One Sunday morning Michael Anderson decided it was time his students put to action what they had been learning. On that Valentine’s Day he had been sharing with the members of his youth group about love, and presented them with a challenge. Michael split the students into two groups–guys and girls–and gave each team $10 and an hour to love as many people as possible.
After driving around with Michael for a few minutes, the guys said they wanted to use their $10 to feed someone. They started a conversation with a man pushing a grocery cart and asked if he was hungry. Not long after, they purchased a meal for him.
Michael said part of his role as pastor of families with students at Westpoint Church in Winter Garden, Fla., involves counteracting the brainwashing his students–most of whom come from “well-to-do” families–receive from their relatives and society. In this instance, one of the teenagers was hesitant to talk with the homeless man.
“He said he was afraid the guy was going to beat us up because he had a bat in his shopping cart,” Michael said.
Before the group parted ways with the man, however, the student’s opinion changed and he felt compelled to offer the homeless individual his hat.
The girls used their money to purchase Valentine’s cards, which they handed out to people who were alone. Michael said they came back telling about a man who they initially were hesitant to approach because of his multiple tattoos and piercings. Yet they were excited about his gratitude upon receiving their card.
“He said it made his day because that’s probably the only Valentine he’d get all day,” Michael said.
Michael wants to teach the younger generation how to reach out to those in need through following the examples of others with their own hands-on experiences. He said “little steps” like the Valentine’s Day challenge “get students to interact on a more face-to-face basis” with the broken, hurting and oppressed. In the process, Michael also is influencing the students’ families and their perceptions of those in need.
Currently Michael and other Westpoint pastors are working toward more involvement with the Maxey Center, a government-run community center in a lower-income, drug-infested area. The church leadership hopes to help develop programs that would allow believers to be a part of the lives of people in the community. Michael said he and his wife are seriously considering moving to the area in order to “do life” with the inhabitants of this neighborhood on a daily basis.
“We’re really praying through what we should do,” Michael said. “I’m drawn to the overlooked and forgotten. It’s who my heart breaks for, and who I think you see Christ in the most.”
Michael said segregation of communities within an area discourages interaction with the oppressed.
“We need to start living more in those communities, or at least spending a lot of time in there, listening to what are (their) needs.”
Another pastor’s wife is hoping to teach Zumba classes at the Maxey Center, while Michael is in the process of setting up a sports program that would enable Westpoint students to serve and minister there.
Michael said it’s crucial for students and adults alike to see the examples of their pastors challenging them to make a difference in the lives of the lost outside of their church walls. He said true leadership at his own church involves more than talking about impacting the lost, but taking action in doing so.
“We need to do it or shut our mouths,” Michael said. “(All pastors) can be great at teaching what we should do, but horrible at living that out. I feel we need to focus on doing more than teaching. The Bible becomes a living, breathing Word, and you can use your own personal life experiences instead of … telling about an example of someone else you read about in a book.
“Believers will do what they see, but it has to start with the pastors,” he said. “(They) are the ones who lead the masses. As they go, so their fellowship goes.”
Michael said acts of kindness to the hurting require selflessness, but don’t have to be magnificent feats involving large clothing drives or complicated programs.
“Let’s get our heads up from our rat race of life and start small by giving a cool drink of water to someone who’s thirsty,” he said. “It’s not hard to get a basketball and interact with students; it’s not hard to get a kid and take him out to get ice cream.
“A kid might need a father figure, not shoes.”
He said these simple acts at first may not seem adequate, but they “might be huge to someone who might not have a hot meal when they go home tonight, or someone who never plays basketball with an older person because he gets beat up by older people all the time.”
Michael knows he cannot stand alone in his work to teach students through experience, and asks for intercession on behalf of these efforts. He also asks for others to be living examples.
“Please pray with us in how we can engage the students more in reaching the hurting, oppressed and broken,” he said. “Let’s live radical and really see what Christ will do if we lay down our lives for others. He said that’s the greatest love we can show others.
“Let’s just do it.”
Written by Natalie Bunch. Natalie is a freelance writer for The Upstream Collective and lives in North Carolina. She served as a missionary writer based out of Prague, Czech Republic, from 2007-2009, and plans to return to full-time international mission work with her husband in a few years.
No comments yet.