Forgetting Something?

We at YWAM Ozarks recently developed a new activity for the purpose of fun and education when youth groups and teams come here for a missions week. We simply call it the Missions Game, in which participants compete at a variety of stations with several objectives. Each station is designed to mimic an encountered on a foreign mission field. Examples of the stations include washing clothes by hand, using a "squatty potty," and picking lice (rice) from a scalp. (We own no copyrights, so feel free to use it yourself if you so desire!)

When students arrived at my station, instructions went something like this:

"You've just met me. I'm a Buddhist (or Muslim or atheist, etc). You are here to share the Gospel with me. Your group has one minute to prepare, and three minutes to present. Go."

I thoroughly enjoyed it. The students typically responded with nervousness, and the results varied widely. But one observation from the game stood out to me in particular, and I want to share it with you. Most groups told me about God sending His son, Jesus, to die for us, to cleanse us from our sins. Good. They often mentioned that He died on a cross. These are indeed critical components of the message. But something was frequently left out, something so vital, so important, that the message makes no sense, no attraction, and no power without it.

The tomb sat empty three days later.

This Easter, it is important to reflect on Christ's sufferings and death. But the Easter holiday doesn't end on Good Friday. The message of the Gospel is centered on the Resurrection. Allow me to close with two quotes on the subject:

"This, then, is the more or less universal witness of the early Christians: that they are who they are, they do what they do, they tell the stories they tell not because of a new religious expreience or insight but because of something that happened; something that happened to the crucified Jesus; something that they at once interpreted as meaning that he was after all the Messiah, that God's new age had after all broken into the present time, and that they were charged with a new commission..." (N.T. Wright, Surprised by Hope)

"If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep... in Christ shall all be made alive." (The Apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 15:19-20, 22)