Opinion: Serve Lynchburg Allows Students to Make an Impact in Lynchburg

Over the past two years, Liberty University has participated in an event called Serve Lynchburg that, as the name may suggest, is focused on serving the community of Lynchburg, Virginia.

“Liberty University’s long-lasting commitment to positively impact the community as ‘Champions for Christ’ turned into (a) campus-wide effort on Friday and Saturday, as approximately 2,000 students, faculty and staff members crowded into buses and headed to more than 90 sites throughout the city for the second annual Serve Lynchburg,” Liberty News said in an article regarding the event held April 20 and 21.

The Serve Lynchburg event is an incredibly effective service opportunity that leaves a lasting impact on the Lynchburg community as well as the Liberty student body.

This type of community outreach shows the Lynchburg community that Liberty University cares. We are not just living in our own little happy bubble, content to ignore the needs of the city around us. We want to help. We want to invest in people’s lives and show them what it means to be a Christian.

This leads to another point — Serve Lynchburg is an amazing opportunity to spread the message of Christ. While students only set out to serve for a day, they have the chance to leave an impact that will affect people for the rest of their lives.

Before the crowd of students set out on the day of the latest Serve Lynchburg event, David Nasser reminded them of this fact.

“You really are reshaping in the minds of so many people the way that they think about your generation,” Nasser said in an article from Liberty News. “You are being a testament to Christ, not only to locals, but to the world by volunteering and walking into the lives of people.”

Additionally, while the focus of this event is to bring hope and change to the people of Lynchburg, service opportunities like this can also produce a positive change in the Liberty student body.

Many recent studies have shown that the benefits of community service are not just limited to the recipients of the services. An article by Teen Life points out a long list of benefits that community service can have on the growth of young people, such as developing an increased sense of social responsibility. The article claims that community service gives volunteers a heart for “giving back” and helping others.

The act of service teaches people to look beyond themselves and focus on the needs of others. It can also help them connect with the people around them.

“Volunteer activities can strengthen the social ties that protect individuals from isolation during difficult times, while the experience of helping others leads to a sense of greater self-worth and trust,” the Corporation for National and Community Service said in report about the benefits of volunteer work.

Events such as Serve Lynchburg also expose Liberty students to realities that they may not even be aware of. Often times, Liberty students can feel a bit isolated from the real world. Only by going out into the community and getting our hands dirty can we really see for ourselves what people around us are going through.

The Serve Lynchburg event is truly an amazing opportunity and the people of Lynchburg will not forget the work of the Liberty student body. I can only hope that participation in this event will grow astronomically and that, one day in the future, Liberty can spread its efforts to affect even more people outside of the Lynchburg area.