Some of what follows might be review, but here are five things that I have learned and some quotes
from what I have read…
1) Agents of God are ministers of reconciliation, not power.
I made this point in my last post but wanted to re-visit it
with this quote,
Our witness is not made from a
posture of authority or arrogance but from a posture of humility and weakness.
Paul said in [2 Cor. 2:3], "I was with you in weakness and fear and much
trembling." If we try to come to folks simply from a posture of being
authoritative or arrogant—if we try to beat people over the head with the Bible—all
we do is drive them away. God has given us the rare privilege of handling holy
things. We do that with fear, trembling, and much humility.[1]
2) Agents of God are coming to serve rather than be served.
While we have come to serve, we need to take time to listen
or our help may end up being a curse instead of a blessing as Niebuhr observes,
The breakdown of our society due to
human sinfulness has robbed people of safe places (e.g., marriage, family, and
church). Even our sincere efforts at fixing what is broken often just make
things worse if we haven’t taken time to listen to the Lord and to those in
need. Yet, we need safe places where we can heal together—places where we
mutually pity the stranger, enter into their story and find new family in the
process.[2]
3) Agents of God are invitational, not coercive.
Soong-Chan Rah, in his book, Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church,
repeatedly advocates for us to listen to each other’s story, and to “discover
the hidden or untold story.”[3]
But listening takes time so we Americans simply press forward with the plans we
feel are the most effective. We think we know better than “others” and feel
justified in not listening. This tyranny of action that historically has
permeated our culture has also been mixed with a heavy dose of the end
justifying the means. The church is not immune to such cultural pulls.
Worldliness can also infect a
church's methods. In a day of shifting paradigms with many innovative ways of
thinking and doing, many church leaders assume any method that is new or
produces visible results is acceptable to God. A not-so-holy pragmatism
sometimes makes us believe any means justifies the end when the means and the
end often need to be reevaluated in light of the New Testament. Although
worldliness may not be in the method, it can be in the attitude of those who
use the method.[4]
4) Agents of God desire to follow Jesus’ example of incarnational
care not merely to offer aid from a safe distance via drones, remote control,
or robotic arms.
"The calling of the church is to embody, but not
compel, this vision."[5]
As we desire to embody, to model a different way of living, to help those in
the most poverty-stricken areas Perkins says that we need to be willing to
relocate or “move into a needy community so that its needs become our own
needs.”[6]
And as
Another way of restoring the
stabilizing glue to our urban areas is for committed Christians to live in
these communities. The importance of our physical presence in these communities
can’t be overstated, whether it means moving to them for the first time, coming
back, or just staying put. This principle that we have come to call relocation
is what has given Christian community development success as well as undeniable
credibility.[7]
5) Agents of God see the church as an intentional community
of peace, not a voluntary social club established to maintain the status quo.
I frequently hear people, from many backgrounds and in diverse
contexts, complain about personal betrayals, physical and
emotional abuses, terrible crimes in the community, and even corporate
injustice and government heavy-handedness. We need our homes, our towns,
counties, states, and countries to be not only safe but just. The problem we
face is that in wanting to help make things better our government programs
simply make things worse. Why? Because even our highest ideals apart from the
redeeming love of Christ are tainted by pride and ego endemic since that first
selfish act in a garden long ago.
“A second consequence of the root sin is the
social sinfulness of mankind… Friendship is corrupted by treachery; the home,
‘natural refuge from the ills of life,’ is itself not safe; the political order
in city and empire is not only confused by wars and oppressions, but the very administration of justice becomes a perverse business in which ignorance seeking to check
vice commits new injustice.”[8]
[emphasis mine]
From housing projects to health care reform, we can see how
efforts to help can easily turn bad. Efforts to legislate morality to
protect social justice have failed just as badly. What is needed is not a new
deal but a new heart, not a program but a personal relationship with the
Savior. When we have that, when we follow Jesus’ incarnational example, we
continue to die to our own sense of entitlement and need for control and live
life in a way that is helpful and liberating—truly humanizing—to those around
us. Our Triune God cares about the sick, and the poor, and justice for the
oppressed. If we are agents of God we will be a profound blessing to our
communities because we will stand for mercy, truth, and sacrificial serving love.
I have a ways to go, yet I remain hopeful.
I will conclude with the words of John Perkins, “I believe
that the church has the opportunity to pioneer and model a way of life whereby
our nation itself can experience a new birth.”[9]
[1] John
E. Mathison, "A First Century Witness for a 21st Century World." Preaching,
(March 2013): 34-37.
[2]
H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ & Culture. [New York: HarperOne, 1951],
212.
[3]
Soong-Chan Rah, Many Colors: Cultural
Intelligence for a Changing Church (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010),
132-156.
[4]
Niebuhr, 211.
[5] Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian
Theology (New York: T & T Clark, 1997), 177.
[6] John Perkins. Beyond
Charity: The Call to Christian Community Development, Baker Publishing
Group. Kindle Edition, 36.
[7]
Perkins, 75.
[8]
Niebuhr, 212.
[9] Perkins, 18.
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