Crew from the Hood

By Kariss Lynch, FBC Lubbock College Student

“From now on, we will no longer call you the ‘Crew from Texas Tech.’ You will now be known as the ‘Crew from the Hood,’” Ted Napp, the Director of Missions in the Crescent Bay Baptist Convention shouted out to a rousing round of applause to conclude the testimony service on the final night of our mission trip in Los Angeles, California. The room buzzed with one hundred and five people from Texas, members of six congregations in the LA area, fresh paint, and new wood standing proudly as a new stage at the front of the sanctuary.

On March 13, 2009, ninety-three college students from Texas Tech University, Lubbock Christian University, Wayland Baptist University, and South Plains College loaded onto two buses with thirteen adult leaders to begin the twenty-two hour trek from Lubbock, Texas to Los Angeles, California to spend the week fixing up churches in underprivileged areas of LA. The trip first started in the spring of 1985 with Sam Douglas, the then University Minister at First Baptist Church of Lubbock, Texas. Douglas had a vision to encourage college students to experience mission work through service and helping others. The first year, four cars full of students made the trip to Richville, Utah to work on a church there. The next year the trip grew to a couple van loads of students with the final destination being Sheridan, Wyoming.

Douglas’ dream caught on and the trip continued to grow every year. Since 1985, the First Baptist University Ministry has traveled to Utah, Nevada, Wyoming, Idaho, California, and Mexico to help build, repair, and encourage churches that are unable to afford necessary repairs. The goal every year is to help fellow Christians further their work by meeting the needs of the church in regards to their building facilities.

Eventually, Douglas left and Keith Brister took over, taking eighty to ninety students to Utah where they built a church in a week. He also was the first one to bring in adults from the church with construction experience to aid the mission trip goers in attaining their goals more effectively and efficiently as they served. Bill and Diane Davis, the current trip coordinators, began their spring break mission trip experiences in 1988. In 1991, Bill began to lead the trips, coordinating with directors of missions in California to see which churches had the greatest need. After Brister, John Strappazon took over the ministry, continuing to expand it, followed by Bruce Venable, the current University minister of four years.

From the outside looking in, the trip may seem simple enough: a handful of students go spend a work doing a Christian service project in another state; however, those of us that go on the mission trip know differently. The students and adult that go on the trip give up their spring breaks, taking off of work and setting aside homework and projects to pay two hundred and eighty five dollars to spend a week working every day for roughly ten hours a day. Tyler Ferguson, a sophomore in the ministry, described it as “an incredible picture of the body of Christ at work. Every one of us has different abilities and passions, but God is here teaching us to serve, humbling us. If everyone in America would learn how to serve like this, we would be able to fix our nation.”

This was my third mission trip with the First Baptist University Ministry to California, and it never ceases to amaze me how God moves. God does something special and powerful when His people commit to serve. There is nothing easy about the trip and there is nothing special about the students that go. We simply acknowledge that God has called us to serve and we do what is required.

Before leaving, every student is asked to fill out an evaluation of skills that they are capable of doing from roofing, painting, electric work, sheet rocking, and working with power tools. Many students embark on the trip with no experience, simply a willingness to serve. With our group of ninety students this year, we were able to work on six churches in southern LA including: First Southern Baptist Church of Anaheim, Faith in Christ Baptist Church, New Rock of Ages in Hawthorn, First Baptist Church of Southern LA, Greater Good Shepherd Baptist Church, and Southside Bethel Baptist Church.

The group discovered as a whole this trip that we came to be a blessing and encouragement to the congregations and pastors, but over and over again we were blessed through them as well. At services every night, Bruce would continually remind us that one day both our group from Texas and the congregations from California would praise Jesus in Heaven together, without thought about race, economic status, occupation, background, or political opinions. God truly does a work in His body, and it was a blessing every night to worship our God with believers in a different state that we had never met before and may never see again.

Throughout the trip, Bruce and Bill continued to ask us, “What is God teaching you this week? What is He showing you through this experience?” Ryan Wilkinson, a first time goer, said about the week, “I feel like God opened my eyes in the sense that I don't need to drink and go out to have fun. I also feel like he let me see the joy in helping people in need, and that prayer should not consist of my wants but I should focus on his will.”

We were able to complete our tasks at five of the six churches, leaving information and necessary resources for the members to finish at the sixth. As Bruce has continually stated since our return back to Lubbock, “God has blown a fresh wind into our ministry through this experience. How will you apply what you have learned to your daily life now that we are back?” We experienced God in a big way on mission trip in Los Angeles, California. But He continues to be the same God who calls us to do the same things in Lubbock and in our various hometowns.

As a University Ministry we have claimed Acts 20:24 as a prayer for ourselves in our city: “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me – the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” We pray that God will continue to use us in the days ahead on our campuses, because in the end, it is all for His glory. As we sang one night in service after a long day of hard work and sunburns, with our new friends and fellow believers in LA, I realized that nothing that was built, painted, or repaired would have happened without the Lord. We will one day sing again with them in Heaven, “How Great is Our God.”

Kariss Lynch is a creative writing major at Texas Tech University. She loves swimming, reading, and going for walks with her golden retriever, Wise Guy.