prepositions of ministry

This past weekend Angie was to receive a couple really cool gifts for Josiah and lots of food from a suburban church food pantry and their partnering holiday gift program.  

But before she could accept the compassion and grace through this church program something was required of her. Yep, the program felt it was necessary for all recipients to sit through an hour-long “church service” complete with special music and a 30-minute sermon before receiving the goods. The sermon was preached by a developing yet confident looking seminary student who had all his relevant illustrations and scriptures in just the right places just as he was instructed in his preaching classes.  Angie said the music was actually great and the voices of the singers sounded professional. After the service was complete she said the system for passing out the gifts and food was nearly flawless and although some volunteers had the posture of superiority most were friendly and smiled.

Now, without sounding too much like a rant, I do want to thoughtfully step back and consider just a few unspoken aspects of this church’s ministry posture and theology:

• We needed a car to get there. Really poor folks don’t have cars and could not benefit from an attractional church ministry like this unless they were close in proximity to the church (but the houses around this church indicate that materially poor people would need a car).
• Poor people were not on the other side, the serving side of the counter. This has the potential to create an embarrassing distinction between those who have and those who have not.  
• Volunteers didn’t know my wife by name. And even if they did ask for her name and call her by name they didn’t know her story and experience depth in the relationship. Ultimately, this style of helping people requires very little from those who are serving. Don’t get me wrong, soup kitchen type ministries have been of significant importance in my story, but the question needs to be… is there a follow up experience, a 201 and 301 opportunity that asks even more of me? And is there formative reflection and prayer surrounding the volunteer opportunity?
• The church service… This is the biggie! Yes, the church service was a requirement for anyone receiving food or gifts. This is a theological issue with large implications.  What is communicated by this? Priority numero uno is people hearing and comprehending the spoken word. Their logic is… If we have them in our gymnasium, what a great opportunity to preach the message of Jesus. And although intentions are loving what that communicates is they can't receive the blessing until they deserve the blessing. This is the fine print that many people miss when the advertisement says FREE IPOD… then later learn the actual requirement of taking 30 minutes to fill out a detailed survey and the necessity of being placed on a mailing list.

And I wouldn’t be writing this if the sermon would have been a simple 5 minute “Jesus loves you” devotional, but instead what my very pregnant wife sat through was a by the book, fresh from seminary 30 minute exegetical impersonal talking at.

Angie has recovered and I will enjoy seeing my son use the expensive gifts we received though the program. It sincerely was a significant blessing for us to receive it. I honestly am not experiencing resentment here but am simply frustrated which serves as a reminder of why I do what I do.

The "prepositions" of ministry communicate our perspective on power. We must move from the "for" and "to" toward the "with" and the "as." Am I doing these good works "for" the poor or am I doing this "with" the poor or even "as" the poor?

As God’s image bearers EVERYTHING we do communicates something significant. Where we live and even more importantly how we live, what we say and even more importantly how we say it, the gifts we give and even more importantly the way in which we give them is of Kingdom importance. Nothing is wasted.  Everything communicates something.

 

Comments

[Andrew Hoffman]

Very thoughtful post Ryan.

I've seen a group of NeighborLink volunteers attempt to incorporate some of the "with," and not "to," philosophies in serving in the past few months on their own. The stories of how enlightening the experiences have been for both the recipient and the volunteer are great.

The reality that it's the way to go jumps out at me as I read the post.

Here's to doing more "with" and not "to" at NL in 2011.