Tonight we had our very first Launch Team meeting. We met in the upstairs part of the Manayunk Diner. It was so good to get together to discuss and pray about what God has called us to be a part of in the city. I shared a story with them that I wanted to share on the blog as well.
In the past during times of war medical personnel have found themselves overwhelmed by the number of wounded they were asked to care for. That forced them to come up with a system of prioritizing which wounded soldiers would receive medical attention first, second, an so on. This system is known today as advanced triage.
Advanced Triage is a process of prioritizing patients based on the severity of their condition so as to treat as many as possible when resources are insufficient for all to be treated immediately. The term comes from the French verb "trier", meaning to sort, sift or select.
Medical personnel would literally sort through or sift through the wounded as they came in, making assessments as to how quickly they needed to be attended to.
To do so they used a system of colored tags:
Soldiers were given WHITE tags if their injuries did not require the attention of a doctor.
Soldiers were given GREEN tags if care could be delayed for days without threat of the patient losing their life.
Soldiers were given YELLOW tags if they were seriously injured but care could be delayed for a few hours.
Soldiers were given RED tags if they were seriously injured and in need of immediate medical attention in order to save their life.
Soldiers were given BLACK tags if the patient was deceased OR if they were so severely wounded that it is very likely that they would die from their injuries regardless of treatment.
And so the story is told about a young man named Lou who was wounded and had a black tag placed on him. His leg had been so severely blown up and he had lost so much blood that it was determined that he would most likely die.
A nurse that was close by overheard the doctors, noticed the tag, and saw that the young man hadn’t loss consciousness. She couldn’t bare the thought of him dying without having someone there to talk to so she sat by he bed and spoke to him. One hour passed followed by another and another.... finally, the nurse did the unthinkable. She changed the color of his tag. She changed the Black tag to a Red one.
So of course you’re ahead of me in the story.
They air-lifted him out and amputated what was left of his leg.
Though he spent the rest of his days as an amputee, He did however live a full life. Interestingly enough the young woman that saved his life went on to marry him. (Awe)
For me, starting this church is really just about changing peoples tags. It's about looking at people that others consider too hard to reach and doing everything we can to change their forevers. In our case those people are the young adults/ young professionals/ and young families here in the city.
Who decided that these people are not important enough for there to be any churches for them? Who gave them a black tag? Who made that call? Not us…… not us.
I think that God is trying to change the tag on this city... and we're just trying to do our part.
