Others-Oriented Service: Core Value #2

John Vandervelde - Program Director

On Friday I received a note from an elderly widow who lives in Eagle River, WI.  This summer a crew of 10 high school girls from our Discipleship Training Program (DTP) worked at her house for two days.  These young women helped clean her windows, mow her yard, pick up brush, and do other odd jobs around the house.  Her note was hand-written on an out-of-style thank you note, and it simply said, "Thank you for coming over and helping me.  You worked so hard and with such excitement.  I was truly blessed."  I was touched by her kind note and reflected on those two days and not only how much work was accomplished, but also how much those 10 young women learned about themselves and how God wants them to live. 

Core Value #2 here at HoneyRock is "Others-Oriented Service."  Serving others has been a core value at HoneyRock since the beginning, and in the last few years we've expanded opportunities to serve others in all of our programs.  Over the last 4 summers we've been reaching out to the Three Lakes and Eagle River communities in partnership with our local church, the Three Lakes Evangelical Free Church.  Through God's strength and guidance we've been able to help many people in need and have been blessed by the relationships we've established.

At HoneyRock the purpose for all of our work serving others is very clear.  First, we believe that hard work and service are great developers of people.  Working hard all day teaches young people life lessons in self-discipline, perseverance, motivation, and teamwork.   Like the Puritan work ethic, we believe work becomes one of the means by which a person lives out his or her relationship to God.  Secondly, we believe service is a key part of character development and discipleship.  All throughout Scripture we see Jesus involved in and involving his disciples in acts of service.  From the feeding of the 5,000 to the healing of the sick, Christ used service to develop his disciples.  I’d even venture to say that if we are true disciples of Christ we must be involved in serving others, particularly the less fortunate.  The third reason for the missional focus of our programs is that being involved in service, especially with those who are in need, softens our hearts and tears down our selfish desires and entitlement mentality.  Through service projects we see campers' and students' lives change in terms of what they think of themselves and what they think of other people.  They go home and live different, more Christ-centered and others-centered lives because of their service experiences at HoneyRock.   Finally, we know there are great needs in our world and we want to involve our high school students in helping to meet some of those needs in practical ways.  God doesn’t need us to do his work, but he chooses to use us anyway.  When we work hard for God, we bring him honor and glory and we further his Kingdom here on earth.  This is His call and His command and we want to serve and follow Him.  

Sometimes we get stuck thinking that serving others has to be a really organized and overly planned kind of an event.  That's just not true.  When campers and students are working hard to serve others at HoneyRock, I always tell them that they can live every day of their lives just like this.  I tell them, "You don't have to come to HoneyRock or go on a missions trip to be about serving others; there are needs all around us if we just open our eyes and stop focusing so much on ourselves and our needs." 

So the challenge for today: who is someone you can serve in your world?  Let's stop, take a look around, and see where God might be encouraging us to serve others right in our own community.  

Below are a few pictures of the 2009 DTP group splitting and stacking firewood that will be donated to people who use wood as their sole source of heat in the winter.  The DTP group also ran a Vacation Bible School in South Minneapolis in partnership with Park Ave. Church.