After spending his summer serving the needy with a group of low-income youth from the other side of town, Caleb Street had a revelation.
“It doesn’t matter who you are now or where you come from. We’re all precious children of God whom he loves very much,” the 17-year-old says.
Street took part in Summer of Service, a partnership between his church, Meadowlake Presbyterian in Huntersville, N.C., and the East Huntersville Youth Group. While mostly middle-class whites attend Meadowlake, which has an average weekend attendance of 120 people, mostly low-income blacks live in East Huntersville.
The two communities came together in 2012 after Meadowlake members “felt like we were being called to do more transformational relationship ministry,” says Pastor Fred Lowrance. Meadowlake begin hosting community dinners in East Huntersville, and before long, neighborhood youth asked if they could participate. They formed the East Huntersville Youth Association, with a mission to improve themselves by improving the neighborhood.
Each week during the Summer of Service, the groups united to serve the needy. They made care packages for an orphanage, held an ice cream social for homeless men and played Bingo with nursing home residents.
Jackie Nance, a 17-year-old member of the East Huntersville youth group, says serving the less fortunate made her feel blessed.
“The projects opened my eyes and heart to the fact that any person young or old can fall on hard times,” she says. “Some of the men at the homeless shelter had owned businesses and ran companies. One had even been a medical doctor.”
The youth ended the summer with a Breaking Barriers dance. While the two groups initially hesitated to dance together, they slowly opened up and celebrated their summer of service with one another.
Lowrance says that serving together emphasized commonalities.
“They learned they all share similar desires,” he says. “They may state it in a different way, but they realized, ‘We’re not different.’”
