Serving the Poor

A few years ago I came across an article in Discipleship Journal by Anne Meskey Elhajoui on A Transformed Life. Yesterday I came across it again, this time at the DJ on-line archive. One of the convicting paragraphs that stood out the first time I read it, and remains convicting:

Finally, after studying these verses, I stumbled upon what I thought to be a biblical typo: "[God] is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish," (Lk. 6:35, RSV). Could that be correct? What an interesting crescendo to this convicting passage. I'd already learned that serving the poor isn't always easy. I'd been burned a time or two for loving Sheila. But Jesus was crucified for loving me. He gave everything! This is the irony of the cross. How often I fail to acknowledge the blessings and love He's lavished upon me while still expecting Him to give more. Is Sheila any different from me? What if God stopped giving when I was ungrateful, selfish, or failed to show progress?

Self-Examination Questions

David Powlison shares a list of 35 X-ray Questions (pdf). These questions draw out "the whys and wherefores of human behavior." They help in discerning the patterns of a person’s motivation, and help to "identify and unveil the ungodly masters that occupy positions of authority in their hearts." We can use these as self-examination questions or in counseling others.

1. What do you love? Hate?
2. What do you want, desire, crave, lust, and wish for? What desires do you serve and obey?
3. What do you seek, aim for, pursue? What are your goals and expectations?
4. Where do you bank your hopes?
5. What do you fear? What do you not want? What do you tend to worry about?
6. What do you feel like doing?
7. What do you think you need? What are your “felt needs”?
8. What are your plans, agendas, strategies, and intentions designed to accomplish?
9. What makes you tick? What sun does your planet revolve around? Where do you find your garden of delight? What lights up your world? What fountain of life, hope, and delight do you drink from? What food sustains your life? What really matters to you? What fairy castle do you construct in the clouds? What pipe dreams tantalize or terrify you? Around what do you organize your life? What magnetic north orients your world?
10. Where do you find refuge, safety, comfort, escape, pleasure, security?
11. What or who do you trust?
12. Whose performance matters? On whose shoulders does the well-being of your world rest? Who can make it better, make it work, make it safe, make it successful?
13. Who must you please? Whose opinion of you counts? From whom do you desire approval and fear rejection? Whose value system do you measure yourself against? In whose eyes are you living? Whose love and approval do you need?
14. Who are your role models? What kind of person do you think you ought to be or want to be?
15. On your deathbed, what would sum up your life as worthwhile? What gives your life meaning?
16. How do you define and weigh success or failure, right or wrong, desirable or undesirable, in any particular situation?
17. What would make you feel rich, secure, prosperous? What must you get to make life sing?
18. What would bring you the greatest pleasure, happiness and delight? The greatest pain and misery?
19. Whose coming into political power would make everything better?
20. Whose victory or success would make your life happy? How do you define victory and success?
21. What do you see as your rights? What do you feel entitled to?
22. In what situations do you feel pressured or tense? Confident and relaxed? When you are pressured, where do you turn? What do you think about? What are your escapes? What do you escape from?
23. What do you want to get out of life? What payoff do you seek out of the things you do? “What do you get out of doing that?”
24. What do you pray for?
25. What do you think about most often? What preoccupies or obsesses you? In the morning, to what does your mind drift instinctively? What is your “mindset”?
26. What do you talk about? What is important to you? What attitudes do you communicate?
27. How do you spend your time? What are your priorities?
28. What are your characteristic fantasies, either pleasurable or fearful? Daydreams? What do your night dreams revolve around?
29. What are the functional beliefs that control how you interpret your life and determine how you act?
30. What are your idols or false gods? In what do you place your trust, or set your hopes? What do you turn to or seek? Where do you take refuge? Who is the savior, judge, controller, provider, protector in your world? Who do you serve? What “voice” controls you?
31. How do you live for yourself?
32. How do you live as a slave of the devil?
33. How do you implicitly say, “If only.…” (to get what you want, avoid what you don’t want, keep what you have)?
34. What instinctively seems and feels right to you? What are your opinions, things you feel are true?
35. Where do you find your identity? How do you define who you are?

Serving Through Ministries of Mercy

The Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) has a position paper on Biblical Guidelines for Mercy Ministry in the PCA. The first part of the paper asks and answers the question, "To what ministry of mercy does Christ call his church?" Here are the key points of the answer (you'll have to read the paper to flesh out each point):

1. To a ministry that flows from the compassion of Christ
a. Christ's compassion is perceptive, directed toward the needy
b. Christ's compassion is active, expressed in deed as well as word
c. Christ's compassion is gracious, directed toward the undeserving
d. Christ's example and precept call us to compassionate ministry
e. Christ's Spirit conveys his compassion

2. To a ministry defined by the kingdom/gospel of Christ
a. A ministry of hope
b. A ministry in Christ's name
c. A ministry that calls to repentance and faith
d. A ministry of Christian fellowship
e. A ministry in spiritual power

3. To a ministry equipped by the Spirit of Christ
a. A ministry of the Spirit, not simply of resources
b. Varieties of gifts and ministries

Crisis Pregnancy Centers

Betty J. Kvale offers some thoughts on Ministering to Women in Times of Personal Crisis: Christian Crisis Pregnancy Centers (pdf).

How can you or your church get involved? Psalm 116:12-13 asks, “What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me?” and answers, “I will take up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.” Prayer is the foundation for any service to our Lord. Also:

• Ask Him how He would have you serve.
• Pray for the centers already established that they will see fruit in souls and babies saved.
• Take the required training course and become a volunteer. There are varied opportunities from sorting donated items, office work, or serving on the Hotline in your own home.
• Donate used items, perhaps holding a church-wide baby shower. Anything for a baby or pregnant mom is accepted.

Our local CPC is actually based in a community 45 minutes away: Sunparlour Pregnancy Resource Centre, 33 Princess St, Suite 203 B, Leamington, Ontario. They have a satellite office in Windsor at St. Clair College.

Serving the Community, Part 2

Randy Nabors in an article on Mercy Ministries: For Goodness Sake, Do Something! offers some suggestions on what churches can do:

We need to encourage and pray for our elders and deacons to help us know what needs to be done, outside the walls of our church building, and then show us how to do it. They need to lead us to make an impact on our neighborhoods. Can we build somebody a Habitat for Humanity house? Can we throw a block party for an apartment complex? Can we go into a poor neighborhood and set up a bike fix-it station on a Saturday? Can we organize a mothers day out for mothers of small children? Can we invite all the seniors in a neighborhood to a bus tour somewhere? Can we paint a widow's home? Can we install fire detectors in the old houses of a neighborhood? Can we build a medical clinic in an underserved neighborhood? Can we plant trees or flowers in a bare patch of public ground? Can we help get people to a medical fair, or provide flu shots? Can we change the oil in cars of single moms? Can we just give a visible demonstration of the love of Christ?

Yes, we can do those things, and we can do more. We can create tutoring programs, and job partnership programs, and prison reentry programs, and care for people with HIV/AIDS, or provide hospice care. We can incorporate development agencies under the spiritual authority of the church (we do that for schools, don't we?), and we can build housing, create jobs, and change whole neighborhoods. We can establish and send disaster response teams. We can train and equip our deacons, maybe even employ one full time, to do effective mercy with accountability and escalate that into true economic development-all the while preaching Christ and the need for Holy Spirit regeneration.

Organ Donation?

ESPN has a story about Jason Ray.

It's a timely read given the Church of England's recent declaration, Organ Donation a Christian Duty. The Albert Mohler radio program has a discussion on this topic: Do Christians Have a "Duty to Donate"? (beginning at about the 11:00 minute mark).

A Christian's Response to Organ Donation and Transplantation offers a helpful summary of the complex issues involved.

I hope you'll at least give some serious thought to signing your organ donation card if you haven't yet.

Serving as Deacons

Tim Keller, whose article I linked to in my last post, is the pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. Here is the description of Redeemer's Diaconate ministry.

The Diaconate, a group of men and women nominated, elected and appointed into the office by the Redeemer members, exists to contribute to the building of a repentant and rejoicing community through loving, truth-telling relationships where practical, visible needs are being met while hearts are being changed through encounters with Jesus and one another. We express in practical ways Christ's command to all believers to love our neighbor as ourselves.

The Diaconate is a ministry that reaches out to people in Redeemer's congregation who are in crisis or challenging circumstances and offers help in assessing their needs and working together to find solutions. Unlike elders, who are responsible for teaching the Gospel, administering healing prayer, and overseeing the church, the officers of the Diaconate (deacons and deaconesses) focus on extending mercy and compassion. Our purpose is to show God's love by trying to help people out of difficult circumstances and to be facilitators of the work God is doing in their lives.

Serving the Community

I might have posted this before but it's worth repeating: Tim Keller on A New Kind of Urban Christian and particularly the church being "a city within the city."

Christians should be a community radically committed to the good of the city as a whole. We must move out to sacrificially serve the good of the whole human community, especially the poor. Revelation 21-22 makes it clear that the ultimate purpose of redemption is not to escape the material world, but to renew it. God's purpose is not only saving individuals, but also inaugurating a new world based on justice, peace, and love, not power, strife, and selfishness.

So Christians work for the peace, security, justice, and prosperity of their city and their neighbors, loving them in word and in deed, whether they believe what we do or not. In Jeremiah 29:7, Israel's exiles were called not just to live in the city, but also to love it and work for its shalom—its economic, social, and spiritual flourishing. The citizens of God's city are the best possible citizens of their earthly cities.

This is the only kind of cultural engagement that will not corrupt us and conform us to the world's pattern of life. If Christians go to urban centers simply to acquire power, they will never achieve cultural influence and change that is deep, lasting, and embraced by the broader society. We must live in the city to serve all the peoples in it, not just our own tribe. We must lose our power to find our (true) power. Christianity will not be attractive enough to win influence except through sacrificial service to all people, regardless of their beliefs.

This strategy (if we must call it that) will work. In every culture, some Christian conduct will be offensive and attacked, but some will be moving and attractive to outsiders. "Though they accuse you — they may see your good deeds and glorify God" (1 Peter 2:12, see also Matt. 5:16). In the Middle East, a Christian sexual ethic makes sense, but not "turn the other cheek." In secular New York City, the Christian teaching on forgiveness and reconciliation is welcome, but our sexual ethics seem horribly regressive. Every non-Christian culture has enough common grace to recognize some of the work of God in the world and to be attracted to it, even while Christianity in other ways will offend the prevailing culture.

So we must neither just denounce the culture nor adopt it. We must sacrificially serve the common good, expecting to be constantly misunderstood and sometimes attacked. We must walk in the steps of the one who laid down his life for his opponents.

Serving by Helping Where Needed

Jerry Bridges has an article at Discipleship Journal on Loving by Serving.

Competition has no place in the fellowship of believers. Rather we are to honor one another above ourselves. Serving one another within the Body is a very practical and concrete way to honor one another. By serving I simply mean doing helpful deeds for one another. Jesus washed His disciples' feet. Dawson Trotman cleaned a national pastor's shoes. Paul, shipwrecked on the island of Malta, gathered a pile of brushwood to put on the fire built for his fellow passengers. Each of these acts was incredibly simple and mundane in and of itself. But this is what servanthood within the fellowship of believers is all about: being alert to the little things that need to be done, and doing them....

No one ever gets to a place within society as a whole or the Body of Christ in particular where he or she is too important to serve others in the ordinary tasks of life. In fact, one of the chief characteristics of a servant is that he serves downward, that is, to those who by the world's standards are beneath him in position or station in life. It is relatively easy to serve those above us. Even the world expects this. But Jesus served downward. Quite apart from His deity, He was, on a strictly human plane, the leader of that band of twelve apostles. He could have asked one of the disciples to wash all their feet but He chose to do it Himself.

Jesus recognized that in the world, the lesser serves the greater. At one time He said, "For who is greater, the one who is at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who is at the table? But I am among you as one who serves" (Lk. 22:27). But though this may be true in the world, in the Body of Christ it is to be different. Again Jesus said, "I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you" (Jn. 13:15).

What Does Ekklesia Mean?

No, I'm not talking about the name of my blog, though it's related. I've been thinking about the meaning of the Greek word ekklesia, which is usually translated "church" in the New Testament. There is a long history of connecting the word with its etymology - "called out of." But others say that the first century usage of the word only means "assembly" or "gathering."

The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology defines ekklesia as "assembly, meeting, congregation, church." It says of the word's classical usage:

ekklesia, derived via ek-kaleo, which was used for the summons to the army to assemble, from kaleo, to call. It is attested from Eur. and Hdt. onwards (5th cent. B.C.), and denotes in the usage of antiquity the popular assembly of the competent full citizens of the polis, city.

An example of this secular usage is found in Acts 19 (the bold highlighted words translate ekklesia):

About that time there arose a great disturbance about the Way. A silversmith named Demetrius, who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought in no little business for the craftsmen. He called them together, along with the workmen in related trades, and said: "Men, you know we receive a good income from this business. And you see and hear how this fellow Paul has convinced and led astray large numbers of people here in Ephesus and in practically the whole province of Asia. He says that man-made gods are no gods at all. There is danger not only that our trade will lose its good name, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be discredited, and the goddess herself, who is worshiped throughout the province of Asia and the world, will be robbed of her divine majesty."

When they heard this, they were furious and began shouting: "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!" Soon the whole city was in an uproar. The people seized Gaius and Aristarchus, Paul's traveling companions from Macedonia, and rushed as one man into the theater. Paul wanted to appear before the crowd, but the disciples would not let him. Even some of the officials of the province, friends of Paul, sent him a message begging him not to venture into the theater.

The assembly was in confusion: Some were shouting one thing, some another. Most of the people did not even know why they were there. The Jews pushed Alexander to the front, and some of the crowd shouted instructions to him. He motioned for silence in order to make a defense before the people. But when they realized he was a Jew, they all shouted in unison for about two hours: "Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!"

The city clerk quieted the crowd and said: "Men of Ephesus, doesn't all the world know that the city of Ephesus is the guardian of the temple of the great Artemis and of her image, which fell from heaven? Therefore, since these facts are undeniable, you ought to be quiet and not do anything rash. You have brought these men here, though they have neither robbed temples nor blasphemed our goddess. If, then, Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen have a grievance against anybody, the courts are open and there are proconsuls. They can press charges. If there is anything further you want to bring up, it must be settled in a legal assembly. As it is, we are in danger of being charged with rioting because of today's events. In that case we would not be able to account for this commotion, since there is no reason for it." After he had said this, he dismissed the assembly (Acts 19:23-41).

Some (e.g.) have argued that all instances of ekklesia in the New Testament should be translated by "assembly" or "gathering."

But there is also a long history of referring to the church as "the called out" ones, based on the etymology of ekklesia. Some (e.g.) reference D. A. Carson's book Exegetical Fallacies to caution against this practice. Carson writes:

One of the most enduring fallacies, the root fallacy presupposes that every word actually has a meaning bound up with its shape or its components. In this view, meaning is determined by etymology; that is by the roots of a word.

Carson's warning is important. Usage is more important than etymology. However, we shouldn't just look at secular usage; we should also look at Old Testament usage. In the case of ekklesia, Carson writes in his commentary on Matthew in The Expositor's Bible Commentary:

Whenever ekklesia in the LXX is translating Hebrew, the Hebrew word is qahal ("assembly," "meeting," "gathering"), with reference to various kinds of "assemblies" ... but increasingly used to refer to God's people, the assembly of Yahweh.

The point about ekklesia as "God's people, the assembly of Yahweh," is important. It seems to me that simply speaking of ekklesia as an assembly or gathering can lead to the idea that the church is mainly about meeting together. But ekklesia is not so much the activity as it is the people - the community or fellowship, if you will - who have been assembled or gathered together by God. On a side note, aren't there "religious" overtones to this, not in the sense of an institution, but in the sense of a community of faith? So I think there is still benefit in thinking of the church as "called out" ones - or those "called together" by God. Indeed, Paul can speak of the community of God's people as the kletoi, the called ones (e.g. Romans 1:6).

Just as there are those who think they can be part of a church without ever meeting, there are others who think that the meeting is church. Both are distortions. The ekklesia is the people of God. And we gather together because we've been called together in the name of Jesus Christ.

Microfinance?

One of the ways we can serve is through financial giving. One innovative way of giving to the poorest of the poor is through microfinancing. I heard about the concept when Muhammad Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Prize. Then last week I was directed to a book review for A Billion Bootstraps (sorry I can't remember whose blog mentioned it). Anybody familiar with the book?

The reviewer writes:

Thurman's chapter, "A Thousand Battles, A Thousand Victories," is probably the book's strongest. It stands alone as an essay describing poverty and the "war" on poverty, with an acknowledgement that poverty is not only a financial problem. He says that most wealthy people are shielded from the poverty of developing nations, but it is important for people in developed countries to move beyond the data of poverty to a deeper understanding.

Thurman clearly explains absolute poverty and the relative poverty of low-income Americans. The difference between living on $1 a day or less and living on $1 to $2 day is often the difference between starvation and survival. Thurman stresses that microcredit often works best for the poorest people, as he points out, "Doubling an income of $1 or $2 a day is easier than doubling an income of $10 or $20 a day."

On A Billion Bootstraps' website, they list some organizations that are involved in microcredit. Included is HOPE International, "a global, faith-based, non-profit organization focused on poverty alleviation through microenterprise development" in Afghanistan, China, Dominican Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Moldova, Russia, Rwanda, South Asia, and Ukraine. Anyone familiar with HOPE?

Update: Rick Meigs posts that he is involved in microcredit through an organization called Kiva:

I'm so sold on this concept that I’d like to introduce it in a practical way to two people. I’m going to do this by giving away two US$25.00 Kiva gift certificate that two people can use to make their first micro-credit loan through Kiva.

Serving Through Hospitality

Some basic but helpful observations by Jonathan Lindvall about hospitality:

Hospitality is practiced in a family setting. But if our families are being atomized into fragmented individuals, each with his own independent life to pursue, there is very little potential context for being hospitable....

It is instructive that one of the observable qualifications God instituted for evaluating the qualifications of potential leaders in the church is that they be hospitable (1Ti 3:2; Tit 1:8).

Do you think we need to emphasize in our churches that hospitality is something men should be leading their families in?

What are we offering when we offer hospitality? Tim Frickenschmidt has a great post on How Money Ruins Hospitality. He concludes:

As Christians our greatest offerings to one another and to the watching world are not positive; they are not out of the reservoir of what we are or have in ourselves. What we uniquely have to offer others that can truly change their souls is the “void” of which Barth speaks; it is the brokenness and feebleness that sin has scarred upon us but which God in Christ is healing. Our greatest offerings, our most hospitable offerings to others are negative; they are what we are not. We are not holier than they; our houses and our lives are not in spotless order; our children are not the beautiful little pixies that the pictures in our wallets display. We just are not...what most people think us to be. And if we let them into our homes and they see what we are not, maybe they will see who Christ is, what the gospel is.

It is our negative offerings in hospitality that most clearly share grace with others. When they see that fallen people like us, who were once enslaved to the insatiable egotism of sin are now those who, though not perfect, strive to serve others out of our reservoir of weakness, we will really leave an impression. Christian hospitality is ultimately not an offering of our food, our house, our wit, our house cleaning, our horticulture, our parenting, or anything that the world too can offer, but rather our Lord Jesus, who has graciously filled the void between us and God through His life, death, and resurrection. It is Him we offer in our hospitality. You cannot serve both God and money.

Canadian Thanksgiving

I'm reading Randy Alcorn's book Heaven. This is appropriate for Thanksgiving Sunday:

God isn't displeased when we enjoy a good meal, marital sex, a football game, a cozy fire, or a good book. He's not up in Heaven frowning at us and saying, "Stop it—you should only find joy in me." This would be as foreign to God's nature as our heavenly Father as it would be to mine as an earthly father if I gave my daughters a Christmas gift and started pouting because they enjoyed it too much. No, I gave the gift to bring joy to them and to me—if they didn't take pleasure in it, I'd be disappointed. Their pleasure in my gift to them draws them closer to me. I am delighted that they enjoy the gift.

Of course, if children become so preoccupied with the gift that they walk away from their father and ignore him, that's different. Though preoccupation with a God-given gift can turn into idolatry, enjoying that same gift with a grateful heart can draw us closer to God. In Heaven we'll have no capacity to turn people or things into idols. When we find joy in God's gifts, we will be finding our joy in him....

All secondary joys are derivative in nature. They cannot be separated from God. Flowers are beautiful for one reason—God is beautiful. Rainbows are stunning because God is stunning. Puppies are delightful because God is delightful. Sports are fun because God is fun. Study is rewarding because God is rewarding. Work is fulfilling because God is fulfilling.

Ironically, some people who are the most determined to avoid the sacrilege of putting things before God miss a thousand daily opportunities to thank him, praise him, and draw near to him, because they imagine they shouldn't enjoy the very things he made to help us know him and love him....

God welcomes prayers of thanksgiving for meals, warm fires, games, books, relationships, and every other good thing. When we fail to acknowledge God as the source of all good things, we fail to give him the recognition and glory he deserves. We separate joy from God, which is like trying to separate heat from fire or wetness from rain....

Every day we should see God in his creation: in the food we eat, the air we breathe, the friendships we enjoy, and the pleasures of family, work, and hobbies. Yes, we must sometimes forgo secondary pleasures, and we should never let them eclipse God. And we should avoid opulence and waste when others are needy. But we should thank God for all of life's joys, large and small, and allow them to draw us to him.

That's exactly what we'll do in Heaven . . . so why not start now? (pp. 171-172).

Read the full chapter here.

October Topic: Serving

I got back from Halifax on Monday (after five weeks away), and have been slowly rebuilding a routine here at home. So I'm a little late getting to my October topic of the month. I'll be linking to articles on how we can serve people with the gifts that God has given us.

Here is a necessary reminder from Joni Eareckson Tada that we need to be Serving in His Strength:

Christ did not lay down His life for others in an emotional vacuum. So if I was to have His attitude toward the people He was calling me to serve, it meant serving with warmth and passion. With fervent devotion. Zeal and spirited affection. Even pleasure.

"Pleasure? Service is supposed to be a pleasure?" I knew what it involved. It meant making myself nothing, humbly nailing every snobby sentiment to the Cross, and becoming obedient to death. Dying to self—putting to death the "let others do it" mentality—would open the door to loving, really loving God. Only then would I love and serve people as He did....

It all falls apart if there is no passion for God. Deep and abiding devotion to Jesus energizes service that is tiring or rigorous. Affection that is warm and heartfelt can give boundless joy to a difficult task. Fervent love for the Lord takes the squeamishness out of duty that's distasteful.

Perhaps that's why Jesus always made a point of abiding in Him. Surely He, the Vine, had more than just fruit in mind for us branches when in Jn. 15:4 He said, "Remain in Me, and I will remain in you." Life that sustains and invigorates service can only be realized through a deep and personal union with Him; and you can't get more intimate than being a branch grafted into a vine.