Student Missions to NYC on Spring Break

When someone mentions "college students" and "spring break," most people have thoughts of the beach, partying, binge drinking, and a week's pass on sexual morality. But for some college students, spring break is an opportunity to go and serve God by serving other people. The past two weeks have been filled with college students who came to New York City to serve alongside churches and church plants. I'd like to share how one particular team was used by God to open up a big door for Connection Church NYC!

We had students from North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia come serve with us. One of the adult leaders from Alabama interviewed me on camera while I was driving them in my Yellow Cab to the association office in Manhattan (sounds cool, huh?). He asked me to give encouragement and advice to those who were contemplating going on a mission trip themselves. While I gave a couple of different answers, I believe there was one answer that was the most critical, and I'll share it with you. Dear Mission Teams: Be prepared to do whatever you are asked and whatever you can to help the local church/ministers gain favor in their community.

We had a great experience with our teams, and one of our groups was given the task of sweeping the local playground, cleaning the bathrooms (yes they were nasty), and shoveling the dirt from the places where dirt shouldn't be. If you're not careful, you'll dismiss this kind of work as something "not worth" traveling and spending money to do. But this was a project that needed to be done. As members of our community, we (the local ministers) had eyes to see what would be most beneficial to our community at the time, and these students believed us and cleaned that playground with passion. It just so happened that God opened up a door as a result of their "menial" work.

One of our girl students was sweeping and a lady came up to her and asked, "What are you doing?" She replied, "We're cleaning the playground." This lady asked another question, but she seemed to be almost frustrated as she replied, "WHY are you doing this?!" Our student said, "Um... you can talk to Larry. He's a pastor here and we are here to help their church." So the lady went to Larry to seek out answers to her query.

Larry told her that Connection Church is a new church coming to Astoria and wanted to serve our local community however we could. Well, this lady was certainly surprised. As it turns out, she was far from frustrated with our work. In fact, she was almost in a state of shock. This inquisitive woman was not merely a neighbor of ours either, but she worked for the Queens Parks and Recreation Department! Seriously, I couldn't make this stuff up. She thanked Larry and the group for all their work and asked us to get in touch with her whenever we wanted to use a park for future events. She also set us up with her boss, and we have now contacted him. He also told us that if we ever did anything like this again, please don't spend our money on trash bags and cleaning supplies as they would love to buy those things for us. Is that cool or what?

This summer we would have contacted this department to get permission to access the parks for outreach events and been just another group wanting to use a facility. But now, we have a personal connection that God has given us by his providence. We had NO IDEA we would get any attention for this act of community service. This was not our motivation either. But when we bathe our work in prayer, look for ways to serve people, and give glory to God then God opens doors for us to do more of the same. He increased our favor through these short term missionaries, and this is only one of many connections that God has given us through their work.

Dear Mission Teams: Whether your task seems big or small, just do it with a passion to show your love for God and for people. He will take our works, big or small, and turn them into great movements. Our teams successfully left the mission field knowing that the favor of the local church was increased. That means they were successful in their work. Instead of spending a week's vacation partying on a beach and glorifying themselves, they used that time to invest in the kingdom of God and glorifying the Son of God.

To God be the glory!