OUR MINISTRY EBOOK
Reflection from CEO Aaron Myler
“My parents taught me something deeper: that our life of service matters. ‘They will know we are Christians by our love.’ Not just by what we say, but by how we live.
After years of volunteering inspired by their example, moving to San Diego for college at John Paul the Great Catholic University forced me to pause and get settled. Even that short break from service left me unexpectedly restless. In those first few weeks of college, I felt a sense of emptiness I couldn’t quite explain—until I returned to teaching Sunday School and later joined the Middle School Youth Ministry as part of my new community.
I began to realize that almost every young adult far from home is asking the same deeper questions: Who am I? What am I meant to do? Is this the right major and career path? Am I worth loving? Am I marriage material? How do I know God? How do I make a difference? Do I belong?
Have you ever asked one of those questions? I believe that service is one of the most powerful answers to those questions. Service helps us know God, know one another, and to grow each day. The fruits of service flow into every aspect of how we become the best version of ourselves.
A Movement Bigger Than One Story
Almost everyone today has heard of Jesus.
But what people are starving for is to see Jesus and to encounter His love lived out in real, tangible ways through other people.
That’s where this begins. We set out to be the hands and feet of Christ when we serve but we encounter Him too.
Through doing, through encounter, through service, we come to know other people—and in that, we come to know God. Not just on Sundays, before we’re pulled back into the consumer-driven media cycle and the demands of the week ahead, but every day—Monday through Saturday—as we serve the people right in front of us.
Service, lived this way, becomes a lifestyle. And it’s a lot like fitness: real growth doesn’t come from occasional effort, but from consistent, intentional practice. It takes dedicated time to engage the heart, to stay active, and to keep everything within us strong and alive.
Just like a fitness lifestlye journey, no one starts this perfectly.
It’s more like a shuffle than a sprint.
Like penguins, we move awkwardly at first, figuring it out as we go. But when we step into the water, into the flow of God’s grace together, something changes. We begin to move with purpose, with direction and with each other.
The Model
Impact Resources, now Service on the Schedule became a mission to help provide people the invitation to put service on their schedule for the same transformative journey.
The first project didn’t grow from one person to one hundred out of three hundred total students on campus through a novel way of living out the Gospel invitation to serve the poor.
It was simple. It was joyful and it was also intentional.
We would gather over pizza and soda. What college kids turn down free food?
The invitation was to eat and to talk about serving others. To make space for it and then go.
Led by Others
This was never built by one person.
As things grew, it was other people who carried it forward.
For one of the first larger projects, a retirement home initiative, it was Nicholas, Jackie, and other student leaders who stepped up.
They were responding to an invitation to a contagious idea.
Service is necessary as a pillar of grace that allows us to experience Jesus as the living water flowing into our lives.
Jackie’s story shows how songs can grow wings when given with love.
What We’re Building
This is how movements of love actually grow.
Through relationship.
Through invitation.
Through witness.
Multiplied across campuses, among young adults, and in everyday life..
“Let your light shine before others, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in Heaven.” – Matthew 5:16
An Invitation
After college we started again in Melbourne, serving about 20 people once or twice a week for two and a half years. This is where I met Brian Ling who became of my closest friends. Eventually, after Brian took over our pizza route in Melbourne and we moved to Bakersfield, we were feeding around 50 people a week every Saturday for two years there too. Over the totality of this time in three cities and spanning 7 years, that mission became more than 10,000 meals served, more than 200 young adults mobilized, and a culture of service that included caring for the poor, visiting assisted living homes, and mentoring youth.
And here is something I learned along the way: the kind of love we are called to live does not usually happen by accident. It has to be intentional. If we do not schedule it, we do not do it. The most meaningful things in life—the things that stretch us, form us, and change others—are often the things that do not come naturally. So we choose them. We plan for them. We make space for them.
That is why I think of this whole mission as it pertains to us human beings as ‘The Penguin Shuffle to Heaven.’ Because none of us truly knows God’s full calling or what tomorrow holds, or where we will live five years from now, but we can take awkward, uncertain, shuffle-like steps as our ‘yes’ to His perfect plan.
Like penguins in the fiercest Antarctic winds, we do not survive alone. We press forward together and take turns at the front, breaking the wind for one another, then stepping back so another can carry the weight. No one is meant to stand in the cold by themselves.
We must to keep moving forward, step by step, faithful yes by faithful yes, replacing lesser things with those that last for eternity, until the day we are finally ready for eternal communion with Him in Heaven.
And how do we help make sure more people get to Heaven too? At the heart of every pizza delivered or song given to the lonely, the ultimate victory is to win souls for the Kingdom of Heaven.
While feeding the poor and forming young adults was powerful, the most exciting part was always evangelization. Because story is what moves us to act. And action and really a lived mission is the clearest and most permanent ink with which we write our own story. It is not our thoughts, our intentions, or our wishes that define us. It is our actions.”
Through doing, through encounter, through service, people don’t just hear about Jesus, they see Him. And in that, we come to truly know other people, and truly know God.
If this resonates with you, we invite you to be part of it. Email Amyler@serviceontheschedule.org with all comments and inquiries. See our webinar schedule. See the Our Mission Page for A-Z Training Manuals on ways to get service on your schedule.
