• The Samuel Servant Project.
• Search Institute’s youth-led service-learning project.
• Greenleaf Center for Servant-leadership.
• Partners in Hope (Mexico City seminars; local, global service).
• The Mexican Association for Rural and Urban Transformation (identifies local needs in Mexico).
• Vocation: Discerning our Callings in Life by Douglas J. Schuurman (Eerdmans, 2004).
"God was using the telephone pole.”
This was one teenager’s observation when asked how God was at work during a community’s bitter argument over the war in Iraq.
The
telephone pole had become the neighborhood kiosk, where residents
posted their opinions and rebuttals. Authorities saw the pole-posting
as a nuisance and posted their own sign—an ordinance that banned
posting things to the pole. But the teenager saw the pole differently:
a type of cross upon which people could nail their fears, anxieties,
anger and hate. The pole and God were both strong enough to bear this
weight.
The teenager, Emmanuel Livingstone, was part of the Samuel Service Project, a service-learning partnership of Luther Seminary, St. Paul, Minn.; Augsburg College,
Minneapolis; and Lutheran Youth Networking in Christ, a joint ministry
of the St. Paul Area and Minneapolis Area synods. It was funded by Thrivent Financial for Lutherans.
Youth
and adults from rural, suburban and urban congregations in the two
synods gathered under the Samuel Service Project for three years—all on
their way to creating their own local service-learning project. Their
three years were spent following three steps: discernment, discovery
and service.
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