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20th Anniversary – CSM Impact
Brian Burris and his team from Real Life Church from Springfield, IL share how their time with CSM in Chicago has impacted service to their very own city.
Real Life students spend the night in boxes.
The Chicago CSM trip has been a staple in our youth ministry for more than 8 years. We originally began the trip as an every-other year event, but it looks like we will be doing this every year for some time to come. We do the trip for what it elicits in our students. No matter how well I prepare them for the sights we will see, they are always astounded both at the poverty and homelessness in America, and at the great work of the people dedicated to helping homeless/working poor/impoverished people in the city. We carry the names and faces of people with us for years. I have talks with kids individually and I’m always humbled to learn how much this trip really affects people. At least two students in the last three years have made a commitment to working as a missionary or within inner-city settings because of the time they spent in Chicago.
Another predictable reaction by our students has been, “What about the poor and homeless in Springfield?” We return to our city and they start noticing people living on the street. They ask me, “What about these people, Brian?” A few years ago we started going to a local soup kitchen later after we had returned from Chicago. Students really responded. Last year we cut our trip short one day from what we had been doing. That day was spent at the same soup kitchen in Springfield. That was a great day in the lives of these students. It was so good—they wouldn’t let us stop there.
On our trip we limit it to students who are juniors, seniors or recent graduates of high school. I have found that students at this level perform/react/respond better to the situations we are in while in Chicago. I have taken some heat from students in 10th grade and their parents who insist they are mature enough. I stick with this policy, and pays off every time. This summer during one of our monthly youth leader meetings we talked about this policy and I explained the dynamic that I saw. The team understood, but also asked about experiences we could provide younger students (all students) that would be similar and prepare them for this trip. That’s when we came up with the “Springfield Missions Trip.”
Two weeks after the Chicago Missions trip we did a “Springfield Missions Trip” modeled off of the CSM trips. Friday night we visited a homeless shelter for a tour (this shelter houses families for up to two years with education and training to help the parents get out of damaging cycles, it was “eye-opening” to say the least). That night we ate stew made from cans of food the kids brought, then slept in cardboard boxes as “homeless youth”. The plan was to sleep outside in the boxes, but it was 39° and raining, so we opened our “homeless shelter” at the church. Saturday started by packing lunches, then off to a prayer walk in the downtown area. We walked about 3 miles in two hours with a lot of squirrely kids.
Hard-working students raked leaves for church members.
The prayer tour had 30 places to pray for ranging from the Department of Corrections offices, to women’s shelters to the State Capital building, and every agency for the poor and homeless in between. The students were surprised at all the agencies that could be involved in someone’s life.
After that we “meet-a-need” by looking for homeless people and passing out socks. For some reason there were no homeless people in the downtown Springfield area that day. We did find places that people had obviously slept the night before (under loading docks, behind large signs, so we left some socks there). We donated the rest of the socks later in the day. We ate lunch in a downtown park and “people watched”. After lunch we raked leaves for widows in our church (can you say “cookies and candy”?!), then one group went to St. John’s Breadline (high-schoolers) to serve dinner, and another group went to help Serving Jesus Willingly Urban Mission (junior-highers) to sort and package food boxes that were to be given away later in the week. The day ended at 5:30 with pizza (our form of “ethnic food”) by the lake and a time of debriefing.
The Springfield trip was great and really fostered a sense of community with the kids while also showing them real need in Springfield. This trip really opened my eyes to the potential of what these kids could accomplish. Since then, we have put up a sign-up for our students to baby-sit kids in the family homeless shelter we visited on Friday night. We have also challenged the kids to clean out their closets and donate their clothes to the same shelter.
God worked in some very wonderful ways to help us put together the Springfield trip. I’m sure He led us and guided as we went through the city that weekend.
– Brian Burris & The Grindstone youth group at Real Life Church
To learn more about serving with CSM in Chicago!
