Author: The Rev. Leigh DeVries

When I became a youth pastor, I knew I wanted to treat mission trips differently. I knew missions were more complicated than just going on a trip, doing service work for some poor people, telling people about Jesus, and going home. Rather, there was an opportunity for something genuinely sacred to happen.

This past Wednesday morning, nine youths and five adults from BMPC departed the Philadelphia Airport to go to Peru for the Youth Ministry’s Summer Mission Trip with Joining Hands Peru. This trip is my last with our youth before I depart for Washington to become a solo pastor in the Pacific Northwest. So, perhaps understandably, I’ve put some pressure on myself for this mission trip to be, well, everything.

As a teenager, I went on dozens of mission trips to places as close as Kentucky and as far off as Belize. I helped build houses, ramps, and fences. I led Vacation Bible Camp in bad Spanish and painted a pink fence pink. I toured beautiful places, traveled in a boat to see pyramids, and sang worship songs around a campfire.

Sometimes, the trips were transformative, and sometimes, they were something to pad my college resume. Almost every time, it was me serving a community I saw as “needy,” understanding my coming to serve in their community as me being the hands and feet of Jesus in the world, bringing others the Gospel.

I thought I was Jesus, serving the impoverished when, really, the people I encountered were Jesus, and I was, more likely than not, another rich young ruler searching for their own selfish salvation.

I chewed on this question for years, wondering if I was participating in, at best, religious tourism and, at worst, harmful colonial white saviorism, with an added flavor of American exceptionalism, where the White Americans always knew better than the local people of color.

In undergrad at Rhodes College, where I majored in Religious Studies, I wrote my senior thesis on the experience of “Mission Trips as Rite of Passage Ritual.” Mission trip participants first undergo separation from their everyday lives, followed by initiation or transformation in this liminal-other space where something happens. All of this was concluded by a return to normal, but as some new and different person, forever changed by the experience.

While I respect my 22-year-old self’s attempt to justify her own experience of mission trips and understand what she went through on them, I can’t help but realize that that interpretation of mission is solely around the people who go on the mission trip, leaving aside entirely the question of the people we are supposedly “serving.”

While we’re in Peru, we’ll engage in service with Peruvian teenagers in La Oroya and Callao, working on reforestation, painting murals over graffiti, and participating in a beach clean-up. I have an inkling that working with these Peruvian teenagers will dramatically alter the experience of our teenagers. It’s hard to see someone your exact age, interested in the same things you are, as an “other.” Writing them off as needy and you as non-needy is much more challenging. And, if God acts like I think God does, it’ll be a mutually transformative experience for us and the folks with whom we’ll work. I hope our youth see how, while life is different for people in Peru, much more connects us than divides us. And that God looks at each of us, Peruvian or US American, with a smile and a plan for each of our lives, full of glorious purpose and hope.

I pray this trip to Peru is transformative. I hope it is a rite of passage where we enter that liminal space where we are all between what we were and not quite what we will be because of our experience in Peru. While there, we will work with Joining Hands Peru, a mission partner of BMPC, with whom we have built and are continuing to build a fruitful and faithful relationship. Jed Koball, a mission co-worker of the PCUSA, will lead us. Jed came to BMPC in the fall of 2023 to share his work among the incredible people of Peru, who are fighting daily to save themselves from the disasters of climate change instigated by greed.

While in Peru, our group will daily delve into the call stories of scripture—from the call of the Apostles to the call of Mary—learning together how scripture teaches us that we are called to participate in God’s salvific action in the world, bringing about justice, freedom, and peace to everyone and everything, including the planet entrusted to our care.

I covet your prayers for the next 10 days that we are abroad. I ask you to pray for each of our youth and adults that this experience might transform us more into the people God created us to be. I can’t wait to see and share how God works in us, on us, and in and through the people we encounter on this mission trip to Peru with these amazing young people.

Each year, our Confirmation students go through a year of Sunday morning study, learning about who Jesus is, what it means to be a Christian, the purpose of the Christian Bible, church history, and more. They met monthly with a Confirmation Mentor, a congregation member who committed to be in spiritual friendship with the student, discussing questions about what we learn each Sunday. Confirmands also went on a Confirmation Retreat at Johnsonburg Camp in October this year. They also participated in a Casserole Blitz, where they experienced Christian service together with their mentors.

At the heart of our Confirmation program is the selection of a Spiritual Practice by each Confirmand. These practices, diverse and unique to each student, are undertaken for thirty days and serve to deepen their faith. From engaging in a daily Ignatian Examen to gratitude journals, the variety of practices is as diverse as our Confirmands. This year, we are excited to showcase the creative projects that our Confirmands have chosen, involving art, food, scripture, and more.

Two Sundays before Confirmation Sunday, our youth ministry hosts the annual Confirmation Expo! At this event, each Confirmand presents their Spiritual Practice and how it impacted their personal faith development. At 9:00 a.m., the Session meets with the students to examine their projects, voting on whether or not to welcome them into the full membership of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church pending their public professions of faith on Confirmation Sunday on May 19. Then, at 11:00 a.m., the entire congregation is invited to hear about our Confirmation students’ projects. Your presence and support are encouraged and appreciated.

The Confirmation Expo consistently proves to be a vital day in the life of our church each year, as the whole congregation learns about the faith development of our 8th graders. We hope to see you there on Sunday at 11:00 a.m. in the gym!

“Little Things with Great Love” is a song by Porter’s Gate—a group of musicians, pastors, and theologians who meet and write faithful, biblical, and beautiful worship music. This song is one of my favorites. I invite you to watch the video and/or read the lyrics, listening for the Spirit’s stirrings within you.

In the garden of our Savior, no flower grows unseen;

His kindness rains like water on every humble seed.

No simple act of mercy escapes His watchful eye —

for there is One who loves me: His hand is over mine.

In the kingdom of the heavens, no suff’ring is unknown;

each tear that falls is holy, each breaking heart a throne.

There is a song of beauty on ev’ry weeping eye —

for there is One who loves me: His heart, it breaks with mine.

Oh, the deeds forgotten; oh, the works unseen,

every drink of water flowing graciously,

every tender mercy, You’re making glorious.

This You have asked us: do little things with great love,

little things with great love.

At the table of our Savior, no mouth will go unfed;

His children in the shadows stream in and raise their heads.

Oh give us ears to hear them and give us eyes that see —

for there is One who loves them: I am His hands and feet.

I love this piece, the simplicity of guitar and vocals to begin, the slow addition of street sounds and strings, the softness at the lyric, “little things with great love,” and the final build-up in the last stanza with all the strings and guitar. The line “His heart, it breaks with mine” reminds me of the story of Jesus weeping with Mary and Martha after the death of their brother, Lazarus. I particularly love the last stanza, where we are reminded that at the Table of Jesus, all are fed, that God’s children who dwell in shadow are invited to that Table, “for there is one who loves them,” we are “his hands and feet.”

Sometimes, I think of music and art as something separate, something that doesn’t necessarily connect me to God or my faith life. But worship music like this, worship like the hymns we sing on Sundays, art like we see in the gallery, poetry that we read together and alone, recall me to the worship of our just and loving God. Art, I’ve learned, is a vehicle that brings us closer to ourselves, one another, and God.

This coming weekend, we’re taking a group of our youth to Johnsonburg Camp and Retreat Center for their annual all-youth retreat. This year, we’ll be led by Lady Z, the founder and director of Poets for Justice. When I think of poets for justice, I think of songs like “Little Things with Great Love” or the poetry of Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, and more, poetry that inspires me to participate in God’s just and loving action in the world. I can’t wait to see what our youth learn from Lady Z about responding to injustice through creativity and art.

As our youth learn this weekend what it means to seek and experience justice through poetry, I invite you to encounter God through art in some small way this week. Seek out the God who calls for “justice to roll down like rivers” (Amos 5:24), taught in stories and parables, and knew the poetry of the psalms by heart, and who daily calls us to lives of holiness, justice, and peace.

Each year, Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church asks the youth to lead the church in congregational Worship on Youth Sunday. As the Associate Pastor for Youth & Their Families at BMPC, it is likely unsurprising that I believe this Sunday to be one of the holiest days in our church calendar.

We invite our teenagers to plan the worship liturgy, our youth deacons and elders to preach, and our youth ministry members to provide liturgists for the entire service. Every other Sunday, these roles are filled by pastors or elected leaders of the church. It is consequently a unique and precious moment when we recognize our teenagers’ full membership and giftedness in worship.

Wesley W. Ellis wrote in his book Youth Beyond the Developmental Lens: Being Over Becoming, in terms of ministry with children & young people, “We are watching as human beings are being encountered by God in unexpected ways, and we are waiting to discover how we might be able to join that drama by saying yes to God.” So often, when we think of ministry with young people, we focus on their development and how they might eventually grow into someone worth listening to someday. But Ellis argues that all beings, children to youth to adults to older adults, have something worthwhile to share in the Church. The Church is a place where everyone’s voice is valued.

Each Youth Sunday, we, as the congregation of BMPC, witness God’s action in our teenagers’ lives as they invite us into a deeper relationship with God through their leadership. I hope you can attend this year’s Youth Sunday on February 11, 2024!

This Sunday is also the Souper Bowl of Caring, where all are invited to bring nonperishable goods to support the various hunger ministries to which we at BMPC are connected. Remember to bring nonperishable foods to worship this coming Youth Sunday!