Your essay is very strong grammatically. Although I'm not an expert, I think adding specific details to the essay describing your experience would help a lot.
Fifty Subway sandwiches hushed growling stomachs, bridged differences in age and race, and blessed conversations.
Do you mean something like evoke or start? What do you mean when sandwiches bless a conversation? Just wondering :) I found this part a little confusing.
However, the need to serve and evangelize in the community still remained.
I don't know... to me, I think this could sound more urgent with some rewording... like simply adding the word "compelling" before "need" could give the effect... This is just a minor suggestion though...
Despite the sudden absence of leadership
Some might get caught up here. I think you can clear the small confusion up by changing the earlier sentence: "but the departure of our youth pastor and leader dashed my hopes"
... Actually scratch that x.x Never mind what I said here... now that I think of it, a pastor should be a leader :)
At times, I feel like I provide more narration than reflection on how this experience allowed me to grow as a person. What do you guys think?
I think you've done a pretty nice job balancing both. Since the prompt asks you to elaborate on an activity, undoubtedly, you will need some sort of narration. However, one thing I am not clear about is how the quote relates to what you do. To me the quote "Light is unable to shine without darkness." means, in simplified terms, that life is not easy. I think you should better tie that meaning in to your essay, or perhaps choose a more fitting term...
But this is only an opinion. Wait for the more experience contr/moderators to advise you on this :)