Living full-throttle

Before: pictured (l–r) are: Daniel Primeau, Kristy Cook, Allison Baerg.

After (l–r): Kristy Cook, Allison Baerg, Aileen Burke, Daniel Primeau.

For four students at Bethany College, vanity does not stand in the way of battling AIDS in Africa. To prove it, one male and three female students shaved their heads in an effort to raise $5,000 for the fight against the raging epidemic.

It began last fall when a spokesman from Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) came on campus to discuss the reality of HIV/AIDS in Africa. In 2004, nearly 40 million adults and children were living with HIV, according to a recent UNAIDS report. Forty-seven percent of new infections occurred among females, that figure rising to 57 per cent in Africa.

“It touched my heart,” recalls Allison Baerg, a junior from Rosemary, Alta. She was challenged to find a way to engage in her world and somehow make a difference. She masterminded the head-shaving event and solicited financial sponsorship.

Baerg’s family drove up to witness the event along with the Bethany student body and other supporters. “It was a lot easier than I expected,” says Baerg. “If I had to do it on my own I don’t think I could have, but God definitely gave me strength.” Since then, Baerg says, God has been growing her faith into one that frees her into a life of service to others for their benefit. “I don’t really think about my hair much now.”

The original goal of raising $5,000 has almost been doubled. “AIDS is not an issue that is close to home for many of us,” Baerg says. “The support I got from my home church and how God’s been working in other people’s hearts is amazing.”

So why would a beautiful young woman be willing to set aside her own adornment, and maybe even a bit of her identity, for the sake of people she will likely never even meet?

“[Hair] is something that maybe I’m prideful of and maybe I should let go of,” says Baerg, whose thick locks hung past her shoulders. “This was a chance for me to realize that my worth is not in what I look like.”

The answer may well run deeper. Many youth-centred organizations have been witness to a renewed conviction to live full-throttle for Christ. Paul Loewen, vice president of student development at Columbia Bible College in Abbotsford, has found students hungering for deeper worship during well-attended chapel times over the past year, and an eagerness to experience radical things for God.

Dan King, facilitator of the Canada arm of 24–7, a worldwide network of prayer rooms, agrees. “Kids want to learn what it means to be a branch on the vine, and how to connect in.”

This may explain why one young woman had her feet “shod with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace” – literally, by having them tattooed with the words of Isaiah 61:1. Or why, when asked about his recent ear piercing, a young man explained he did it as an outward expression of “bondservanthood” to Christ.

Where previous generations may have had a more structure-based understanding of God, young adults today are developing a more relationship-based approach, not only with God but with their world, moving from rote belief into heartfelt conviction.

“There’s a go hard or go home mentality [among youth],” says King. “We were made to walk in intimate friendship with God. We see young people yearning for this intimacy.”

—Connie Jones

Connie Jones is a freelance writer and member of Hope Fellowship Church, Saskatoon.