THE OUTREACH THAT WASN'T

Hours had gone into preparing the event both in class and our own time. We personally visited around 1000 homes and businesses, knocking on doors to personally invite people. We’d persuaded businesses to donate gifts and food, moved all our furniture, set up games, displays and a photo booth, and the whole auditorium was transformed into a coffee house area with couches, all decked out with a cozy fall theme. We’d rushed round like crazy that day from our outreach at a local food distribution ministry to helping at their warehouse and then back to set up. This meant a frantic dinner and a room full of girls jostling for bathroom and mirror space as we rushed to dress ourselves up and remove the traces of goodness knows what was clinging to us.We prayed and worshiped, the doors opened, the welcome team was stationed and ready, and......nothing. No-one. Ten minutes went by. Twenty. A couple of neighbours already known to us stopped by and hung out but otherwise still nothing. An hour and we began to fool around with the games. A little longer and the food and coffee began to disappear. Two hours and we were ‘closing’ for the night without a single guest. Our first student planned and led outreach and it was undoubtedly what the world would call a failure. It would be so easy to be disappointed and focus on that word and label the evening and all we’d done for it a failure.

And yet it wasn’t.

This is what pioneering looks like.

This is what it looks like to start something new.

And this wasn’t a failure but steps toward a new thing that God is beginning.

Traditionally this base has focused a lot of inner city outreach, and we still partake in that, but there was a strong feeling that we were to begin to impact this locale. That we were to begin to focus on the town of Smithtown itself where it’s so easy to see the immaculate houses, nice cars and designer brands and forget that there is still a deep, deep need for the knowledge and love of Jesus. Breaking into that is so much harder than on the streets of The Bronx where the need is so much more visible and people feel it much more acutely.

That event was intended to be a way of making connections, building relationships and connected this often-isolated community with each other. It didn’t work the way we thought, and it definitely doesn’t look like we think of as pioneering......but it was. As a team we grew through the challenges of working out the event. We had to set aside our inhibitions to go and knock on hundreds of doors and begin conversation with strangers to invite them but great conversations were had and relationships were established that we’ve since been following up on. We had to grow in obedience to the things God directed us toward and as a base we began to reach out to those God has put us in the middle of. As a result people began to see that we have a desire to serve them. What happened wasn’t failure, but just smaller steps than we’d hoped for toward the vision God has given for this base and its role in this town.

It’s huge for us to keep that context as we begin to plan our outreach to Nepal and realise that there are seasons where we see great fruit from our efforts but also seasons where we plant seeds and wait and pray and watch for what god does, sometimes years and years down the line.

The story of the party no-one came to is maybe not the story we expect to share in a newsletter that could be full of stories of what God is teaching me or ways I’ve seen him heal or provide.....but those stories also shape us and are an important part of the journey. Learning to see what God did in the middle of what didn’t happen is a choice we all needed to learn to make both as a team and together, not just for this season but for outreach and beyond.

One day the 12 of us students will be looking at the Facebook page and website and see the way this base impacts this community and be amazed at how much God has done with what began as hard, work, awkward conversations and hours of physical labour. For now we continue with the steps God has given us reaching out to the community in various ways through prayer stations and direct conversation, acts of service and acts of kindness and pray for a move of God right here in Smithtown.