So, yesterday at Unichurch we looked at Isaiah 58 and its call for the people of God to exercise justice and mercy. It’s a disturbingly simply passage to understand: anyone that can exegete their way out of it calling God’s people to feed the hungry and care for the poor deserves a gold medal in exegetical gymnastics.
The problem isn’t how to understand it; it’s how to implement it.
Now, assuming that individual Christians are applying these truths to their own lives in their own contexts, what does a local church do? Several options I can see:
1) Individual approach. Just keep encouraging individual Christians to do their stuff.
(the dud option, for so many reasons)
2) A charisma-based approach. Namely, you see what God is putting on individual Christians’ hearts and say: “whatever God has got for you in this area, we want to support and encourage you in it.”
Positives: The individual Christians do the R & D. They follow their passions, and the church positions itself as equipping the saints for their works of service.
Negatives: the good can become an enemy of the best. Some aid is bad aid. Some help hurts. And maybe a church could direct people’s energies to the best rather than the good. Also, it tracks in an individualistic direction. It doesn’t (or might not) get the whole church working in common as a witness to the kingdom of Jesus.
3. A church-based programme. Get the church to develop 1, 2, 3, areas of concern and encourage every member to play their part in one of those areas.
I could imagine a church looking at its local area and seeing a need for, say, (1) ESL for refugees, (2) after-school programmes for local youth, and (3) adopting an overseas situation which they pray for, visit, give toward etc.
Positives: Coherent. Good R and D. Local focus. Ever member working together.
Negatives: Might lock you in to stuff that takes away from the spontaneous kind of stuff God lays on people’s hearts.
4. Small group/discipleship based. You get the small groups of the church to discern areas of need, and to set themselves as a (smaller) community to meet those needs.
Positives: Allows for spontenaity and deliberation. Plugs mercy into a discipleship context so that mercy is not just for enthusiasts, but a natural and normal part of every Christian’s discipleship.
Negatives: Harder (but not impossible) to get the wider church behind stuff. Good could still be enemy of the best, depending on the group.
So, what do you think? Anyone in a church that can report on these models in practice? Got another model you could commend? Love your comments.