The social issues facing our communities are complex and difficult. Countless government and non-profit efforts have failed to provide any kind of lasting remedy. Millions and millions of dollars have been spent to deal with issues such as drug addiction, homelessness, domestic violence, and mental health. None of these efforts have made much of a difference. A lot of people have given up and retreated into guarded neighborhoods and institutions and tried to focus on not losing anyone else to the chaos.
Yet, the church doesn’t give up. Jesus won’t let us give up. Our communities can’t afford for us to give up. What’s more, the history of the church is that when faced with these kinds of insurmountable problems, we charge them head on. What makes the church think we can make any real difference when so many others have failed?
The answers are both simple and obvious. First, doing this kind of ministry is what we see Jesus doing. Jesus healed the blind, fed the hungry and reached out to those in the margins. We see the early church doing the same thing. In fact, the church, during the Middle Ages, gained the respect of Europe because the Christians were the only people who would help the victims of the plagues and their families. The church started hospitals. Sunday School was a way to reach the children of the city slums who didn’t attend school at all. Not many people will know this, but Alcoholics Anonymous was started in a church. Habitat for Humanity was started under the guidance of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farms. Throughout the church’s history, congregations have responded to challenges of their communities in both creative and redemptive ways.
Why do Christians attempt these impossible tasks? Simple. We believe.
We believe God loves every human being and has endowed each of us with His divine Image. We believe people are of incalculable worth. Every person deserves a life of meaning and purpose. One of the missions of the church is to help people find their mission and purpose in life and live fully into it. We don’t care where they start– wounded, addicted, abandoned – we believe Jesus can – and has – changed the arc of these stories.
We believe God has empowered us with the presence of His Holy Spirit. The same power that raised Christ from the dead is now available to us. We believe God can give us favor with governments, community leaders and even unbelievers. We believe God will provide the resources – money, people and talents – required to transform the problems of our local communities to stories of redemption and salvation.
We live in a very different time. When I was beginning my career, we were taught to begin our evangelism conversations with the Bible. Now, our neighbors don’t recognize the authority of the Bible. Most of the time, people rarely want to talk about their faith at all. Religion is one of those topics polite company never brings up. Unless they see a church doing something interesting.
What if a church, realizing the students at a neighborhood school are falling behind in math and reading scores, provided tutors for the school? What if they set up a job placement program for those graduating high schools? What if part of the church property was used for a community garden? A safe playground? What if before and after school programs were set up?
What if?
These days, ministry comes before the message. People want to see the church doing something before they will listen to what the church is saying. When the church begins to serve, the community will take notice and want to know why the church is doing what they are doing. That’s when we can talk to them about Jesus. This is why we attempt what others say can’t be done because we believe at the bottom of every broken life is a question only Jesus can answer. Questions of identity, worth and meaning — these are Jesus questions. So, we feed the hungry and house the homeless and do all the rest because we believe.
Our God can heal brokenness. He can heal the wounded and welcome home the lost. We believe this is the work God is doing in our world, and we believe we should be doing this work with Him. So, let’s look around our churches. What gifts has God given to our people? Where do the problems of the community and the passions and talents of our churches intersect?
That’s where God wants us to get started. That is our mission.
In all of our history, nothing has really changed. We live in a broken world. God loves our world and is working to fix it. As His people, we should be fixing it too.
