At the beginning of June, I knew the next month and a half or so would be absolutely crazy. I had 3 weeks of camp followed by moving into my house and my brother being here and then a week of VBS and I finished it up with a mission trip to Arizona. I had my work cut out for me. As I sit here at the end of a hectic month and a half, looking back at it, I can only say how thankful I am to have experienced all of it. Part of me feels bad that I wasn’t around as much as I could/should have been. But at the same time, I have been encouraged, strengthened, enlightened to a degree, and I feel better equipped to be a good youth pastor and an even better Christian because of it. It’d be easy to pour into all that I’ve experienced this summer, but hopefully you are okay with me focusing on the mission trip in this article, because it was by far the most transformational of all the things I have done this summer.
I’m writing this on Thursday, July 22nd. Jean and Dee Sherer, Travis Nanchoff, and I got back from an eye-opening mission trip to Arizona 5 days ago and am still processing through what I experienced, saw, and learned on that trip. I think we have this idea that the life we experience is often the norm for most people; that life in Lima, Ohio is similar to life in most cities around this country. After going to Arizona, I can comfortably tell you that is not the case. There is still strong, and I mean shockingly strong, racism in this country. There are still people in this country that when you say “Jesus”, they say “who?” And the most troubling part is that there are churches in this country that seem to be okay with that, and that really upsets me, and I hope it upsets you too. We flew into Arizona on a Saturday and got to where we stayed for the week by mid afternoon, thanks in large part to all the time changes. Saturday was a hard day of traveling, but Sunday was a pretty easy day. Monday was when the real work, and fun, started as we ran a VBS Monday through Thursday during the mornings. In the afternoons and evenings, it was usually different things each day, be it cleaning up the campground we were staying at, handing out water and water filters to people, or going around door to door and praying for people.
But what really changed my perspective on this trip was what happened on I think Monday afternoon. The pastor at the Well, which was the church where we did VBS and sits on the outskirts of Winslow, sat us all down and gave us a rundown of the culture in the area, and what life on a Native American reservation is like. Now, Winslow isn’t on the reservation, but it is only about 20 miles south of the reservation, so they have a lot of interaction with Native Americans from the reservation. I’ll put it this way. The Native Americans are basically HATED by the white population in that area, particularly Winslow, where we stayed. We were told that Native Americans were usually treated as children that didn’t know anything. There was a Navajo man named Brian that worked with the church that was about as funny a man as you’ll meet. He is quite a character. But we were told that if he went to get an oil change then the people at the garage would question him about all these things and Brian couldn’t get anywhere with them. That is the norm for Native Americans in northern Arizona. We were also told that the churches in that area want next to nothing to do with Native Americans. They are happy to let The Well evangelize to the Native Americans because they didn’t want to because of their toxic view of Native Americans. I don’t know what that does to you, but let me say that being shocked doesn’t do it justice as to how I felt hearing that. We were told that there were about 10 churches in a mile and a half stretch of road that felt no need to change or to try to bring in more people because they were happy with church the way they had it. It scares me to think what that will do to the spiritual/moral condition of that area in the coming years.
But all that being said, the title of this article is By the Power of the Spirit. In Zechariah 4, a passage that is alluded to in Revelation, we are given a picture of a golden lampstand and two olive trees. It is a story of Zerubbabel being told that God will do a great thing in Israel, but it won’t be by might or power, but by God’s word. To a certain level, we experienced this during VBS. We were told not to expect many kids because of how most Native Americans felt about the church. But God stepped in. That is the only explanation. We never had fewer than 35 kids show up! By Thursday, we had a whopping 53 kids! And there’s nothing that we can say we did special. We just loved the kids that God gave us and let Him do the rest.
So let me leave you with this. There are places in this country where Christ is seldom preached, and where God is given a bad name by the church. However, as was shown to me and the rest of those at The Will in Winslow Arizona that week, God still does amazing things independent of human expectation. I hope that encourages you, because it really encouraged me.
So he said to me, “This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: ‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty. -Zechariah 4:6 NIV
