Saturday, March 29, 2008

An email from a stranger

I recently received this email from someone I don't know. However, I love his spirit. I responded to him but I wonder what other people might say.
hey. my name is _____. i live in texas, i'm 17 years old, i'm homeschooled and i'm going to graduate from highschool tomorrow. after that i want to go somewhere away from texas, and it seems like going outside of the US would be prohibitively expensive. so i'm thinking about learning from matthew 19:22 (rich young ruler) and selling a bunch of stuff and going to a big city for about a month (because it's not learning if you don't actually do anything about it, is it?) so i thought it would be a good idea to look up some like-minded people (or on a more idealistic bent, brothers and sisters in Christ) and chat somebody up.

so, do you have any words for me?
Comment and tell me what you would tell him. I'll forward your replies to him in a couple of days.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know if I would have responded or not. It weirds me out. But then I get weirded out easily.

PrincessMax said...

You and my mom, both.

The context is that I facilitate online communities for the local emerging Christianity group and for an intentional community development that I'm part of so my email box is where the general questions get directed to. This question just stood out.

This is the advice I gave him: "I recommend that you keep reading around. I can offer some blogs and books if you're interested. Find a couple of communities, cities or writers that you're interested in. Then, treat it like a job search. Send letters of inquiry and follow up on those with phone calls since lots of folks involved in Kingdom work are really busy. Write out your proposal (would like to come and work with your organization) and be as professional as possible, describing what you have to offer them. Make sure to include your time line.

If you narrow in on a city or field of interest, I might be able to tell you some possibilities and forward your info to folks. After that, though, you'll have to convince them. :-)

You might also check out City Year (http://www.cityyear.org/) or Mission Year (http://www.missionyear.org/) if you think you might want to spend a whole year before going to college, assuming that's a goal of yours."

ABG said...

Ohh! I was going to suggest Mission year. Several of my former students have done it.