Going to Church or Being the Church

The flood waters had overtaken her yard, and then her porch, entered her home, and claimed it all. She lost nearly everything she owned. ‘I didn’t cry,’ she recalled, ‘when the water destroyed my home. But when I saw people from the church traveling from so far away to help me clean up and rebuild, I couldn’t stop crying.’ (Schnase)

She experienced God’s grace through people like you and me who showed up because they cared, and their care expressed to her God’s care.

I don’t know what hurdles those men and women overcame to go that week to serve. They all went to church together and someone had told them about a church near the flooding that was asking for teams to come. And someone said, “I’ll go.” And pretty soon, a whole team was on its way. That’s the way most mission begins…with compassion, and a person or two who say, “I will go.” Some of those who went, had to take off work. Some had children and had to arrange for their care. Some had never been on a mission trip before and were nervous. They didn’t know what to expect. Some had no experience with construction or disasters, so they didn’t think they would be much help rebuilding and they surely didn’t know what to say to people who had lost everything. But, they went, and lives were transformed.

Believers who are deliberate in the discipleship gather to worship, they learn in community, and they serve with compassion. The letter of James was written to early followers of Jesus, most likely before 49AD, about 12-15 years after Jesus’ crucifixion, to encourage them to live what they had heard about the way of Jesus. Remember the early Christians were almost all born Jewish, and at this point Christianity wasn’t a separate religion. The apostles were teaching the way of Jesus, and there were people who called themselves, “Followers of the Way.” And James says, this word you are hearing is transformative – it should change your life! James writes, “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”

Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, what we now call the Old Testament, “widows and orphans are frequently lifted up as representative of the oppressed and as a special focus of God’s concern” (Gench). James is following that tradition, so when he says that God is only pleased by religion that looks after orphans and widows in their distress, what he is saying is that “Genuine religion is marked by care and concern for people in need” (Gench) and by not conforming to the world’s judgements and the way the world values, or doesn’t value, people.

Religion that is acceptable to God is religion that deliberately nurtures disciples who are becoming more and more like Jesus, who more and more have the heart of Jesus, the compassion of Jesus. Religion that is acceptable to God moves hearers of the Word to be doers of the Word.

When we serve people who are different from us, people who are in need, people who are struggling, the blessing is three-fold.

The people we serve are blessed as they experience the love of God through those who have come to serve. They may never have heard the Gospel before – or they may not have been open to it before. Their hope may be renewed, they may see the importance of God in our lives and be drawn to it, transforming their lives forever.

We are blessed as we go to serve, as we come into contact with a different culture or a different way of life. Over and over again, people returning from mission trips, and reflecting on volunteering at Room in the Inn, will have the same realization, “I went expecting to take God to these people, and when I got there, I found God waiting for me in them.”

The church that sends is blessed as well. Even when just a few go, the life of the church changes when we move from coming to church to being the church. God blesses and strengthens the Body of Christ as we move out of our comfort zone, beyond the relationships and activities that are routine to us, “to love those who do not think like us or live like us, and to express respect, compassion, and mercy to those we do not know” with no thought of self-gain.

Just this week, our cistern building in Mexico came up in conversation. Will we go again? Yes. When? As soon as we can, probably next summer. When we go, we work in a village to build cisterns for, usually, three families. Each family has made a commitment to repay the price of the materials over a period of years, allowing our contribution of the materials to spill over to bless other families. Each family also commits to working on one another’s cisterns, so we spend all week working side by side with the families. And we work with a congregation there, whose elders manage the program, they determine what village will be served, they build relationships over years of staying in touch with families who have received cisterns, and they share that we are there to work beside them because it is a way for us to show Christ’s love. We do the most menial of the work on the site. We shovel sand and gravel to make cement; we take a pole and stir the bubbles out of the cement walls; we do no finish work, no rebar work, no skilled labor. We come, and we serve. We play with the kids and language barriers don’t keep us from smiling and communicating with our fellow workers and the mothers and grandmothers. But, our work is to come and humbly serve.

Looking ahead, tomorrow morning I am attending a groundbreaking for the Hospitality Hub’s new campus. The Hospitality HUB was founded in 2007 by the Downtown Churches Association in an effort to provide a better continuum of care for the homeless in Memphis. The new facility will include the first barrier-free, meaning they can bring their children with them, emergency shelter for women in the Memphis area, a Day Plaza for anyone to come and relax during the day in close proximity to the professional care that the HUB offers including access to mental health professionals, NA, AA, the list goes on, and within the new facility the work of the Hospitality HUB will be relocated and expanded, including WorkLocal, and shelter and housing assistance. If you want to attend, it is at 10am and there is more information on their website, hospitalityhub.org.

Then on Wednesday, Farmington Presbyterian will tour the new Recuperative Care Center and Family Inn, two new ministries of Room in the Inn. We have been providing lunches on Wednesdays and you can sign up to provide lunch – I think the first open slots are in August – on our website. And if you want to see the ministry for yourself, I encourage you to meet here in the parking lot by the Youth Room Wednesday morning at 10:15, or meet us at 409 Ayers for the tour at 11am.

Our largest mission is housed right here within the walls of the church – the Day School. If you love children and want to volunteer to read stories or do a craft, to help with holiday parties or service projects, or to share a special talent – let me know! We would love for you to serve here. Did you know that our Day School’s service focus is on St. Jude, and on cancer and children? Did you know that we currently have 2 children on full scholarship, both of whom have an immediate family member undergoing cancer treatment? Did you know we have another child who is in remission who will be coming to us because someone at St. Jude recommended us to his family? Did you know our kids raised over $10,000 last spring in our St. Jude Trike-a-thon? If you want to just experience it for a few days, let Doug know and he will get you plugged into one of our two weeks of VBS next month!

Are there other ways to serve? Absolutely! I would love to pray with you and help you connect with a place of service that takes you beyond your comfort zone, because that is where growth as a disciple happens – at the margins, where we lean on God and don’t feel sure we know what to say or do, where our eyes are opened to other ways of life that are not better or worse than ours…just different, where our hearts are warmed with compassion. That is where we move from going to church to being the church.