SPU Community?
Class was cancelled this morning. I got coffee and walked around Queen Anne: up into the areas I've never seen before, like past the graveyard and down through the neighborhoods. As I was walking I tried to imagine what it would be like to live outside of Robbins in the future. Not necessarily while I'm college, but in the future, like say ten or twenty years.
If I lived in the neighborhood surrounding SPU I'd be wondering where the students are. To a certain extent, neighbors probably appreciate how much we keep on campus and how rarely the rowdy students run screaming through the neighborhoods. In that regard, I think that SPU is a good neighbor to Queen Anne. We keep to ourselves like Queen Anne residents keep to themselves.
But SPU is part of a bigger community than just the dorms and perhaps the on campus apartments...
We are a college that preaches that we are to, "engage the culture and change the world." I don't know why I often feel like I'm the only one trying to live out this motto in my life...NOW. Okay, not the only one, and I'm definitely not good at it, but I feel like students don't think of this as a life call for their lives at THIS point in time. I see the majority of students thinking, "How will I engage the culture and change the world in the workforce once I graduate?" We are called to be living sacrifices for Christ: that includes RIGHT NOW, at this point in our lives, with the little experience we have and the little amount of time we have beyond our studies. If I were a neighbor to this school, knowing that this is the motto of the school, I'd also be wondering where this engaging force is.
WHY do we keep to ourselves so much?
We have an open chapel every Tuesday that's student led. Do the neighbors of SPU know that they're invited to this?
How can we affect the lives of the people living in our area? (without affecting them with loud laughter at 3 in the morning...stuff like that)
I for sure don't have an answer to this, but I do think that we need to seriously consider how to live out this motto. I get so stuck in thinking about the community of Robbins that I forget that we should be looking to the outside and people we affect around us. I think we can have a bigger impact on those people around us.
Then again...
There is so much to be done within the community at SPU. Robbins hardly feels like its a part of the SPU culture. We're so removed, along with many of the other CHA units. Do we need to be putting ALL of our effort into making this community better for the older/commuter students? Should we be making our own student body perfect before going out into the community?
I'd say no. We will never be perfect. That's like waiting to be perfect in our spiritual walks before ministering to others. We are broken vessels, and Christ uses us just as we are. Perfect community or not, we can be used through the power of the Holy Spirit. To focus only on ourselves is selfish and we can easily ignore opportunities presented to us in our current lives.
MY HEART GOES OUT
She sat a table away
Staring into space
In her own little world
And I saw a tear in her eye
Like a window to the mind
Of a frightened little girl
She never said a word
But I know I clearly heard
A cry for help
And I wanted to answer
I wanted to tell her
CHORUS:
My heart goes out to you
You don't even know me
You don't even know
Oh my heart goes out to you
And I don't know what else to do
To reach you now
My heart goes out
Let me do what I can do to reach you now
My heart goes out
Yeah
My heart goes out to the neighborhoods surrounding SPU. How do we reach these people? They don't even know that there are students who care and want to reach out. Gospel Choir went to Boston this spring to sing with Berklee School of Music and do some other things while we were there. We went as a short term missions trip- being a light for Berklee and Boston as a whole. We went on a prayer walk one free evening and everywhere we went we were as intentional as possible to be stewerds of the Word and be a living example of Christ. I get so caught up in my own life that I forget to be that living example in my daily routine. Why don't I treat Seattle as a short term missions trip? Or even better, like an incarnational ministry opportunity? I don't need to go into the ghettos of Chicago or the tribes of Africa to be used by God. I'm being used by God right here, right now, here at SPU and in the surrounding Seattle area. I want to live my life in a way that reflects that opportunity.
My Initial Rambling Ideas about what to do:
*Prayer walks
*Get involved in more community activities (through church, through the city?)
*Build relationships with regular people in the community (go to the same store at the same time...get to know the grocer, get to know the regular vendors at the Fremont market, I don't know)
*Queen Anne is an upperclass part of town, are there any service projects that we could do in the area?
I seem to focus on the physical needs to people to be in "ministry". If people don't need food, we don't need to go there- they don't need us. But this is completely faulty thinking. Going on missions trips, I often find that the physically needy are the ones that teach me the most about spirituality. I'm the needy one, just in different ways. People in Queen Anne don't physically need anything, but I bet there are people in Queen Anne who are spiritually needy. These types are hard to reach out to, but I want to figure out a way to do so.
"For God, who said, 'Let light shine out of darkness,' made His light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ." 2 Corinthians 4:6
Go in love and peace.