Purpose for the Summer

Beyond Malibu Guide Staff 2012

This post is by Cliff DeMastus.  He is a second-year guide this year and a total rock star. This is his take on this summer's mission statment.  Please pray for Cliff and the rest of the staff as they head up the inlet this week to settle in for a summer of service.

In our first training weekend, the ten returning guides compiled a mission statement to serve as a focus for the rest of the summer.  Acquiring and collaborating over ten different visions for how we ought to approach the summer was definitely a tedious process.  In the end we finally agreed on one statement, which had some amazing attributes, many of which we discovered post-compilation.  I hope and pray that our mission statement will be something we return to again and again throughout the summer and that it aligns our hearts to a posture of service, gratitude, and glory for God.  What follows is the mission statement, its outline, and an explanation of the three components.

With God as our strength and song, recognizing we are poor in spirit, we will be stewards of Christ’s light and love.

As one navigates through the mission statement it covers three arenas.  It first speaks to who God is which is our strength and song.  Next it declares who we are which is poor in spirit.  Finally after proclaiming who God is and recognizing our current state, we identify what we will do in response, stewarding the light and love of Christ.

Strength and Song
We are to serve by the strength that God supplies (I Peter 4:11).  We will toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within us (Colossians 1:29).  He will be our refuge, our rock, our fortress, our salvation as we trust in Him (Psalm 62:5-8).  He is also our song, our source of joy in the highs and lows of the summer (Habakkuk 3:18-19).  We will recognize Him in our and the participants’ "a-ha" moments (Ephesians 1:17-18).  God is the composer of the melody that is the tune of our lives (Exodus 15:1-21).

Poor in Spirit
As the first beatitude shows us (Matthew 5:3), it is important for us to reach a humble state, to acknowledge and accept our need for Jesus because we are human, we are frail, we are imperfect (John 15:5).  We utterly depend upon God.  From the Valley of Vision’s The Broken Heart, “Give me perpetual broken-heartedness, keep me always clinging to thy cross, flood me every moment with descending grace, open to me the springs of divine knowledge, sparkling like crystal, flowing clear and unsullied, through my wilderness of life.”

Light and Love
Stewarding the light and love of Christ speaks to our responsibility to God’s creation, not only in the natural world (Genesis 2:15) but also to each other with the grace found in the Gospel (I Peter 4:10).  We are to use our gifting to bring God glory (I Corinthians 10:31), sharing the Good News that is a light in the darkness and the source of all love.

With God as our strength and song, recognizing we are poor in spirit, we will be stewards of Christ’s light and love.