After Party: Serve Lynchburg
April 21, 2022
Uncertainty and chaos are everywhere we turn today. When you look at the news it can feel both overwhelming and shocking and you are left to wonder if peace will ever reign. God, however, is never surprised with chaos.
When Paul wrote Colossians 3:15 to the church of Colossae, He wanted the church to discover peace through the Lordship of Christ, but they needed to first experience the inward transformation before they could know true peace.
What kind of peace? The peace of the gospel – the good news that Jesus saves and frees sinners. That’s who Jesus is and what He does. He brings calm, assurance, and reconciliation. He does that through service and through the ultimate sacrifice of His life.
Mark 10:45 says, “For even the Son of Man came not be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
You see, service that is rooted in sacrifice creates opportunity for reconciliation and peace, and service is the bridge for bringing that peace. Both service unto the Lord and towards those around you, has no defined shape and can be seen and expressed in many different forms. But one thing is certain, it should always be characterized by love, sacrifice, hope, and peace.
At LU Serve, we lead and train students to volunteer and speak His peace and reconciliation through service and outreach. LU Serve is predominantly known for the CSER program, and rightly so as students serve over 500,000 hours each year through the CSER program to bless communities and organizations around the U.S. and the world.
Whether service on group trips, individual experiences around the U.S. and the World, or through the Serve Now program, LU Serve helps students seek to bring peace through loving our communities, in both word and deed.
One of the biggest ways that we do this locally each year is through this one-day effort called Serve Lynchburg. Serve Lynchburg is an annual event in which Liberty University students, faculty, staff, and Lynchburg residents join together with community partners to meet local community needs.
On April 23rd, students will serve alongside 75 organizations in the Lynchburg community. This is a day Liberty University gets to invest the greatest asset it possesses, the Liberty University students.
This will be the 5th annual Serve Lynchburg with the inaugural year being 2017. Each time LU Serve leads out on this event, we get to link arms with many departments across Liberty University to maximize impact on the students that serve and the organizations we work alongside. This event cannot happen without Liberty as a whole coming together.
From 10:30 am to 2:30 pm on April 23rd all around the greater Lynchburg area, you might find a Liberty student planting flowers at a local elementary school, stocking a warehouse for a humanitarian organization, singing to elderly people at a nursing home, mulching a playground, or playing with some youth. No matter what you see being done, all of it is making an impact and serving the needs of the organizations.
Many of these organizations rely heavily on volunteers throughout the year to move the needle for their organization. But on a day like Serve Lynchburg, this needle moves much farther along and they can feel the impact and influence!
To top it all off, Serve Lynchburg is partnering with Student Activities and our collaboration has created what we are calling “After Party”, which is the end of year equivalent to the Block Party event they put on at the start of the year.
We look forward to having the biggest party of the year and celebrating the work of Serve Lynchburg together!
Written by: Steven Gillum – Director of LU Serve