Gather Up

A few years ago now (whoa!), Elon started a new leadership program through the Kernodle Center for Service Learning. Elon sends hundreds of students out into the community to volunteer through class requirements, clubs, fraternities, and sororities, and Leaders in Collaborative Service (LINCS) aims to better connect Elon with our community partners.

I was in my second service-learning course at Elon when the LINCS program began to come together, and I knew that there was no better way to combine my love for the Boys and Girls Club with my desire to share my passion for service with my peers. I was one of the first three LINCS at Elon, and I loved my time at the Boys and Girls Clubs. In addition to directly serving with the kids at the after school program and helping out with the Club’s basketball program, I managed all of the Elon volunteers that came through the Club. If there was a need with the staff at the Club, I got to brainstorm and utilize my Elon contacts and resources to try and meet that need. Most importantly, though, I got to work with my fellow Elon students and encourage them to not only serve their community, but to learn from their interactions with children and community members on a much deeper level. Instead of asking them to merely sit and practice spelling words with a third grader who struggles to recite his alphabet in the correct order, I got to push them to see literacy issues come alive in children who don’t always have someone give them their undivided attention. I got to challenge them to reach out to that child who normally wouldn’t get the time of day from other white people around them. I got them to view the world for what it is – not the world that is easy for them to see on a daily basis.

What I love about my job with CSM, is that it is 100% youth ministry, 100% direct service in the community, and 100% a synthesis of these two passions. Yet again I get to push students and adult leaders to see the world (specifically New York City) in a way that challenges and pushes them towards reality. New York is an exciting and flashy city, but it is also diverse, thriving, hurting, growing, desperate, and disparate, all at the same time. There is beauty in these, but there is also pain. As a city host, I get to serve alongside my groups at soup kitchens, food pantries, and after school programs, then go back to the housing site with them at night to reflect, process, and discuss the day’s activities. Then I get to push them to see behind the dirt and grime of the city, and embrace the people that they got to serve that day. I get to encourage them to see Christ in the faces of the people I have come to know and love.

This is a song I use for almost every group that comes through CSM, and I think it perfectly puts our role in this city into perspective. Peter Bradley Adams seems to be right on target for anyone out to make a difference in this world. Again, it’s not about beating people upside the head with the Gospel. It’s about SHOWING them the love of Christ by how we live and love.

What do you think?

“Gather Up”
By Peter Bradley Adams

Gather up in the arms of your pity
the sick, the depraved, the desperate, the tired
all the scum of this weary city
gather up in the arms of your love
those who expect no love from above

I ask you this, which way to turn
I ask you this, which sin to bear
which crown to put upon my hair
I do not know, I do not know

I wait to take the hand of love, with every one you gather up
I wait to take the hand of love,
come every one, come gather up

there's lonely people in the lonely night
they grab a lonely dream and they hold it tight
there's lonely people in the lonely day
who work to sit their dream away

so I ask you this, which way to turn
I ask you this, which sin to bear
which crown to put upon my hair
I do not know, I do not know

I wait to take the hand of love, with every one you gather up
I wait to take the hand of love,
come every one, come gather up
won't you gather in your arms, gather in your arms