DownloadNov. 16, 2009 issue
Hard times offer a chance to help more
EMU’s Spiritual Life Week focuses on a creative approach to service
By Tom Mitchell Harrisonburg Daily News-RecordPage:
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HARRISONBURG, Va. — One of the earliest uses of Tom Sine’s creativity turned heads — and cars.
Tom and Christine Sine talk with students in the Campus Center Greeting Hall area during Spiritual Life Week. — Photo by Lindsey Kolb/EMU
Speaking Nov. 4 at Eastern Mennonite University, Sine recalled how, as a college student in Portland, Ore., he and some friends piled into the back of an old hearse that a member of the group had just bought and rattled the nerves of fellow motorists.
“We stopped really fast at an intersection, and every one of us in the back tumbled out of that hearse,” Sine said. “One driver ran off the road and I think another swallowed his cigarette.”
Sine and his wife, Christine, spoke about how today’s college students can use that kind of imagination for good in a troubled world. The couple’s joint talk was part of fall Spiritual Life Week Nov. 2-6 at EMU.
The Sines are founders of Mustard Seed Associates, a nonprofit multidenominational alliance headquartered in Seattle, consisting of Christians from throughout the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
The goal of Mustard Seed Associates is to spur people to help others at home and abroad.
The Sines urged students to turn the world’s financially fragile times into a chance to help others through service that meets the needs of the less fortunate.
Due largely to a poor economy, today’s young adults may have less materially than their parents, Tom Sine said. Such monetary limits may enable young adults to find joy in other ways, he said.
“We’re trying to help college people consider using their lives more to make a difference than a living,” he said.
Such prompting competes with a consumer culture that promotes self-indulgence, Christine Sine said. But many young adults aren’t so materialistic, she said.
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