Instead of waiting for students to discover their "radical" edges, United Campus Ministry (UCM) in Kalamazoo, Michigan, tries to precipitate that discovery. For the past four years at UCM, we have used a service/learning program to move students out of their safe environment. We work with students who may never attend a traditional church but who are eager to go into "unsafe" places in the world: the inner city, the villages of Mexico, a Haitian hospital, the neighborhoods of our own small city.
Often in reflection, students discover that they receive more than they give. They touch the homeless and are taught; they touch the wounded and are healed; they touch the hungry and are filled. "Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me." Students touch the wounds of Jesus and become his hands and heart. Lives are converted even if doctrine remains unspoken.
In a final reflection, senior Mick Lopez wrote:
When I decided to volunteer with kids for a few hours on Saturday mornings, I really had no concept of the spiritual journey on which I was about to embark. Ive always had a humanistic approach to life. However, my humanism was empty, based on nothing more than an ideal to do good. [Through my service work, Ive discovered that] we are all connected by something deeper than ourselves.
Reaching out to those who need to feel Gods love has become not only a social responsibility for me but a moral one as well. We are all united by our salvation. But without [this experience], I know I would still be trying to do good without really understanding how or why someone elses liberation is connected to my own.
Although Mick was never involved in the "religious" aspect of our ministry (Bible study or traditional worship), he had awakened to the spiritual. He had encountered God in the lives of the children he had served.
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