A Very Creative Way To Serve The Poor

Interacting with "The Hole in our Gospel"

D.A. Carson:

So now I come to the fairly recent and certainly very moving book by Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel: What Does God Expect of Us? This frank and appealing book surveys worldwide poverty and argues that the American failure to take up God’s mandate to address poverty is “the hole in our gospel.” Without wanting to diminish the obligation Christians have to help the poor, and with nothing but admiration for Mr Stearns’s personal pilgrimage, his argument would have been far more helpful and compelling had he observed three things: 

First, “what God expects of us” (his subtitle) is, by definition, not the gospel. This is not the great news of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. Had Mr Stearns cast his treatment of poverty as one of the things to be addressed by the second greatest commandment, or as one of several entailments of the gospel, I could have recommended his book with much greater confidence. As it is, the book will contribute to declining clarity as to what the gospel is. 

Second, even while acknowledging—indeed, insisting on the importance of highlighting—the genuine needs that Mr Stearns depicts in his book, it is disturbing not to hear similar anguish over human alienation from God. The focus of his book is so narrowly poverty that the sweep of what the gospel addresses is lost to view. Men and women stand under God’s judgment, and this God of love mandates that by the means of heralding the gospel they will be saved not only in this life but in the life to come. Where is the anguish that contemplates a Christ-less eternity, that cries, “Repent! Turn away from all your offenses. . . . Why will you die, people of Israel? For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone” (Ezek 18:30–32). The analysis of the problem is too small, and the gospel is correspondingly reduced. 

Third, some studies have shown that Christians spend about five times more mission dollars on issues related to poverty than they do on evangelism and church planting. At one time, “holistic ministry” was an expression intended to move Christians beyond proclamation to include deeds of mercy. Increasingly, however, “holistic ministry” refers to deeds of mercy without any proclamation of the gospel—and that is not holistic. It is not even halfistic, since the deeds of mercy are not the gospel: they are entailments of the gospel. Although I know many Christians who happily combine fidelity to the gospel, evangelism, church planting, and energetic service to the needy, and although I know some who call themselves Christians who formally espouse the gospel but who live out few of its entailments, I also know Christians who, in the name of a “holistic” gospel, focus all their energy on presence, wells in the Sahel, fighting disease, and distributing food to the poor, but who never, or only very rarely, articulate the gospel, preach the gospel, announce the gospel, to anyone. Judging by the distribution of American mission dollars, the biggest hole in our gospel is the gospel itself.

Read D.A. Carson’s entire article.

(HT:  Dan Cruver)

Care for the Socially Vulnerable in the Early Church—Aristides (2nd century)

BibleMesh Blog:

Aristides of Athens was a second-century Christian author who wrote an apology addressed to the pagan Roman emperor Hadrian (or Antoninus Pius). The purpose of Aristides’s treatise was to defend the Christian faith against false accusations during the time when the Roman government persecuted Christians. Among other things, Aristides argues that the Christian moral code surpasses the highest ethical ideals of pagan philosophers, especially as manifested by the Church’s concern for the poor and socially vulnerable.

They [Christians] help those who offend them, making friends of them; do good to their enemies. They don’t adore idols; they are kind, good, modest, sincere, they love one another; don’t despise widows; protect the orphans; those who have much give without grumbling, to those in need. When they meet strangers, they invite them to their homes with joy, for they recognize them as true brothers, not natural but spiritual. 

When a poor man dies, if they become aware, they contribute according to their means for his funeral; if they come to know that some people are persecuted or sent to prison or condemned for the sake of Christ’s name, they put their alms together and send them to those in need. If they can do it, they try to obtain their release. When a slave or a beggar is in need of help, they fast two or three days, and give him the food they had prepared for themselves, because they think that he too should be joyful, as he has been called to be joyful like themselves.[i]

Your Heart Will Follow Your Money

Suppose you buy shares of General Motors. What happens? You suddenly develop interest in GM. You check the financial pages. You see a magazine article about GM and read every word, even though a month ago you would have passed right over it. 

Suppose you’re giving to help African children with AIDS. When you see an article on the subject, you’re hooked. If you’re sending money to plant churches in India and an earthquake hits India, you watch the news and fervently pray. 

As surely as the compass needle follows north, your heart will follow your treasure. Money leads; hearts follow. 

I’ve heard people say, “I want more of a heart for missions.” I always respond, “Jesus tells you exactly how to get it. Put your money in missions—and in your church and the poor—and your heart will follow”

- Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle, p.44

Pharisees Today

The religious elite had created a sys- tem of moral respectability that only the wealthy could ever hope to maintain. Only the rich had the time and money to do all the required ritual cleansing. You can’t be ritually clean in a slum. This was bourgeois spirituality. We can do this too. Our expectations of clothing, behavior, literacy, and punctuality can exclude the poor. These verses also speak to a professionalized church ministry—a life seen as the epitome of godliness, but all but impossible for those not in full-time ministry. 

The teachers of the law created a system that allowed them to feel superior, and then lifted not one finger to help others. Think how this might play out today. Today’s Pharisees might condemn the poor for their dysfunctional families, but lift not one finger to help. Today’s Pharisees might condemn the poor for their excessive drinking, but lift not one finger to ease their pain. Today’s Pharisees might condemn the poor for their laziness, but lift not one finger to provide employment. Today’s Pharisees might condemn the poor for their abortions, but lift not one finger to adopt unwanted children. I’m not defending dysfunctional families, drunkenness, and so on. But we can’t condemn these things at a distance. That’s legalism. We must come alongside, proclaiming and demonstrating the transforming grace of God.

- Tim Chester, A Meal with Jesus: Discovering Grace, Community, and Mission around the Table, p. 22

The Black Family in Politically Conservative Discourse

Very helpful thoughts here from Thabiti Anaybwile.

Evangelism and Social Renewal Are Inseparable

I found this quote profoundly helpful in light of recent debates in Reformed evangelicalism.

Given that the greatest need of people is to be reconciled with God and given that this need can only be met through the message of the gospel, it might seem logical to say that evangelism has priority. The problem is that it is not clear what "priority" means in this context. It suggests a choice between the two, and so evangelism should be chosen; it sets the two activities up as competing priorities in which social action can be neglected. We prioritize by making a list and doing the activies at the top of the list. If there is no time left for item lower down the list, then this does not matter because we have deemed such things less important. The implication of saying evangelism has priority in this sense is that it does not matter if we have no time for social action.

However, such choices rarely bare any relationship to reality.  In our involvement in the lives of others, we cannot choose to ignore their social needs.  We cannot treat people in isolation from their context.  Evangelism alone might make sense in the lecture room.  It may even just about make sense in a middle-class suburb.  It makes no sense at all when working among the poor.  Mission takes place in and through relationships and relationships are multi-faceted.  Proclamation should be central, but a center implies a context and our proclamation should take place in the context of a life of love.   

So social action and evangelism should neither be identified with one another, nor separated.  Evangelism and social action should be viewed as distinct, but inseparable activities in our mission to the poor in which proclamation is central.  In any relationship with poor people or with a poor community, we must as evangelicals be looking for opportunities to share the message of the gospel.  This is not because our social action is invalid without evangelism.  It is because love requires that we share the message of hope that meets people's greatest need.  

- Engaging With The City, Porterbook curriculum, Year 1, Module 12

David Platt on Caring for the Poor and Discipleship

RSS readers, click through to view.

Stop asking the wrong question

Guest post by Aaron Armstrong

Sometimes when I look at the world's problems—especially the problem of poverty and the need to care for the poor—I find myself asking the question, “Am I doing enough?” But in my study of the Scriptures, I’ve come to the conclusion that this may not be the right question. In fact, it might be exactly the wrong one. Here's what I mean:

“Doing enough” can be overly simplistic. One problem with “doing enough” is that it tends to focus us on the wrong goal. We pick a dollar amount, or an income percentage, or a number of hours per month. We construct a set of checkboxes to see if we’re meeting the output criteria we have set for ourselves. Some suggest, for example, that if we all give just one percent more financially, global poverty can be wiped out forever. All we have to do, they say, is track the progress, allocate the resources, and we’re set.

When “doing enough” becomes primarily a matter of numbers, we can be sure we are focusing on the wrong thing. Alleviating poverty is about more than a certain amount of giving, whether of time or money.

“Doing enough” is legalism. Worse, this “doing enough” mindset is textbook legalism—the effort to be pleasing to God through our external behavior. And encouraging people to be active in helping the poor can promote legalism like few other activities. Unless God cuts someone to the heart and instills a compassion for the poor, exhortations to “choose your fast” or “just give more money” either will be ignored or will feed one’s “inner legalist.”

If our focus is whether we are doing “enough,” it may be that our hearts are as dead as those to whom Isaiah, Amos, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel preached. “We have all become like one who is unclean,” Isaiah said, “and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment" (Isaiah 64:6).

(From Awaiting a Savior: The Gospel, the New Creation and the End of Poverty, pp. 58-59)

Want to change the world? Sponsor a child

Guest post by Aaron Armstrong

Child sponsorship sometimes gets a bum rap. Many of us are leery about it's effectiveness. I've been sponsoring with Compassion International for seven years.* I've had the chance to meet my sponsored children on a couple of occasions and have seen the work for myself so I "know" it works. But I'm also an unusual case. Most people only have an organization's assurance to go on that they're really doing what they say they are.

That is, until independent research was conducted by Dr. Bruce Wydick and a team from the University of San Francisco on the effectiveness of Compassion's child sponsorship program. The results are pretty astounding. Check out the article at Christianity Today:

We loaded the data onto my computer from Rutledge's flash drive, and I rattled off some code to replicate their estimations. I was looking at the results of Compassion's impact on educational outcomes in Uganda—I stared at the statistics on my screen to make sure I was seeing correctly.

"This is … amazing," was all I could mumble. We tried slicing the data different ways, but each showed significant educational improvements. You could beat this data senseless, and it was incapable of showing anything other than extremely large and statistically significant impacts on educational outcomes for sponsored children. 

A few months later, I presented the Uganda findings in the weekly development economics seminar at UC–Berkeley. The Berkeley seminar was familiar turf, but not a place to suffer fools gladly. We received a number of constructive comments, but the consensus was that the underlying methodology was sound. What was obvious was that the study needed external validity. Uganda was one country. Compassion was one organization. We would try to expand the study to multiple organizations and countries.

Read the whole article.

(*Full disclosure: I am employed by Compassion's Canadian office. I'm sharing the CT article because it's good stuff, not because of my affiliation with the organization.)

Do We Give at Christmas Like God Gives?

Miroslav Volf:

Consider the true gift we celebrate at Christmas, God’s advent into the world. Here is how the apostle Paul told the story of Christmas: “For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). The Son of God did not dwell among humans just to open our vista onto the circle of blissful exchanges within the Godhead. He divested himself of heavenly wealth and became an impoverished child so the fragile flesh of humanity could be taken up into God’s embrace. The circle of the Eternal Intimates opened up, and gifts traversed its boundaries to reach those in need.

Our gifts [at Christmas] shouldn’t just travel on a two-way street so givers and receivers can delight in one another; they should travel on a one-way street so that the needy may be helped, being imparted to those who may not be able to give in return.

At Christmas we should celebrate two kinds of gift giving, not just one. Christmas should be a feast of reciprocal giving in a circle of intimates, a provisional enactment of the advent of God’s future world. But it should also be a feast of giving to those outside the circle, a small contribution helping to align the world of sin and need with the coming world of love. The advent of the light into the darkness of the world is not the goal; it is part of the movement toward the goal. At Christmas we celebrate this movement. Gifts should therefore chiefly flow out to the needy; they shouldn’t largely circulate among friends.  (Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, 75).

(HT:  Dan Cruver)

Thanksgiving of the Damned

Kind of sounds like a Spinal Tap song, right? But it's the title of a great post by Bob Bixby on the true nature of Thanksgiving. Check it out:

I love Thanksgiving. And I can’t wait for the festive time with family and friends. The food. Tons of food. Lots and lots of good stuff. Yes, the cornucopia of blessing is overflowing. But I don’t want to thank God like the damned. I don’t want to celebrate the good things of life like the unjustified Pharisee.

This Thanksgiving millions of Americans will indulge in self-righteousness. And they’ll do it by thanking God. It’s because the notion that prosperity, particularly in health and wealth, are the key tokens of Divine blessing. This is an American ideology even though many do not formally subscribe to the Prosperity Theology that dominates huge swaths of contemporary evangelicalism.

In Luke 18:9-14 Jesus tells about a Pharisee, prosperous in the stuff that mattered to him, went to the temple to pray. There was also in that same place a publican, spiritually broken and alone, praying at the same time. The Pharisee could not help but contemplate on all the advantages that he had over that poor, broken, despised publican and so he thanked God.

Yes, he thanked God!

Read the rest.

Who is Coming to Thanksgiving?

John Piper:

There is in every human heart a terrible and powerful tendency to live by the law of earthly repayment, the law of reciprocity. There is a subtle and relentless inclination in our flesh to do what will make life as comfortable as possible and to avoid what will inconvenience us or agitate our placid routine or add the least bit of tension to our Thanksgiving dinner. The most sanctified people among us must do battle every day so as not to be enslaved by the universal tendency to always act for the greatest earthly payoff.

The people who lightly dismiss [Luke 14:12–14] as a rhetorical overstatement are probably blind to the impossibility of overstating the corruption of the human heart and its deceptive power to make us think all is well when we are enslaved to the law of reciprocity, the law which says: always do what will pay off in convenience, undisturbed pleasures, domestic comfort, and social tranquility. Jesus's words are radical because our sin is radical. He waves a red flag because there is destruction ahead for people governed by the law of reciprocity.

Why does it make such an eternal difference whom you invite to Thanksgiving dinner? It is not so much that this one afternoon is all-determining. The reason it makes an eternal difference is that it, along with many other occasions, reveals where our treasure is. Is Jesus, with his commands and promises, more valuable to us than tradition and convenience and earthly comfort? Is he our treasure or is the world?

That question is not decided during an invitation at church. It is decided at Thanksgiving dinner, and hour by hour every day, by whether we are willing to inconvenience ourselves for those who can't repay, or whether we avoid them and so preserve our placid routine.

It matters whom you invite to Thanksgiving dinner because it matters where your treasure is.

Read the rest.

"...in this land of the free and home of the brave, many people were not allowed to vote."

Powerful post here from Garrett Kell.

RESTORE - Sometimes Helping Hurts

If you are committed to justice in the world today, take a few minutes and watch these videos. They are very well done and will likely lead to conversations that many church leaders and mission leaders need to have.

 





 Get the book here, When Helping Hurts (paperback for $8 and eBook for $3)

Christianity - Something Else Entirely

Tim Keller:

To most people in our society, Christianity is religion and moralism. The only alternative to it (besides some other world religion) is pluralistic secularism. But from the beginning it was not so. Christianity was recognized as a tertium quid, something else entirely.

The crucial point here is that, in general, religiously observant people were offended by Jesus, but those estranged from religious and moral observance were intrigued and attracted to him. We see this throughout the New Testament accounts of Jesus’s life. In every case where Jesus meets a religious person and a sexual outcast (as in Luke 7) or a religious person and a racial outcast (as in John 3-4) or a religious person and a political outcast (as in Luke 19), the outcast is the one who connects with Jesus and the elder-brother type does not. Jesus says to the respectable religious leaders ‘the tax collectors and the prostitutes enter the kingdom before you’ (Matthew 21:31).

Jesus’s teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.

(HT)

"Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled."

Timmy Brister writes:

There’s a lot of talk about being missional these days. There’s not a lot of visual aids, at least not like this one. I found it incredibly moving. May God raise up many men and women like Sara in our generation to take the gospel in the heart of brokenness and ruin and see the transforming power of King Jesus.

Slum Dwellers

The Big Picture Blog:

One billion people worldwide live in slums, a number that will likely double by 2030. The characteristics of slum life vary greatly between geographic regions, but they are generally inhabited by the very poor or socially disadvantaged. Slum buildings can be simple shacks or permanent and well-maintained structures but lack clean water, electricity, sanitation and other basic services. In this post, I've included images from several slums including Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, the second largest slum in Africa (and the third largest in the world); New Building slum in central Malabo, Equatorial Guinea; Pinheirinho slum - where residents recently resisted police efforts to forcibly evict them; and slum dwellers from Kolkata, Mumbai and New Delhi, India. India has about 93 million slum dwellers and as much as 50% of New Delhi's population is thought to live in slums, 60% of Mumbai.

See the pictures.   

White America Coming Apart?

Collin Hansen reflects on the new book, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010.  It is an interesting study and might not reflect what you think.

His conclusion:

Consider your own church. Is it a place where the classes mix? Have you considered planting a church or even starting a small group somewhere where the lower classes predominate? Especially for those of us who may not encounter them in our regular routines, the poor must not be neglected in our prayers or our evangelistic efforts. That process starts with overcoming the misconceptions about the spiritual needs and practices of our neighbors. Don't be fooled by the political rhetoric. They might vote Republican, but they need Jesus.

Read the rest.

Mission Critical

Collin Hansen with a helpful post about mission and the church.