Loving Radically, Real Ministry

Here's the deal. I met I guy while at Dunkin Donuts and we talked for a really long time. Have you ever experienced something that was so divine and incredible (even something small like a conversation) that we fear to tell someone about it because there is no way that they are going to fully grasp the same experience you had. If they're not going to fully get it and I'm not going to fully be able to portray it the way it happened, why try? Yeah, it was like that.

Basically, this guy was leaving and felt a tug by the spirit to come talk to me. After I told him that I was a high school pastor at The Bridge, conversation ensued. Come to find out our ideas of how ministry needs to be done today lined up. The old way of doing church is just that, old. It tends to (when done incorrectly) focus primarily on the keeping of legalistic traditions only to overlook the hurt and need in people's lives. So many people are so burned by church that they wouldn't dare set a foot in one again for fear of another burning, which is completely understandable. This guy and I come to find out that we know a lot of the same people and he went to college with my dad. Here's this 56 year-old man that tells me his life as a traditional Church of God pastor who hears from God "I didn't really like how you were as a Church of God pastor for so many years. Let's be done with this." This guy over the last 12 years, gets his whole view on ministry rocked when he decided to get involved in other, non-traditional ways of ministry. He begins to do ministry on the street, takes the living word of God to the homeless, lives with them and gains insight. It became more of a ministry to him as he began to truly understand what the ministry of Jesus was and how we tend to downplay it as "oh, that was then, this is now. Life is different now." Life is more similar today than we realize. Too often are we preaching to the choir, people. The choir don't need preaching to. They should be the ones preaching. One of my favorite verses is Mark 2:17 when Jesus says, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners." What are we doing about that in our churches today? Would a homeless person feel welcome in your church. What about when they see what everyone else is wearing or how they are acting? What about when some traditions are being performed that they don't know about? Will they continue to feel left in the dark? Will they feel accepted? For some people who have been burnt by the church, this next time they show up is you only chance. Show them a Jesus that would accept them and love them, the same Jesus that hung out with prostitutes and tax collectors and all those "sinners" that were looked down upon by the "religious leaders" of that day. You got one chance to show them the church Jesus had intended all along. One chance or ... they're gone. "That's it! The last straw! This is no religion I want to be a part of!" Me neither.

"You're not as radical as you think you are," this guy tells me. Of course, I get a little defensive, telling him all the ways we are reaching out to the community, loving others who have never been loved and all this. At the beginning he asks me, "What is God doing? What can you see happening that is getting you excited?" I tell him how I came to The Bridge and how they only way we are going to be able to do this is by raising our own support. God keeps providing the money, God is providing in so many ways. I thought that was pretty radical right? No, he tells me "You're not as radical as you think you are. There are 2 places that I send these people on the street to for church and The Bridge is one of them. You guys are doing great things. But you are not as radical as you think you are there." We explore what that word means. He tells me, "You have one chance with these people that I send to your church or else they're done going to church forever. Do you notice them, are you creating a community that notices them, and then are you following up with them on the streets?"

We were sitting there talking for a long time. He asks me, "How many homeless people have you seen walk past this window?" I said that I noticed one and described him. He said, "Yeah, that was Paul. What about the other 3 (and he names them). He says, "I know 2 of those guys closely, the other 2 I just know who they are." He then asks, "Do you see Jesus is those people." I said (sheepishly), "I know that I should..." I mentioned my one time I went to a prison to do ministry there. He told me about this prison in Noblesville that he goes to twice a week (By the way, in no way was he ever portraying himself as better than me or a better Christian of whatever). He said that he goes there specifically because of the large amount of sex offenders that are in there. He said that the sex offender is the modern day leper to the church. "No one wants a sex offender in your church when there's a children's ministry, right? You know the ones down the street because they have already commited a crime and that information has to be made public." There is one on Kylee's and my street. We were warned by people on our block what he looks like and the car he drives. They all steer clear of him... This guy says, "What about the sex offenders who haven't done anything yet? The sex offenders that, given the right situation, snap and commit their first crime. That's why we need to see Jesus in everyone. All people need to experience this life-changing love of Christ before it's too late."

What are you doing to show that love? What aren't you doing? There's an urgency and expectation that needs to be realized in the church today. Does your church have that? Does it even want it? It's a big responsibility Jesus asks of us, to represent him. It is detremental to how Christianity is portrayed to the world and no wonder some people get a bad taste in their mouth when someone uses the words "Christian" or "Church." If you don't see it, please stop looking inward. Look at all the hurt. There's so much to be seen. Not only seen but noticed. Sometimes we see it and close ourselves off to it. We shelter ourselves from it. Jesus went straight for it, held nothing back and he gives us the same power to do so. Jesus was fully human. Some of the things he did seems superhuman... no, he was fully human. The same power that lives in him, lives in us. Everything he did, we can. This guy told me, "Don't let your generation fall into the same lie that my generation did: that we were living radically. The church isn't the head, Jesus is the head. We got really good at worshipping on Sundays a believed that was ministry. We came to believe that the only thing sacred was when we came together one morning out of the week to worship together."

Wake up church! Live outside of yourself. Real ministry happens in real life circumstances. Often the real life is ugly but that's where Jesus hung out: in the ugly, with the ugly. We are too quick to shut our eyes and ears to what we deem as "worldly" and "ungodly" but not quick enough to shut our mouths about it. That's not how change happens. There is no regard for people as people that way. They are just another number, another soul to convert. Look out! This is not the way of Jesus, this is not the way of the everlasting. That will never bring everlasting life. Jesus is grace, Jesus loves without condition, Jesus allows for self-discovery and never forces himself upon anyone! The choice is individual, and we better not feel like we have the responsibility to make them see what we see as truth. Truth is a personal discovery. God, Jesus, is personal discovery. It will never be provable to everyone, ever. Even when Christ seems so completely evident, people will still choose hell (Luke 16:19-31).

What are we to do? Simple. See Jesus in others and love them as Jesus would, seeing their whole person inside of them and paying attention to and identifying with their needs. Love. That's what it comes down to. Unconditional. Love. No strings attached. They don't owe you anything. You don't owe them anything. The love of Christ you have been shown needs to overflow and become the same love that you show everyone you come in contact with. And that's the only reason. But that reason is good enough. Because that love is radical.