ONE RED PILOT

Around my house we are trying to build a mentality into the kids that says, “before you can move on to another activity, clean up your current mess”. As parents we are not great at enforcing this rule but we are trying. Recently I’ve been applying this to outreach, global and local. Side Note: As Christians outreach should be a major part of our walks. If you’re not helping others you need to sit down and re-evaluate why you call yourself a follower of Christ. Anyway…Like I said I’ve been thinking a lot about Global vs. local missions and asking myself, “which is more important”?

I had the awesome opportunity to be a part of an outreach the Young Adult ministry of Seacoast did in December of last year. We went to a community that is about 15 minutes from our Church that is ravaged with drugs, murder, poverty, etc. We served a hot meal, gave each family 2 weeks worth of groceries, and brought the hope, love, and acceptance of Jesus Christ. We took prayer request from people and upon closing the night we gathered the volunteers and the Pastor read one of the request, it said this. “Please pray that I get into the homeless shelter tomorrow night.” BOOM!! It was a Holy Spirit punch to my gut. I have never and will never pray that prayer…EVER, but whoever this person was, prays for shelter EVERYDAY! The other kicker was “I’m not watching this person on TV in some country far away from me, I probably shook their hand that night”. Not only did I probably shake their hand, they live 15 minute from me. 15 minutes away from hundreds of thousands of people who could change the rest of that person life by 2 months worth of their personal income. I was wrecked. Let’s go back to the parenting rule for my toddlers:

“Before we go on to another activity, clean up your current mess.”

I guarantee we all have the same ravaged community within a 30 minute drive of where we live. Imagine the impact you could have if your family, small group, or even church said, “for this season we are going to focus on thinking locally.” You want to talk about making an impact, I can’t think of a better way. I close with this:

The value on Global missions is limitless, but I propose the question: “Should we clean up our current mess first?”

Favor to You,

Nate