A Family on Mission
[These posts are intended not to highlight that we are experts in these areas or we have these things perfected but more that we feel like these are practices worth doing and are foundations for our family as we think about our lives as missionaries in this city.]
New York City is a place of possibilities and adventure, a city where pretty much anything you want to do, taste, hear or see is at your disposal. Edward Glaeser in his book, Triumph of the City, describes New York as a city billed as an, "urban theme park" and as one of a few cities that started the trend of consumer cities, places where people would move to find and experience all the pleasures of life. Though this is one of the things we do love about our city, it is also something we have be very wary of as a family as we think about why God has us here.
We believe that God has us here in Brooklyn not merely to be blessed, to get and to have but to be a blessing, to serve and give away, as Tim Keller put it in his book Center Church, "The urban society in God's plan is based on service, not on selfishness." We have come to recognize the very real pull to selfishness in reducing our New York life to what we get out of it and so we have sought to purposefully plan, what we hope can be monthly family service opportunities where we are serving together as a family in ways that serve and bless others.
We have done this a few times already with Here's Life Inner City and their Easter and Thanksgiving boxes of love. Meal boxes are packed and distributed to churches around the city in needy areas where then those churches can go into the community with these boxes as an opportunity to open doors to relationship and show love and meet needs. We are also really excited to serve at Plenty Farm, a community garden started by a life group at Trinity Grace that grows produce in Bedford-Stuyvesant that is then redistributed through a local church to people in the community and that is also working with the community to see the garden be a community builder in the neighborhood.
We believe that God has called to live and minister here in this amazing, immense and needy city and be here not just to be entertained. We want to instill this in our girls through these simply but purposeful moments as they grow up here and we pray that as we seek to be a blessing it allows us the opportunity to share the greatest blessing and gift humans could ever receive, Jesus.
