Skip to main content

Memphis Street Reach Days 1 and 2

The team from First Baptist Church, Monroe departed on Saturday afternoon around 3:30 bound for Memphis, TN. To help make the 10+ hour drive more palatable, we stopped in Knoxville, TN for the night, and drove the remaining 5 hours across Tennessee on Sunday to reach Brinkley Heights Urban Academy, which during the summer serves as the host site for Street Reach Memphis. SRM is a 20+ year old ministry birthed out of the hearts of the small congregation of Brinkley Heights Baptist who desired to see their community changed. Now they welcome mission teams from all over the country to work in the eastern portion of inner-city Memphis each summer.
Our team of 12 adults and students was assigned to a site known as "National" where we conduct backyard Bible clubs for children in the area. On Monday morning we welcomed about 65 children between the ages of 3-14, and on Tuesday, we joined with about 50 children. Our mornings consist of canvassing the area in teams to knock on doors and invite children to come to the park, while the actual club portion consists of opening games, rotation through stations of Bible stories and games, before finally serving each child a lunch provided by the area school system. When the club is over, our teams return the children to their homes.
Our afternoons provide us the opportunity to participate in a mission activity of our choice. Monday afternoon saw us participating in a prayer walk around our club site area, and then Tuesday afternoon we had the chance to work in a nearby laundromat providing free washes to customers and if they would like, a time of prayer. Our team from FBCM is here along with churches from Tennessee, North Carolina, Texas, and Arkansas, all serving at different club sites all over the city.
We have had great weather, and even greater opportunities to develop relationships with area children through sharing stories about people who chose to follow Jesus. We certainly have been challenged in different ways, but also have seen the ways we have grown. Our desire to apply what we learn/experience in Monroe is strong, and we can't wait to see what else God does with us this week.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Just Because We Can Doesn't Mean We Should

Over the last ten weeks the sanctuary at First Baptist Monroe has sat dormant. Though we haven't been worshiping in that space, worship has continued via a more intimate setting in our church's choir room beamed up into airwaves for people to participate in on all manner of personal devices. I have missed being able to gather with our folks there, and when I walk through it now, something is definitely missing. It is a vast understatement to say the COVID-19 pandemic has overturned our very way of life. Restrictions on work, retail, recreational, and social activities have hit us all hard. Like a two year old toddler, the first instance or two of being told "no" might slip right by us, but after repeated denials, that opposition often grows into anger-filled defiance before generating fits of rage-fueled outbursts. It happens. Churches are no stranger to this as the recent push to allow congregants to gather in NC has made its way through the court system. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reconstructing Our Own "Cathedral of Innovation"

The other day I came across a fascinating article about a recent facility acquisition made by Audible, Inc., the Amazon subsidiary that provides audiobooks and other storytelling services on its well-designed app (of which I happen to be a frequent user). The company had purchased an old rundown building just down the street from its headquarters in Newark, NJ, believing it could be a center of innovation and development not only for the company’s products but also for their community. Your first thought is likely that what they purchased was a warehouse, a former storefront, or possibly an abandoned apartment building. What would you say if I told you what they purchased was a church? Yes, Audible, Inc. purchased what was formerly Newark’s Second Presbyterian Church. Having been constructed in 1933, the church at one time had as many as 10,000 members at its height in the middle of the 20th century. The church closed in 1995 due to declining membership and the space was used as a sc...
Post a Comment
Read more

8 Keys to Success in Your Child's Sports/Faith Relationship

NOTE : The following is an abbreviated format of material that was presented in a workshop I led on Saturday January 20 at a parents conference held by our local association of Baptist churches. The workshop was entitled "Sports in the Christian Home."  Do we have a sports fanatics problem? The picture to the left is taken from Twitter last month. It shows a person in the Atlanta area who was so excited at the Georgia Bulldogs SEC championship victory, that he saw fit to attach a flat-screen TV to his car and played the game on a loop for everyone to see on his daily commute. I have to admit... that is a first for this sports addict.  As someone who has participated in sport in a variety of ways (athlete, coach, college-administration, and a high-school official in two sports), I have seen just about everything when it comes to people's passion. This passion is not lost on our nation's teenagers and children who participate in athletics with unprecedented leve...
Post a Comment
Read more