We’ve all been pulling a lot closer to Haiti these past couple of months.  Many of us have been to Percin and many more have given rides to the airport, financially supported teams and prayed.  This tiny outpost in the Caribbean has become a tangible symbol of the power of God to use the collegiate generation to change lives in this world and the world to come.  The church is growing there, lives are changing and university students are discovering their potential to be a force for God.  You can feel the ripple effects of that on our campuses.  You see it in the form of outreaches, passionate worship experiences, intenCITY trips, clothing drives and so much more.

You can see it in the story of Baby Sarah.

This little girl has come to represent so much of what we’re asking God to do through us.  Sarah was just born this past December and, in one of the most touching signs of our impact on Percin, was named after a member of our Gathering community.  I remember meeting Baby Sarah when I traveled to Haiti in January and I remember seeing her resting in the arms of the American University student she’s named after.  I remember being so excited that we were making inroads into Percin to the point where babies were being named after Gathering students.

So you can imagine how hard it was to sit with a small group of students after last night’s Gathering at AU as they learned that Baby Sarah passed away at the end of last month.  She never quite made it to three months old before she lost her life in this world to a fever.  We know she’s with her God this morning.  But that doesn’t do much to quiet the resolve in all of our hearts that we must do more in Percin, in DC and on our campuses.  Three month old babies shouldn’t die of something so preventable.

It’s stories like Baby Sarah’s that give life to what we’re talking about at The Gathering this week.  You and I have the resources to make a difference in the lives of countless other Baby Sarah’s.  Please don’t waste them on things that don’t matter.  Please use them in the ways that matter most.  Remember what James said:

“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” – James 1:27.

I pray we would be the kind of community that would continue to invest our resources in the work of God and do so with even more intentionality and resolve in the days to come.

There’s a beautiful tension in my heart these days.  There’s this almost insatiable desire for more.  More lives changed by the Gospel.  More students sharing Christ on their campus.  More times of worship, study and prayer.  More chances to serve.  More joy.  More trips to Haiti.  More students joining a movement to change a generation.  I want so much more.  At the same time, there’s this almost overwhelming joy at how much God has done.  I still can’t believe what He did in Haiti last week.  I can’t believe there is still a team of Gathering students in Percin.  I can’t believe the worship experiences we had this week.  I can’t get over the ways He is changing lives.

And starting this weekend, we enter a season of intenCITY trips.  Both this weekend and next, we will have teams of students from The Gathering seving our own city in the name of Christ.  AU’s leading the charge this weekend and Mason gets the batton next weekend.  The same God who is changing Percin is working right here in DC.  He’s leading students to serve the youth of this city, to visit young adults in jail and to care for the homeless.

I hope you feel that same tension. Rejoice over what God is doing.  And ask Him for more.  They actually fit really well together if you think about it.

As I was driving home from a great night at American University last night, I had this strange urge to set my cruise control on Route 7.  Don’t ask me why; it just seemed like an overwhelmingly good idea.  I could settle in, enjoy the ride and let the car worry about carrying me along at a nice, safe speed.

This is the time of year when college ministries have a tendency to set the spiritual cruise control.  The end of the year is in sight.  Graduation, summer jobs and interships are right around the corner.  If we’re not careful, we fall into a rhythm of just trying to get through the rest of the year.  We go on autopilot, set the cruise control and never allow for the possibility that God wants to do something fresh, unexpected and big during these next few weeks.

I didn’t set the cruise control last night.  Strange, I know.  But it was my way of reminding myself not to get complacent for the rest of the semester.  There are so many big things on the horizon.  God has things He wants to accomplish in our lives, on our campuses and in this city.  There are intenCITY teams headed out, outreaches planned, baptisms to be celebrated and lives to be changed.

My challenge to all of us is to fight complacency.  Don’t write off this semester.  Keep fighting.  Keep believing God for more.  Keep pressing into everything we’re trying to accomplish.

We’ve always been one ministry meeting on multiple campuses.  It’s finally time to bring everyone together for one night of worship that will unite the collegiate generation in the nation’s capital.  We’re joining The Gathering at UMD, AU, Mason, Georgetown and GW together for one incredible experience.  We want you to be there.  And we’re asking you to help us spread the word and get your friends involved as well.  We’ll be releasing more details this week.  But for now, start planning to be in the Smith Center on Friday, April 3rd.

It’s transition day in Haiti.  Our team from UMD headed to the airport early this morning and later this afternoon we’ll welcome the team from Mason back to DC.  As simple as that transition might seem, it’s really significant in the life of The Gathering.  We’ve been dreaming for a while about ways to harness the momentum of the collegiate generation in DC to effect sustained, lasting change in communities.  To see that happening in a little village called Percin in a remote part of the poorest country in the Western hemisphere is a dream come true.  Since last May, we’ve sent four teams to that village and two students from The Gathering went for the summer.  We’re not just going to find an isolated serving experience that can become more about us than the people we’re coming to serve.  We’re shifting the culture in Percin.  That village is changing.  And you’re a part of that.

But it would also be easy to allow our focus on Haiti to slide this week as many of us come back from spring break.  It would be easy to slide back into the frantic pace of life and fail to head Paul’s urgings:

“I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone— for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.” – 1 Timothy 2: 1-2

Keep praying for Haiti.  Pray they will be able to follow-up with the new believers from last week’s trip.  Pray they will be able to train the adults in Percin in how to minister to the children.  Pray for their health, safety and joy.

God isn’t anywhere near done in Haiti.  And neither are we.

By this point in the week, I hope you’re getting as caught up in the story of what God is doing in Haiti as I am.  If what He’s doing down there doesn’t get you excited, I don’t know what will.  But here’s the part you don’t know yet.  Just a few hours after I wrote about those 25 new followers of Jesus yesterday, I was sitting in The Stamp Student Center at The University of Maryland when I got this text:

“Ok not kidding but 34 new kids today so make that a total of 59…about to show the movie.”

Are you with me on this?!?  A group of college students from Mason flew down to Haiti on Saturday and so far the legacy of their trip is 59 Haitian children who are walking with Jesus now and forever.  That’s amazing.  I can’t stop celebrating all the Lord is doing through those students.

All of this as we’re just starting our “Force For God” series.  This is what we’re talking about – God using ordinary students to change lives and culture.  I’m so excited to jump back into that series that it’s not even funny.  Wow – haven’t been this fired up in a while!!

Yesterday morning, our staff team got together for a time of prayer.  There’s so much going on in The Gathering these days and we all felt this collective need to thank God for what He’s doing, to seek His wisdom and to lay burdens at His feet.  It was a great time to talk with God about so many different topics.  But the one we kept coming back to was our team currently in Haiti.  They’re down there serving, sweating and pouring into the lives of the kids of Percin and we wanted to encourage them in prayer.  We were asking God to use this week to change kids for eternity.  We were praying that salvation would come to Percin.

So, you can imagine how encouraged we were to get this text from our Haiti team last night, “Day 2 done.  Great day.  25 kids prayed to receive Christ.”

I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a better text message in my life!

God is working in Haiti.  He’s grabbed 25 kids, rescued them from hell and called them to eternity in heaven.  That’s what we’re all about.  That’s why we send missions teams.  That’s why we exist.

You know there’s one serious party going on in heaven over the lives of these kids.  We’re joining in today and celebrating God’s amazing grace; wanted you to be in on it as well.

So, what would you do with a little extra time in your day?  Go to the gym?  Read more?  Pray?  Study your Bible?  Invest in your family?  Hangout with friends?  Serve in the church?  Study?  Sleep?

If your life is anything like mine, you carry around a long list of things you would do “if I just had more time.”  Let’s take it even one step further.  The things on that list are probably things you really want to be doing, right?  And a lot of the things you are doing are things you don’t want to be doing, right?  Hmm.  No wonder so many of us live stressed out, frustrated lives where we never have enough time.

Paul speaks so directly to that problem when he writes, “Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise, making the most of your time, because the days are evil.” (Ephesians 5:15-16)  I’ve been trying to look at my life in the last few weeks in light of this truth.  And I’ve realized there are a lot of places I’m wasting time and not “making the most” of it.  Here are a few of the culprits in my life:  email, Facebook, checking the Dow, my Blackberry, etc…  You see a theme developing?

I wonder how many hours we all waste on the computer and I wonder if we made just a few changes if we wouldn’t find ourselves with more time to do the things that really matter.  Here’s what I’m trying – checking email once a day, Facebook once a week and reprogramming my Blackberry so it doesn’t notify me every time I get an email.

Bottom line – I feel like I’m more in control of life.  And I have more time.  Try it – you just might get to more of the things you really want to do in life.

Earlier this morning, a group of students from Gathering703 headed to Haiti to spend their spring break serving through our partnership with World Hope International. Next week, a group of students from GatheringUMD will make the same trip. So, for the next two weeks, we’ll have students from The Gathering in Haiti, serving the residents of a little village called Percin. That’s pretty amazing, if you ask me.

The need in Haiti is staggering. It’s hard to imagine that such extreme poverty could exist a short hour and a half flight from Miami, but it does. 80% of Haiti lives below the poverty line, nearly half of the adult population is illiterate and 2/3 of the country lacks any formal employment. Add into that the spiritual needs of the people and it’s the kind of mess that only the power of Christ can transform.

Having students serving in this tiny Caribbean nation over spring break is an answer to so many prayers. The Gathering is about mobilizing the collegiate generation to transform our world with the Gospel. Weeks like this remind all of us just how faithfully God is allowing us to be a part of His work.

I really want to keep Haiti in your minds and hearts for these next two weeks. We need to be praying for these teams. We need to be praying for the Lord’s blessing on their work, protection over their lives and transformation in their own hearts.

Where ever spring break takes you these next couple of weeks, I hope you’ll remember Haiti. And when you do, pray.

We’re going to be turning a corner this week at The Gathering as we start building on the foundation we laid in the “People In Person” series. We’ve been pretty inwardly focused for these last few weeks. That’s not bad. In fact, it was deliberate. We needed to talk about community and how we keep our expanding movement connected at the most basic, interpersonal levels.

But this week, we’re starting a new series, “A Force For God.” We’re going to spend a few weeks looking at the life of Hezekiah, one of the most compelling figures in the Old Testament. This guys was unreal – the way he lead Judah, the way he loved God, the way he changed culture. I mean, this guy had it. He was “A Force For God.”

But here’s the thing: the way he got there was pretty simple. He built his life on a few core commitments. And God honored those and used him to change his world.

Wouldn’t it be great if we learned from Hezekiah’s life and all of us became “A Force For God”? That’s what we’re praying for in this series. I hope you’ll be there as we get it started this week.