[Transcript of a midweek message published by Horley Baptist Church on YouTube[1], July 2021]
How does being real affect the way we do mission and social action? have we been doing it wrong all these years?
Last Sunday I finished off our teaching series ‘back to basics’ with the value of being real, not putting up a fake front, a mask to cover up who we really are. I think that will have a massive impact not only on what we do in a church service and how we are in our our groups, in our community but I think it will have a particular impact on how we do mission and social action. In Luke’s gospel, Luke records yet another time when Jesus disciples were arguing over who was the greatest amongst them. It seemed to be quite a common discussion with them and Jesus says to them “Look, the kings of the Gentiles and the authorities, they lord it over them and call themselves benefactors; you are not to be like them”.
Now a benefactor is someone that offers money or help to a person or an organization and I don’t think Jesus had anything particularly against benefactors. It’s good to help people, to offer money and serve them in any way that we can but what Jesus did have an issue with was how that was done. I think he had an issue with the hierarchical aspect of being a benefactor – you know, when you say “You’ve got a problem, I haven’t. You need help, I don’t. You need something, I’ve got something to offer.” or maybe, you know “You’re uneducated, I’m educated. You have nothing, I have everything. You have nothing to offer me, I have everything to offer you”.
I think that has a real unfortunate influence, particularly when it comes to the middle class Christians (which most Christians are), when it comes to the way they serve those who are poor, those who are needy. I’ve known some lovely people who are followers of Jesus, who are kind and caring, and have wanted to serve people but have served in a hierarchical way. They have come to the situation saying “I have something to offer, you have nothing to offer me”, and it has a real negative impact, I think, on the relationship between the benefactor and a beneficiary. Too often the way we do mission and also, you know, the way we do social action but also the way that we share the good news about Jesus Christ; we have done it in such a way where “I have something, you have nothing”, we’ve approached it, say, the good news of Jesus Christ with “but I am right and you are wrong“.
But how about if instead we came to the situation where you say “yeah, you are struggling but so am I, I’ve got something to teach you but I’ve got something to learn from you as well”? I remember helping out in a soup kitchen and it was very much kind of a benefactor role. I bought my box of sandwiches and my thermos flask of soup; I offered it to these people but, having watched the way that these homeless people people who had so little cared for one another, gave to one another, it was a was a real eye opener to me. I had, it turns out, possibly more to gain from my interactions with them than they had to gain from my sandwiches and soup. Likewise when it comes to sharing the good news of Jesus Christ. Do you come along saying “I’ve come as a purveyor of the truth” or are you coming along saying “I want to learn from you, I want to travel with you on a journey. You have stuff to offer me, you have things to teach me”?
I just want you to think perhaps about those things that we do as a church or as followers of Jesus Christ to share the good news of Jesus Christ in word and deed. How do we need to change those things to level the playing fields and come as equals not superiors?
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[1] YouTube link: Are we doing mission wrong?
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
