More Than a Banquet—A Missions Experience

During our seminary career, Karen and I joined the student missions group heading up planning for the upcoming Student Missions Conference for college students. We were specifically in charge of planning the main meal for the event. Our planning group decided to make the meal an experience, just as much as the breakout sessions, speakers, and other aspects of the missions conference.

Karen had been with me on a trip to Brazil, and we came up with the idea of feeding the students a traditional Brazilian meal of black beans and rice with collard greens and a choice of oranges or apples. We could prepare the food rather inexpensively, and extra monies from the meal would go to a missions offering. We talked about some of our experiences confronting hunger and poverty in Brazil and elsewhere. Two particular stories rose to the top. One was a middle-school boy approaching me as I was sitting down to eat a hamburger I had just ordered, asking me if he could have a bite. As the owner of the establishment was about to kick the boy out, I ordered another sandwich and drink for him. The other experience was walking through downtown São Paulo and encountering a woman sitting to beg with a sign saying, “Help one whose eyes don’t see the light of day.”

We came up with the idea of inviting a family from our church to put on an act in keeping with those and other encounters with poverty overseas. We made a sign for the mother to place at her feet as she begged and played the part of a blind woman. The sign said in English exactly what the sign we had seen in São Paulo the year before. We tasked the father with selling apples and oranges, which were already free to the students as part of their meal. The two boys, meanwhile, were tasked with going around asking people for a bite of their food. To make the experience more realistic, this family decided to begin their day doing some yard work, before coming directly to the seminary campus to participate and carry out their planned roles, dirty, smelly clothes, and all.

On the day of the conference, with hundreds of college students on campus for the various events planned for them, we set up the meal in the student center, where there were plenty of places people could take their food to sit, eat, relax, and talk with one another. The rest of the student missions conference planning team knew what we were doing, but none of the participants were told.

Almost immediately as the meal got underway, we started hearing complaints. “We paid good money for this meal, and all we get is rice and beans?!” “There are people here begging, and they do not belong.” The family reported they were made to feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, by several of the attendees, including overhearing comments that they should be forced to leave the campus. There were plenty more comments and feedback given along those lines, both directly to us, as well as on the written conference evaluation forms.

That was not the only feedback we received, however. The boys were given many apples and oranges which they passed on to their father. He in turn, sold numerous apples and oranges to other students attending the conference. The mother likewise received some significant donations. The response to the meal was all over the place. Several of the students approached the kids, father, and mother to witness to them, talk to them about the love of Jesus, encourage them, and demonstrate love flowing through themselves.

I wish I could remember how much money we raised for missions with that meal, including the money our family of friends collected. We should have made some announcement about that at the closing assembly of the conference, but we did not think that far ahead in our planning.

I can only hope that the experience stimulated several conversations among the participants through the rest of the conference and on their way back home. I would hope that as they shared the stories of their varied interactions with our friends, they came away with a better appreciation for the fact that the people among whom we would do our mission work deserve to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of how uncomfortable our interactions might be for us. Stepping beyond our comfort zones is precisely where Jesus calls us to bear God’s love.




— ©Copyright 2025, Christopher B. Harbin 



http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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