Spring Serve 2012 (The Branch & Haven)

On Satuday, April 7, 2012; the day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the day nothing much happens at local churches, something rad happened in Whatcom County.  The Branch, which is an emerging adult ministry (18-30ish year olds) of Sunrise Baptist Church in Custer, WA, together with Haven, another local emerging adult ministry, engaged a gospel initiative we called Spring Serve. 

Driven by emerging adults themselves, Spring Serve became an opportunity for 40 emerging adults to be together; to serve together, to feast together, to worship together.  We had three primary missions:  Serve widows, orphans, and street folks.  The mission ventures were various.  One team spent the afternoon with a bunch of kids from a housing complex in Bellingham doing craft projects and sidewalk chalk and playing chase and Frisbee and jumping rope.  Many of these kids are “system kids” or kids that bounce in and out of foster care or other social service agencies.  Another team set up a coffee table on the street in downtown Bellingham.  They spent the afternoon serving coffee, tea, pastries, love and Bibles to street folks; to whoever wanted whichever…kids or adults, rich or poor, clothed or naked.  Still another three teams served three different widows throughout the county.  One in Lynden was the widow of a World War II Doolittle Raider pilot.  One on the Lummi First Nations Reservation was a widow of a fisherman.  One just outside Bellingham toward Mt. Baker was a widow with a small farm that was severely overgrown.  With hands and feet and rakes and mowers and an excavator, much work got done. 

We wrapped up the day as I suppose those first disciples of a young and Spirit led movement might have 2000 years ago.  We had a feast.  We shared stories from the day.  We sang to our great God and creator.