Easter Outreach Recap

I volunteered at the Union Rescue Mission today to participate in their Easter Outreach event: thousands of prepackaged plastic boxes containing personal care and hygiene necessities were handed out by hundreds of volunteers who went door-to-door at surrounding hotels that sheltered the homeless in Skid Row.

A noble cause no doubt, but the organization and execution of the volunteer service was sorely lacking in preparation and efficiency. I'd sincerely appreciate a logistics discussion with mission staffers in the volunteer department; I'll try to contact someone next week to express my concerns and see what I can personally do to help improve future events for volunteer participants. Here are the main precepts that I would lay down if I were in charge:

• Each group should number no larger than ten to twelve members
• Each group should have one mission staffer and/or returning adult leader
• Each group should be given more detailed guidelines on performance efficiency
• Each group should be given one specific mapped route through their entire quota

You're probably wondering why I'm even making these criticisms (albeit practical ones) of an act of altruism that ultimately benefited the community. Let me tell you the day's story so you might understand where I'm coming from.

My church group of seven was combined with two other church groups and a smattering of other volunteers to form a large gathering of thirty-plus people. I was appointed the group leader and pulled aside so that I could be given a CB radio and trained on how to use it for communications with mission HQ. Unfortunately, that meant that by the time I returned to the group, I had missed a briefing given by the host. I have no idea what was communicated, but I definitely could have used some sort of basic information about operation supervision and group management in regard to this specific event. As it stood, I honestly had no idea what I was getting myself into...

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: how hard can it be to tell a bunch of people to knock on doors and hand out boxes?

Let me put it this way: I was out there with a huge group of people, most of whom I had never met in my life and were unwilling to pay full attention to a stranger. Yet I was expected to lead them all in an activity that I had never participated in before! Being thrown into the proverbial frying pan like that meant a lot of disorganization and trial-and-error at others' expense. It's not fun for them and it's not fun for me either.

It was a lot harder than you think once you realize that our group had a quota of a dozen hotels, which meant that I had to split them all up in order to accomplish our goal on time. With only one CB radio to handle questions, requests and updates for the entire group (not to mention matters of safety!), I had to run back and forth between hotels to make sure everything was running as smoothly as possible. As group leader, I was expected to make sure that every member was accounted for at every step, which was no easy task when you're dealing with over twenty unfamiliar faces spread across three to four hotels. Add in goof-offs and stragglers and this becomes a difficult operation.

Now here's where the day gets even worse: approaching one group for an update, I was told that a hotel on their list had already been completed before they'd even gone there! A few other similar reports came in soon after. I radioed the mission to ask what was going on but was met with total ignorance of the situation. I soon realized that nearly an entire block of hotels on our list was already completed by other groups who apparently had even less of a clue how to run the show.

The mission eventually sent some staffers to help out our group (without first letting me know, I should add) but even the new guys didn't seem to know too much about what to do next. After dawdling for a while, the staffers essentially relieved me of my role and led the group to whichever hotels in the area were marked as uncompleted.

I'll be the first to admit that during this fiasco my visible leadership wasn't much good at all, and I won't even use my inexperience as an excuse because that failure had nothing to do with this specific event. But it certainly didn't help matters any that a couple people were being openly derisive of me and defiant against my instructions. For most of the morning, they seemed to be doing nothing except shooting dirty looks at me and making snide comments behind my back just loud enough for me to hear. I don't know what exactly spurred them to act that way, but I have to admit that it wasn't so easy to disregard their behavior nonetheless.

I think what especially hurt me was the fact that these people had professed to me not more than thirty minutes prior that they had driven from faraway churches to offer their time and services; I figured that these people couldn't be all that bad if they were fellow Christians unselfish enough to do volunteer work. What must I have been doing so grievously wrong to stir up such negativity and utter disapproval? With that response compounding my self-frustration, I felt altogether helpless and incompetent, which was a sentiment I hadn't felt for the longest time. (Well, that's not entirely true; I had encountered that conviction two Decembers ago but that's another story, and my only exception.)

I guess I kind of figured that the day was going to go badly for me when I took my first hundred steps out from the mission and was confronted by a mentally ill homeless woman who -- without provocation -- screamed "F**k you!" a couple times, threw wet gutter trash at me and tried to spit on me. Not that I was really fazed by that, but I can't say that the rest of the day got any better for me. It was very, very frustrating to see everything slip out of my already tenuous grip and nearly fall to pieces under my direction. In all honesty, I don't think I can say that today I had what could be called a fun time.

But having fun isn't necessarily what this outreach was about... I think that my enduring memory of this day will be that of an old lady who hobbled up beside me and cheerfully and sincerely whispered, "God bless you," in my ear. At the time I was so down on myself that I simply returned a weak smile and thought nothing of it. It was only later that I fully recognized the inspiring gratefulness she manifested to me. You know what? That woman was the exact reason why I came. I came to reach out and touch somebody out there; to enable even one person to know the measure of God's love as exemplified in His people; to prove in some small way that I can be the salt and light of the earth that the apostle Matthew called us to be in order to demonstrate our character and glorify God's name to the world, even if no one but myself and God should see what I have accomplished by His grace for His will. And that was my day.