Nashville 2012 - Youthquake

By Seth Nix

Philippians 3:3-4 says, “Don’t be selfish; don’t try to impress others. Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves. Don’t look out only for your own interests, but take an interest in others, too.” This verse was a reoccurring theme as I watched the young group from Burlington, NC take to the streets. Youth Quake is a youth group whom the Awakening looks forward to serving every year. Led by Pastor Brad Chandler, they are always a ferocious group ready to take on any project we throw in their paths.

As I spent this incredible week with these students I began to wonder, what is it to humble oneself? What does it mean to think of others as BETTER than YOU? It was, and still is, a task that does not come easy. As I watched the youth on their first night, doing homeless ministry, I was continuously amazed. Not one student was impressed with himself or herself. For one night everyone just lived amongst his or her peers. Taking “an interest in others” and not just themselves. 

Every week, Mission 615 visits an apartment complex and goes door to door. They invite children to come get a free snow cone and hot dog. Part of the student’s job was to visit these children’s apartments. In the past, it was interesting; we would knock on a door, invite a kid, and move to the next house on our list. This time was different. As we approached the first door, we looked at the names of these children and prepared our speech. The door opened and these two boys came walking outside. Danshawn and Daniel did not seem very happy as they walked out of their apartment. My group immediately took to them, asking them how their day was, inviting them to have snow cones, and getting them excited for the day. Our next move was to ditch our list and focus on these two boys. We asked the boys to direct us to their friends so we could invite them! They took us all around the apartment complex, and those two boys multiplied into fifteen kids. We eventually made our way back to the group and started serving snow cones to over one hundreds kids and adults. Youth Quake did an amazing job serving kids! I looked around to see Pastor Brad being the perfect example of love. Five kids gathered around Brad as he directed their next play in football.

When everything was over I felt like the kids from Burlington were not finished. On the last day, Pastor Brad pulled all of his youth together and began to cast a vision out for their own town. Asking, “What can we do, simple things, to continue this in Burlington?”

It’s fairly easy to go on a mission trip and pat ourselves on the back, thinking our experience is over. But on the contrary, it’s never over. The homeless and the broken do not only reside in Tennessee, or outside of this country. They are all around us. The students of Youth Quake really captured Philippians 3 in their hearts, “Be humble, thinking of others as better than yourselves.” That is why they are taking the gospel to their home and continuing to pursue broken families and broken lives throughout Burlington, North Carolina.