Young Adults Meeting Report

During the youth meetings the past couple nights, John Miller has split the attendees into four groups of six or seven young people and then assigned questions for the groups to consider for 20 minutes or so before presenting their answers to the entire group. This is similar to what we did a few times last year and greatly enjoyed.

On Monday night Pastor Miller asked questions such as, "if you wanted to respond to a disaster, such as what happened in the Philippines last year, how would you plan a relief trip? What would be the first thing you do? How would you select a team to go? What components would your trip include and how would you implement those components once at the disaster site?"

One thing all the groups emphasized in their answers was the importance of connecting with and working through a local church in the devastated area. Rather than individuals or groups of individuals going out on their own, everyone seemed to recognize that mission work should be done through the church and if at all possible, should be seen as an extension of the local church in the area. This was exemplified in the response to Hurricane Katrina, when churches from all over the country came to work with Lakeshore Baptist and reach out to the community through the church already established here.

Then last night our questions were, "if you wanted to persuade your church to assist in disaster relief, what Biblical justification/rationale would you offer? What would mercy ministry look at like back at your home church and community? How would you define poverty and how would your definition impact the way you engaged in mercy ministries?"

All the teams found a plethora of Biblical justification for engaging in activities like disaster relief. The consensus was that Christ and his ministry is our example in how to reach out to others. Not only did He minister to the spiritual needs of those around Him, He was also concerned with their physical well-being. As Pastor Miller explained, the church has historically flipped from one extreme to the other. Some churches and movements emphasize only helping with the physical needs of society, but then others will argue that the physical condition is irrelevant, and that the church should be concerned only with spiritual needs.

The other interesting conversation during our meeting last night was how we as Christians should define poverty.  I tend to over think things, so when Pastor Miller posed this question I was like, "oh wow, that's going to take a lot of consideration. There are so many different angles and approaches to this question." And then I got sidetracked with writing up notes for last night's blog post, so I didn't actually give it much thought, haha. But everything that the other groups shared was quite thought-provoking. As Christians, we trust God to give us as much as we need, even if it seems like less than we ought to have by the world's standards. And the ultimate definition of poverty is being without Christ. We tend to think of poverty materially, but if God has granted us salvation, then we are truly rich. "For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?" (Mark 8.36) Connecting the importance of the soul over our temporary existence with how we approach questions such as poverty was very helpful for me and certainly simplified the topic in my mind. : )