[This reflection was written by Martin Shorey and published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 11/Sep/2022]
I’ve left you an example of how you should serve and take care of those who are weak. For we must always cherish the words of our Lord Jesus, who taught, ‘Giving brings a far greater blessing than receiving.’ Acts 20 v35
I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have been a member of the clergy in Victorian times. For a start I probably would have had a big house and some servants, at least if I was an Anglican, but I also think that my job role would have been a lot simpler – look after your flock, and tell them about Jesus. And my flock would have been pretty much everyone in the local vicinity, because most people were culturally Christians, and would probably have attended churches regularly, if not weekly.
How things have changed! Churches are now islands surrounded by a sea of people who neither know of Jesus or care about Jesus. They live lives totally disconnected from anything the church might do, and the church is therefore seen as an irrelevance. In response, the church has found it far easier to look inward and care for our own rather than face the disappointment of attempting to reach beyond the confines of the building.
And yet Jesus’ model of ministry was very much the opposite. He cared deeply for those he saw in trouble. He went out into the community, he hung out with the undesirables of society, and he brought about massive change to people’s lives. Jesus was so popular, because he was deemed relevant to people’s lives, and he did that by loving them, serving them, and meeting their needs, physically as well as spiritually.
As Jesus’ representatives on earth, do we have the same priorities as Jesus? Are we intentional in seeking relevant ways to serve those people that surround us? Do we ask them what they need, or do we assume that they want what we want to offer? Should we care as much about the people outside our church, as we do about those within?
How should our answers to these questions change what we are doing at HBC?
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Contributed by Martin Shorey; © the Author
