Every year the NYI Zaanstad goes on a weekend camp! The pictures of this camp are online now. Please visit the |
The Beggar Project
Written by Dennis Mohn
|
|
I shared an experience I had while preaching at an Open Air service in the local park in the summer of 2008. While I was giving my very important and God inspired message there was this one drunken beggar in the front of the audience yelling that I should stop, that he got the point and that it would be enough. That man certainly irritated me since I had some faithful Christians to please. When the beggar started to talk to his friend on his cell phone I almost exploded. He was telling his friend that he is sitting in the park listening to some guy talking about God and he just doesn’t stop talking. It was a unique experience. In my preparation for the sermon for the D-Vote service I stumbled across a passage in Hebrews 13:1-2: “Keep on loving each other as brothers. Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.”
I think that there is not much explanation needed because everyone knows where he stands. Here is the idea the D-Vote leadership had. They dressed up a church member as a beggar, hid a camera in a van across the street, equipped him with a hidden microphone, and let him walk around in front of the church begging for money while people arrive for church. The video is not made to put people down and show others off but it certainly works as a mirror for all of us. Watch the clip:
|
For the last D-Vote youth service the leadership team came up with a great idea. The theme of the service was ‘
Reading this passage God made clear to me that this man is also someone He asks me to love. When Jesus explained to the Pharisees that the second commandment is like the first one He made clear that those two commandments go hand in hand. You can’t love God without loving your neighbor. And you can’t truly love your neighbor without loving God. A question that comes up is how real my love for Jesus is if I have trouble loving that beggar? Reading 1 John 3:16 only confirms this question: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”
Comments