center for student missions Resources

At Salt and Sea Mission, we always assist with the morning worship service before handing out food for the food pantry. Then students need to be prepared to hand out clothes, visit with the dozens of regular attenders, clean the kitchen, sort and repack food, or whatever else the mission's pastor needs.

I am reading a book that a former staff member blessed me with called: Here and Now by Henri Nouwen. An excerpt out of the book is called "From Competition to Compassion".

"Compassion - which means, literally, 'to suffer with' - is the way to the truth that we are ourselves, not when we differ from others, but when we are the same."
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"It is not "excelling" but "serving" that makes us most human. It is not proving ourselves to be better than others but confessing to be just like others that is the way to healing and reconciliation."

Every Wed night we have a praise night out on the beach at Coney Island with all of the groups that are here. So we have a time of worship, some testimonies, a time of teaching, and then some small group time

As we were closing the night I was talking to the group about prayer. The verse I read to them, the theme verse for my CSM experience, was Ephesians 3:20, which I’ve talked about before. It reads,
"Now all glory to God! By his mighty power at work within us, he is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask of hope." I also shared this story:

I've been thinking all day about whether or not our society has become completely blinded by injustice. It is something I feel that we may have become accustomed to. Being at CSM this summer has really opened my mind to that possibility. It almost seems at times that we only see what we want to even after we've been exposed to it, served in it, lived in it, and been educated about it. So I guess my question is how do we not become immune to such a massive systemic issue? How do we expose teens to something that doesn't make them feel guilty and get stuck in the guilt?