For some, summer is time to serve through religion

Tuesday, July 6, 2004 | 11:13 a.m.

Fifty-nine-year-old Melvin Stringer is not your typical missionary.

He doesn't spew Bible verses, he doesn't go door to door or stand on street corners handing out pamphlets, he doesn't talk about the need to make an eternal choice.

But Stringer, a manufacturing salesman and the top lay leader at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Henderson, spent 10 days this summer doing mission work in Kenya. Stringer brought basic school supplies, uniforms and shoes to needy children in the African nation's Mua Hills.

His aim was not to conduct evangelism -- Kenya's Anglican Church is stronger than its American counterpart.

"It's Christian love for one another that really permeates throughout this," Stringer said.

Stringer is among hundreds of Las Vegas Valley residents -- many of them teenagers -- who are giving up part of their vacation time this summer to serve others, discover other cultures or visit a historical religious site.

Call it mission work, a service trip or a pilgrimage -- local religious leaders say lay people like Stringer are simply living out their faith in the global community.

The motivations for such trips differ and are often misunderstood or even criticized by outsiders. But the driving force behind all of them is to give lay members a chance to practice what their leaders preach.

"It's one thing to sit in a class and describe something to them," Rabbi Mel Hecht of Temple Beth Am in Summerlin, said. "It's another thing for them to learn about it experientially."

Also at the heart of such trips -- whether for Christians, Muslims or Jews -- is giving the faithful a broader perspective of the world and building camaraderie and a sense of family among congregants, local religious leaders said.

And it's not all work, Rob Hall, associate pastor at South Hills Church Community in Henderson, said. Even the most service-minded trips often give church members a chance to play tourist. On his church's spring trip to do construction work in the the Dominican Republic, members "suffered on the beach for Jesus" one day, he said.

For Christian churches, the theology behind such trips is simple but the application of it is complex. They are following the "Great Commission" in the New Testament, "to make disciples of all nations."

How to do that, however, has been a matter of controversy from the Crusades to the present.

Missionaries have been accused of spreading Western culture, causing civil unrest in predominantly non-Christian countries and interfering in diplomatic relations. Most of the modern criticism comes from people both inside and outside the church who are uncomfortable with proselytizing.

"So many people think missionaries are carrying around Bibles and hitting people over the heads with them and forcing them to be Christians," Hall said. "But it's not like that. It's just people being loving and doing service and going where people are at."

It's not surprising then, that most Christians going on short-term summer trips focus on service, with the hope of evangelizing through actions, local church leaders said. Many churches also limit their trips to providing training and support for indigenous Christian groups, or encouraging other churches through performance tours.

"St. Francis of Assisi said to 'Preach the gospel always and when necessary use words,'th" Hall said.

Church leaders say when they send people on missions to foreign countries, they study the area, culture and language first so they can work within appropriate boundaries.

"We don't assume what they need," Stringer said of his group's work in Kenya. "We ask them what we can do to help and do what we can to help bridge that gap."

Perhaps as important as strengthening the faith of others is the opportunity for short-term missionaries to develop their own faith.

Most of the people who go on service trips are teenagers or "everyday, ordinary working Las Vegans," said Paul Trainor, pastor of evangelism and missions at Central Christian Church in Henderson.

Central has sponsored service trips to the Dominican Republic and Brazil and is looking next at East Timor.

"We go there to serve, fundamentally," Trainor said, "But we go there to broaden our perspective and in some sense break some hearts, break our own hearts, in terms of recognizing the needs of others and recognizing that we are called to be good stewards of what God has given us."

For Jews, synagogue-backed trips are radically different but share the goal of broadening the perspectives of followers.

Rabbis said that most of their trips are educational-based tours that are designed to help congregants better understand and connect with their religious history and with all Jews as a people. Trips to Israel, New York or Eastern Europe are common, but few are happening this summer, rabbis said.

"A person can grow much more as a Jew if they go to an environment that is so connected to their heritage," Rabbi Yitzchak Wyne of the Young Israel of Las Vegas synagogue, one of the few sending people to Israel this summer. "It's part of our issue of education, and really getting an emotional connection to our people and our heritage."

Some trips incorporate service work, such as the Conservative Movement's Camp Ramah Meytiv program for high schoolers, but not in the same way or to the same extent as trips taken by Christian groups, rabbis said. For Jews, service work is done primarily in the local community, and does not have the evangelistic overtones that Christian work does.

"When Jews go down to St. Vincent's or to inner city as a group they don't go there for any other purpose other than performing a mitvah or a good deed," Rabbi Hecht said.

Followers of Islam similarly want to deepen their faith through their annual Hajj, the winter pilgrimage to the religion's holy sites in Mecca and Medina, Aisha Abd-Al-Hamid, a volunteer at the local Islamic Information Center, said. The Hajj is one of the Five Pillars of Islam.

But like Christians, Muslims, are called to share their faith and to give regularly to charity, Abd-Al-Hamid said. Such giving, known as the sakkat, requires Muslims to give 2.5 percent of all of their income to charity.

American Muslim men go out in groups every 45 days to foreign countries in a practice known as Jamat, Abd-Al-Hamid said. These men visit underdeveloped countries such as in Africa or South America, and they combine service with sharing their faith.

"They really go hand in hand," Abd-Al-Hamid said. "Part of that service is to talk about Islam and what we believe, and the charity is a big part of that. Service is a big part of our religion."

Leaders of all three of the faiths agreed that their members benefit the most when they travel abroad and see how closely they are tied to their fellow believers.

"To be able to see that other countries are doing the exact same thing that we are doing is just an awesome experience," Kristen Rochelle, senior at Coronado High School who went to Mexico City last month with Green Valley Presbyterian Church. "You realize that you have different cultures, speak different languages, but we are all worshiping the same God and the same Jesus Christ."

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