Why we do what we do and what God does in the process

This blog post is written by Stillmeadow EFC's site leader, Ben Gehret.

During and before the week of BUMP, my working metaphor for BUMP was that they were simply a temporary bridge, as the name would suggest. They were in our community to serve as and create a bridge between our church and our neighborhood. As the attendees of the church, we needed to make as much use of the bridge as we could while we had it. The people, children and adults from our community got to witness a very visible, very active, arm of the holistic church at work. They saw people in maroon and grey BUMP shirts cleaning up the neighborhood, loving their kids, serving them food, giving them food to take home and doing everything within their power to show the love of Christ in a physical manner.

Over the course of the week, the BUMP students had several individuals, who they had no connection or direct interaction with, come up to them and thank them for what they were doing for our community. That blows my mind. It means that the work that was done in our community meant something. It means the 14 people that came from Community EFC made an immediate impact on this community that people recognized. It was over 100 degrees all this week and people from the community saw a bunch of “crazy church people” outside working hard with smiles on their faces, for no discernible reason other than because they wanted to. This begged the question of why, and we were able to share the answer with them. We were out there to show a physical act of God’s love to them by actively serving our community.

There were three different work locations the BUMP group served at in our community. They served at a soup kitchen, picking up trash, and serving food to those who were in need. They served at an organization aimed at raising awareness about and ending domestic human trafficking called The Samaritan Women. At Samaritan Women, they helped to prepare the grounds for their annual Freedom Barbecue, built a stage for the barbecue, and broke up and moved a massive pile of asphalt to build a road. The last location that the BUMP group served was at our church for a community food drop from the Maryland Food Bank, where we gave a way tons of fresh produce to anyone who came to the giveaway at the church.

The impact that this service and the VBS had is perhaps best summed up in a pair of stories. The first story demonstrates the impact of BUMP on the children who attended our VBS. There has been a young man we will call "Charles," who has attended each VBS we have had for about four years. He doesn’t come to our church any other week during the year, but every year, like clockwork, he shows up for BUMP week and VBS. Charles is now 17 and we have a special teen group for VBS at Stillmeadow because we have such a large teen presence at VBS every year.

This year was no exception. We had 20 different teenagers attend our VBS, however Charles is the particular student that I believe we had the most impact on. Charles came to the block party on Monday and I recognized him and began talking to him. He told me his uncle was in the hospital, and I was able to pray with him for his uncle that night. He came back the next night and during the teen group’s story time, he and his brother asked a lot of deep questions about God that the BUMP group and our church leaders were able to provide answers for.

The next day, Tuesday, he again came back to VBS and in the middle of story time, he received a phone call. He learned from this call that his uncle had been declared brain dead in the hospital. His internal organs had shut down and he was only being kept alive via life support. Needless to say Charles left that night. We all assumed that Charles wouldn’t be back for the rest of the week because of the nature of what was going on in his life, but the final two days he not only showed up, he was there early, and had dinner with the BUMP group. He could have been anywhere doing anything with his grief, but he chose to come to hang out with the BUMP kids who had prayed with him, and he understood cared for him and loved him in a way that he didn’t fully understand but desired and wanted deeply. Charles’ story is a perfect example of the effect that BUMP can have on a community. A “street kid” who understands the love of the church and Jesus because of a group of white kids from Harrisburg.

The second story pertains, not to the kids who attended the VBS, but to the BUMP kids themselves. This week the BUMP students heard five different speakers who taught them a multitude of lessons. Some of these lessons were spiritual, others pertained to social issues and others were designed to expand their understanding of the world around them. Despite these well thought out presentations, the thing that opened the eyes of the BUMP students most was a simple comment from one of the VBS students.The first day of VBS the lesson was on creation, and one of the prompts for the lesson was “What does your perfect world look like?” The answer that really brought home the differences between an urban setting and the setting of the students back home was this. “In my perfect world, you would be able to know the difference between the sound of fireworks and gunshots.”

The sad reality that really struck the BUMP students was that the children attending this VBS lived in a world where every loud boom and crack they heard over the 4th of July wasn’t a happy noise that lead to colors and awe in the sky, as they were used to. It was rather a noise so similar to one that brings sadness and death that a firework wasn’t a symbol of celebration and freedom, but was rather simple relief that they, or someone else, weren’t being shot at. This realization deeply moved many of the BUMP students. It was something completely foreign to them, but it was what people in this urban community face on a daily basis. It gave them a compassion and an understanding for the VBS students that I don’t think they otherwise would have had. It helped them see past some of the “tough guy” front that the VBS students put on and see the real people behind the act.

The value of BUMP for me and our church is in those two things. First, the BUMP group that came had their eyes opened to the situation and the people that live in an urban atmosphere. When they go home and see something negative on the TV about Baltimore, or Chicago, or New York, my hope is that they don’t just see thugs, gangsters and delinquents, as the media likes to portray low income urban residents, but they rather look back on this week and they remember that the people on TV are more than just the labels that are put on them. They are living breathing people who are deeply loved by God.

Secondly, that the kids in our community know and understand that there are people who love them at Stillmeadow Church. Every VBS student that was present on the last day of VBS received a Bible and a few people from Stillmeadow wrote their personal cell phone numbers in the Bibles that were handed out to the teen group with the instruction if they ever needed anything ever at any time, or had any questions about what they read in the Bible that they could call that number and the person on the other end of the line would help them with whatever was going on the the best of their ability.

This week, God was honored, our community was showed His love, and the BUMP students that arrived Sunday morning, were different than the ones that left us on Saturday morning. Their perspective is different, and the lessons that they learned they will be able to take back to their community and being to change the mindsets of others there. Because of BUMP, not one, but two communities will be changed, and impacted for the Kingdom of God, and to me, that is what matters.

BUMP Baltimore 2016 Photo Essay

Off to a great start!

Monday

Today was our first full day of BUMP. The students were excited to get started with their work in the community with Stillmeadow Evangelical Free Church. In the morning we went to work with The Samaritan Women. The Samaritan Women is an organization that works with women who come out of the sex trafficking industry and works to rehabilitate them while providing a safe environment and practical job training. While there we did various jobs such as moving asphalt to make a road, pulling weeds, and helping them prepare for their freedom barbeque event. Megan, their volunteer coordinator, also gave us a presentation on human trafficking.

            In the afternoon we heard a talk from a lady at Stillmeadow named Yorell. She talked to us from John 4 about what personal evangelism should look like as a Christian. We then set up and hosted a community block party. It was a great event where we got to meet kids from the community and preview the week to come at VBS. It was great first day of learning and serving as a team!

Tuesday

            Today was our first day of Vacation Bible School! We had about 60-70 kids from the whole neighborhood ranging from pre-school to juniors and seniors in high school. The kids played games, did crafts, and learned about the creation story in our Bible time. We had many kids asking good, reflective questions about the Gospel and how God’s word intersects with their lives.

            Additionally, that morning, we helped out with a bi-weekly food drive that was hosted by Stillmeadow. We unloaded food off of the truck, unpacked and organized it, and helped those who came to the drive transport food. This was an incredibly fruitful time not just because we were able to help provide food to those in the community but also because several of the people who came with no connection to the church brought their kids back for VBS and got connected to the church. Also, we heard a presentation from Danise Jones-Dorsey, the executive director of My Brother’s Keeper which is a local soup kitchen in the community. She spoke about the reality of hunger in our country’s cities and how My Brother’s Keeper seeks to provide food, housing, healthcare, and job training for those in need. All in all, it was a great day of ministry and God is to be praised for all of it!

Wednesday

Today was our day off! We decided to go to the Baltimore Zoo for the morning and afternoon. It was a relaxing and fun time with our group. We then returned to the church and prepared for VBS. We had a similar amount of kids for our second night of VBS as the first. In our Bible story we talked about sin and the Fall. The kids learned that all the human sin and overall brokenness of our world comes as a result of mankind’s willful rebellion against God. They also learned though of the hope promised in Someone who would defeat sin and set everything right. It was another great night of interacting with the kids and showing them the love of Christ.

30 Days of Prayer for BUMP Baltimore

Join us in prayer for BUMP Baltimore 2016! God goes before...

BUMP Amidst Safety Concerns

by Cedric Lundy, Middle School Pastor since 2006 and three-peat BUMP Baltimore participant, Church at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC     

After being on the bus for no more than twenty minutes, we pulled over to the side of the street and began unloading onto the sidewalk. This was the neighborhood where we would be doing a prayer walk and cleanup, while our guide and ministry partner for the afternoon told us about the social dynamics of the area. The neighborhood we were in was a low-income, working class part of the city of Baltimore. The fact that we were in a neighborhood vastly different than the comfort of south Charlotte was not lost on my students. Most of them had never been this close to poverty in their life.

Poverty wasn’t the biggest feature of the neighborhood to stand out. Directly across the street from where we were dropped off as the bus found a place to park was Pimlico Race Course, Home of The Preakness. Here we are doing a prayer walk and picking up trash in a poverty stricken neighborhood and directly across the street, a stones throw away, is the second leg of The Triple Crown of horse racing.

We eventually began making our way down the sidewalk on this main avenue lined with storefronts. I can still vividly picture the looks on the faces of the people, all of which were African-American, in the barber shop and hair salon watching in utter amazement at this group of thirty middle school kids (only three of which were black) as we strolled through their neighborhood. Finally one tall man having stopped dead in his tracks coming out of a convenience store asked the obvious question, “You all aren’t from around here. What are you doing here?” One of the students answered just as we had instructed them, “We’re a church youth group from Charlotte, North Carolina and we’ve come for a week long mission trip to love on the city of Baltimore.” His response was quick and authoritative, “God bless you kids, that you’d come all this way to love on Baltimore, when you could be home playing video games or at summer camp.”

That was the overwhelming response we received that day, including when we went to a back lot parking lot known for being a local hang out for everyday people to get drunk and/or high. Under the curious gaze of onlookers, we picked up trash and prayed. Even in the midst of whatever haze they were under from the alcohol or drugs the people back there self-medicating their inner pain inquired of our purpose and why we were back there. I will never forget these individuals, not all but most, upon discovering who we are and why we were there, asking to be prayed for, joining us in prayer, praying for our kids, and strongly admonishing them to stay away from the poisons they had given their life over to. It was powerful moment for two reasons: love and feet on the ground to be the good news made our students more than safe from harm. It made them honored and welcomed ambassadors of peace and healing. Secondly, it softened the hearts of the students to see people despite their circumstances and choices as human beings.

It’s been four years since that experience - our first BUMP mission trip to Baltimore. We are scheduled to go a third time this summer. You’d have to be living under a rock to not have clue what has happened in Baltimore over the past three weeks. Admittedly, I was under said rock up until the day before the rioting and looting occurred on April 20^th. I had been at a conference, the last half of the previous week and weekend. Back at my church in time for Sunday services, I had two parents of students signed up for BUMP approach me wanting assurances regarding safety, and this was before the tension in Baltimore had crescendo into citizens throwing rocks at law enforcement officers and fires being lit in the streets.

In the weeks since, things have calmed down some. Yet, questions of safety remain and rightfully so.  If you are reading this you are likely a parent or youth worker with these concerns not only for Baltimore, for other BUMP trips to urban centers of our country. The reality is many of the cities BUMP trips are scheduled for sit on a knife’s edge. One event could light the decade’s full powder keg of social injustice, poverty and economic inequality—and the list goes on—leading to more images that give cause for concern.

           Since the events in Ferguson much of the church has responded by talking about the realities of white privilege. I’m not convinced those conversations have been productive. It has led to sharp disagreement on the social dynamics at play in our urban centers and culpability of whites and other outsiders. It has shifted the focus off the real complaint of whom urban communities are at odds with. They are not at odds with white people in general but rather with the tactics of police and law enforcement agencies regardless of their skin color. 

          Mostly it is unproductive because it isn’t leading to the church doing the very things that BUMP is designed to do: make a bridge to urban areas of our nation with the gospel-filled mission of healing and loving the marginalized. Healing happens when the privileges some Christ Followers enjoy become the vehicle taking them into hurting communities to love and serve. 

         I could list some very practical reasons why I believe our students serving on all BUMP trips will be safe, but instead I’ll keep it simple and true. Few, if anyone, will want to hurt them because they will be too blown away and amazed that a bunch of teenagers from hundreds of miles away came to love on their city and the people who call it home. 

30 Days to BUMP 2015!

We're only 30 days away from the start of four weeks of BUMP 2015 in Baltimore! Join us in praying for the ministry of Stillmeadow EFC in Baltimore this summer, as they double the number of BUMP weeks reaching into their community. Print off the prayer calendar for ideas of daily focus.

Day 6: The Last Day

This is the last day that the team will be spending in Baltimore before heading heading home on Saturday.
The day started off with Ms. Jeannette speaking about about racism when she was growing up and at her work. The team listened to every word she said and took it to heart.

We sent another group of 5 kids to My Brother's Keeper to help serve the meal that day.  Rebecca, Jared, Matt S., Rachel, Cody had the wonderful opportunity to work in the kitchen and on the serving floor of My Brother's Keeper. They all worked hard and had a servant's heart while serving.

For VBS that night had the last two parts of the pirate skit, the bible stories, crafts, and games.  All the kids that came had a great time doing everything.  We ended the VBS night with an ice cream party that perfectly capped  off the great week.  It was hard to say goodbye to all the kids because they had made an impact on the team.

As is typical of BUMP weeks, the impact and learning goes both ways. While giving, teams receive. While serving, God reveals and blesses. "God challenged me to pray through issues and obstacles that come up in life and to love on people."