of the privilege I was born into – while I always could be more grateful and understand what I take for granted, to go even beyond that, is the idea of humility, shifting my perspective from thinking that just because I may be financially better off than people in other demographics, it somehow makes me better – in fact, being “successful” in serving people who have less causes me to understand what we have in common, our shared brokenness.  This means not comparing myself  with others on a social class level which can lead to helping out of pity or sympathy but instead, in being humbled, I need to approach serving knowing that we are all broken and on this journey of wholeness together.  Some are broken in that they live in poverty – they have a broken relationship with creation.  We are all broken spiritually and need to be restored by God.  It is in this place of shared brokenness that I can journey alongside those I serve and learn from them more than I could ever teach.

Seeds of Hope

There are two things I want to point out in this picture…

First, the people in it, my 2017 ETCBC summer interns, Shivarny (left) and Kharthiyaa (right).  These were two of my top Hubsters youth (both from a Hindu background but would consider themselves non-religious) who were willing to work for ETCBC.  As part of their internship, we were at Seeds of Hope Camp (a camp for Jane & Finch residents I will describe below) for a week running their Vacation Bible School.

Part of Shivarny and Kharthiyaa’s responsibility was to perform the gospel skit each day.  Even though they did not necessarily believe in the message, they memorized their lines, acted out the skit with enthusiasm and were willing to debrief the faith aspects with me afterwards.  The way the skits went was characteristic of the internship all summer long.  The girls did everything that was expected of them which included book reports, community events, leading the youth and going to camp – all from the perspective of demonstrating Christ’s love to the community.  For each item, they were willing to have a faith discussion with me and debrief in an open-minded fashion so we could better understand each other.  It was a summer of learning about faith and growing deeper in relationship.

The other noteworthy aspect of the picture was the orange t-shirts Kharthiyaa and I were wearing.  This summer, we had the opportunity to partner for a week with another YU program called Seeds of Hope, a 7-week day-camp for inner city children in the Jane-Finch area (a pretty rough neighbourhood).  We helped run their Vacation Bible School (VBS) in week 7.  We went in with some plan and no idea what to expect.  On day one, as I left home for camp, Vanessa gave me this amazing piece of God-sent advice, “Don’t take anything the kids do personally.”  Through fighting, behavioural issues, disrespect and overly sensitive kids, one major lesson I learned was to dig deeper.

I realized how much I took my own stable upbringing and community for granted.  As ridiculous as it sounds, I used to subconsciously think those kids with behavioural issues had the same upbringing as I did but chose to act out – it caused me to look down on and distance myself from them.  However, during our VBS week, I took Vanessa’s advice and prayed that God would give me the peace and strength to look past just outward behaviour.  Instead of being offended by the disrespect the kids showed, I was able to push past that and asked myself, “what must these kids go through at home to have such sensitivity and anger?”  I observed the kids and saw how much of a difference it made to be fully present with some of them on an individual level even for a few minutes at a time.  I believe that during this week, God humbled me, challenging me to dig deeper to understand the background of the inner city kids slightly better and to take a step back to listen instead of casting immediate judgment.