SEEK: The Experience

One of the coolest experiences we get to have as missionaries is going to the annual national conference.  Whether it be a Student Leadership Summit or the larger SEEK conferences, it's a great experience.  It's a variation from the normal grind of campus work.  We get to sit back and look out on a sea of grace and watch God work in a more concentrated way on the hearts of these students.  It's hard to see sometimes when you work day-to-day with them, but when you're with them for a conference week you get to see the equivalent to a shot in arm in their walk with Christ.

FOCUS decided to document the journey of five students at our SEEK 2013 conference in Orlando and air it as a three-part miniseries on EWTN.  They just recently put the videos up on Youtube.  Meghan and I watched them back to back to back the other night and started reminiscing on the experience of conference.  We wanted to post them here so you all could get a glimpse at what it looked like a couple years ago as well as see some of the incredible types of students we get to work with.  ENJOY!

For some reason, I couldn't find Episode 2, so you'll have to look for it yourself on Youtube

Here's an interview about the series with the cameraman/producer Nick Falls and director Jeremy Rivera (2 missionaries working at the DSC on EWTN)

I was really moved by a line from an address Pope Francis gave at World Youth Day in Rio:

Where does Jesus send us?  There are no borders, no limits: he sends us to everyone.

The Gospel is for everyone, not just for some.

It is not only for those who seem closer to us,

more receptive,

more welcoming.

It is for everyone.

Do no be afraid to go and to bring Christ into every area of life,

to the fringes of society,

even to those who seem farthest away,

most indifferent.

The Lord seeks all,

He wants everyone to feel the warmth of his mercy and love.

Maybe that was a little more than a line... more like a paragraph or section, but still it's pretty convicting!  

I've been in some form of ministry either as a college student missionary or a full-time missionary for the past four-ish years, but I can't remember taking that call seriously ever.  I would always spend my time in ministry of those who I thought would hear me.  I would wait in the pews for them to come sit next to me at mass.  I was missing out on the life-giving nature of ministry, the risk of being a passionate disciple of Jesus and ministering the life-giving water to those who thirst.

I went into fall outreach with this challenge on my heart and with a conviction to spend my time "on the fringes of society" and to live out the Gospel, preaching with words only when necessary.

Fr. Jason loves to talk about Jesus's encounter with the woman at the well.  He sat down and began to talk with her, and by the end of that short encounter she left with her heart ablaze, sharing her love for Christ with everyone she knew (John 4:1-42 -- check it out, seriously powerful stuff).  I thought that that was as good a model as any to try out, so there we all went as a team to find the women by the well and to sit and talk to them.  I wanted to evangelize in silence, preaching the gospel by listening with love and empathy.  (You hear some really crazy stuff come out of peoples' mouths, so this is easier said than done at times).

This last week I had some great encounters.  I sat down with a Muslim brother named Fahad who I'm looking forward to getting to know more.  I had a two-hour conversation with the president of a popular atheist club on campus called the Free Thinkers.  I talked about the existence of God with an apathetic agnostic guy who started off the conversation making snide comments about "our loving God sending a flood to drown all the people of the word" and comparing organized religion to Fascist Germany.  He ended the conversation saying that on a scale from 1 to 10 he was only a 5 in terms of believing there was no God.  It was beautiful seeing some light enter that guy's eyes.  Fahad thanked me for talking to him and gave me his number.  My free thinking friend and I saw eye-to-eye on so much that we couldn't come up with a topic to hold a debate we were trying to set up about (which was the reason we were meeting in the first place).

The Gospel of love is moving without words here, but hearts are being moved here by an open heart and open ears.  I never would've dreamed of starting up these types of conversations before.  I didn't think these people would want to talk to me, but I haven't been more wrong about anything.  

Go and try this out!  Seriously, I'm feeling more alive in my ministry than I ever have before and I'm growing in my ability to see Christ in others.  It's worth the first few awkward seconds, trust me.

-Zach