A compassionate experiment
From Feb. 6 to Feb. 11, Spring Arbor University (SAU) students are learning about selflessness and community service during SAU’s first-ever Week of Love.
SAU junior Matt Voiles heard about Elevation Church’s Week of Love during the summer of 2011 while he was watching a documentary about the church’s history. Over the course of that summer, Voiles had been thinking about Romans 12:9-10, which became his inspiration for the event.
These verses read, “Let love be genuine. Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor.”
Elevation Church is located in Charlotte, N.C., and Voiles is currently pursuing an internship position with their worship arts program. During the course of their Week of Love, Elevation had a total 5,000 volunteers who achieved what Voiles called an incredible number of hours of community service.
Voiles said the Week of Love is “a week where we focus on showing love to our surrounding community by doing community service,” while the Elevation Church website describes the goal of this week as an attempt at “making the name of Jesus famous through our service.”
The Week of Love was purposely planned to be the week before Valentine’s Day partly because one of the service activities is writing love letters to the residents of a senior center in the area.
“If people think our love is great, they don’t know anything until they experience the love of Christ,” said Voiles. “[We can] show that we are members of the community not just people in it [through this event].”
As part of their advertising for the event, the word LOVE was written on the side of Whiteman-Gibbs along with a poster about the event. The goal of this week was to achieve 200 hours of community service, but after three days, this goal has already been achieved. Voiles set a secondary goal of 400 hours that he would like to accomplish by the completion of this event.
Students may sign-up to participate in the Week of Love at a table outside the Dining Commons (DC) . After signing up, each participant is sent an email with the service opportunities for each day of the week.
If you have any questions about the event or would like to volunteer please contact Matt Voiles by emailing matthew.voiles@arbor.edu. You can also send him an email containing the number of hours you have completed.
A campus-wide worship session will take place on Saturday, Feb. 11 at 9 p.m. in the DC as a celebratory conclusion to the week.
Voiles said, “This is a tool to bring people to Christ and express a greater love than we can offer.”
WRITTEN WITH ALEXANDRA HARPER
[WRITER’S NOTE: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON WWW.SAUPULSE.COM]