Ministries of Mercy

Learning To Care Like Jesus

Timothy Keller

• Publisher: SPCK Publishing
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780281078349
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

In this motivational and highly practical book, Timothy Keller shows how caring for those in need is the duty of every believer - as fundamental to Christian living as evangelism, discipleship and worship. But he doesn't stop there. He sets out an array of tried-and-tested measures that will encourage and equip Christians of all persuasions to become more committed and more effective in carrying out this vital ministry.As well as a new foreword by John Sentamu, each chapter of the book ends with group discussion questions to help Churches and groups better realise their calling, and work through what to do about it.Ministries of Mercy will equip you to meet the needs of others, to live and love by example, and be inspire others to do the same.It's a resource for reaching out, and a calling card for caring

Part 2
PRACTICE

8 Getting started

OVERVIEW: Every Christian family must develop its own ministry of mercy by looking at the needs closest to it and meeting them through loving deeds and a spirit of encouragement.

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You are a Christian who is moved by the biblical teaching on the ministry of mercy. Where do you begin? The principles we have been looking at seem to be so all-encompassing, but our ­resources are limited and our skills are so undeveloped! Where do we begin? How can we even get an overview of what there is to do? Let’s start by discerning the Christian’s four basic channels for discharging his or her duty before God to be a minister of mercy.

THE CHANNELS OF MERCY

The first ‘channel’ is the family itself. All individuals and families have a responsibility to develop their own ministries of mercy. We will explore that later in this chapter. The second channel is the local church. Each congregation should develop programmes and ministries of mercy that mobilize the gifts and resources of the congregation to aid the needy. We will discuss this in Chapters 9 and 10.

Christian service can also be carried out through voluntary associations or ‘mission societies’. These are individuals and families who band together to form parachurch organizations that perform needed services.

Historically these societies have been good ways to establish institutions of mercy such as hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly, and so on. They are also, perhaps, the best way for Christians to discharge their responsibility to work for justice in society. Some examples of such parachurch organizations will be referred to in Chapters 11 and 12. A fourth channel for the Christian’s ministry of mercy is the state.

Many argue strenuously that the state has no biblical warrant for helping the needy.1 But we see that both pagan kings (Dan. 4.26–27) and Hebrew kings (Ps. 72.1–2; Prov. 29.14; 31.9) were called by God to render justice and mercy to the poor. Joseph, a believer who served as a civil officer in a pagan government, saved thousands through a hunger relief programme (Gen. 47.13–17). Therefore, Christians can sometimes fulfil God’s call to mercy through their function as civil servants. Obviously, such a course is often fraught with difficulties. Our ministry to the needy should go hand in hand with the ministry of the word, and many modern governments put obstacles in the way of our doing so.

THE FAMILY AS MINISTRY BASE

The first organization for the ministry of mercy is the Christian family. When God sees a person in need, he puts primary responsibility for aid on that person’s family. Those who do not care for their own families are worse than unbelievers (1 Tim. 5.8; cf. Lev. 25.25). But even beyond that, the Bible instructs each family to have a diaconal ministry to the community around it.

In Israel, families were to take care to leave grain in their fields so as to provide for the poor through gleaning. ‘Do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien’ (Lev. 23.22). Boaz made provision for Ruth to glean behind his harvesters, to protect and give refreshment to her as she gathered food (Ruth 2.9).

Also, each year, each family celebrated the Feast of Weeks (Harvest), by offering the first fruits of its farming to God (Exod. 23.16; Lev. 23.15–21). This was celebrated in a family meal before the Lord, including all the sons and daughters, manservants and maidservants. But the Lord commanded that each family include the Levites from the town, the aliens, the fatherless and the ­widows (Deut. 16.11). Heads of families were apparently given the responsibility to see to it that the family’s material blessings were shared with the servants of God (the Levites) and the local poor.

In all of these references, we see how important it is for the believing family to establish its own ministry of mercy. The Bible gives directives to take in the hungry and homeless poor for hospitality (e.g. Isa. 58.7). Hospitality is, of course, pre-eminently the work of the family. This is not to say that a single, unmarried person is without responsibility! What we do mean is that the individual Christian home is the first ‘building block’ in the ministry of mercy of the people of God.

THE FRONTLINE OF MERCY

Newspapers (though not history books) abound with examples of families who have been willing to see themselves as God’s ‘frontline’ in mercy. The Philadelphia Inquirer tells the story of Al and Laura Miller in Pemberton Township, New Jersey. On just Al’s salary as an equipment operator at a local steel plant, the Millers have taken some four dozen homeless people into their modest home during the past two years. Some are victims of fire, or have been evicted from their homes; some are recovering alcoholics or drug addicts; some are teenagers who at 18 were thrown out of their homes by parents. The Millers allow no one to stay more than 90 days. All guests must abide by house rules (no drinking, drugs, beds left unmade, curfews violated, etc.) and must fill out a statement of goals through which they can move to financial self-sufficiency.2

In another story, the same newspaper tells about Ada Alexander, a resident of West Philadelphia. Five years ago, Cambodian, Laotian, Vietnamese, Thai, and Chinese families began pouring into the neighbourhood. Ada saw scores of their children picking through garbage for food. Also, most of the children are left at home alone all day during the summer, while parents go to work picking the New Jersey summer crops. By slowly working to get the confidence of the children, Ada was able to begin giving free box breakfasts and lunches on her front porch each day during the summer. She procured funds from local Catholic charities and government agencies. Today she daily distributes food to over 300 children.3

BEGINNING WHERE YOU ARE

These examples are certainly inspiring, but we are still left with a fundamental question. How does a family begin its own mercy ministry? To answer this, see Figure 2 and look at the concentric ‘circles of concern’. Each family can explore their specific roles in each of these circles.

Figure 2

Let’s look first at the inner circles.

The inmost circle is in the immediate family itself. Many a Christian family has found its primary mercy ministry in the care of disabled or elderly or chronically ill members. If a family has elderly or infirm parents, uncles and aunts, cousins and other relatives in need, it must not look elsewhere! Far too many evangelical Christians today hide behind the high mobility and privatization of our society to screen themselves from duties of mercy to their kin.

The second circle is within the church. In the best ­churches, most of the mercy ministry is not done through official ­programmes or by the officers. Rather, sensitive individuals watch for needs and meet them out of their own schedules, out of their own pockets, and out of their own hearts. I know of of one ­modest-sized church in which the officers gave away over $10,000 annually through their fund for those in need in the congregation and community. But the pastor estimated that individuals within the church gave twice or three times that much to meet needs in informal, non-programmed ways.

The third circle is your neighbourhood or nearby com­munity. Families generally do not need to conduct a full-scale survey of the community as a church does (see Chapter 9). However, we do need to keep our eyes open. The Good Samaritan gave mercy to the man he found in his path. Are there perhaps needs in your vicinity that you may be ‘passing by on the other side’ to avoid, like the priest and the Levite in the parable?

To begin, you can watch the immediate neighbourhood the way you should watch your church. Do you see neighbours struggling with grief, loss, sickness, divorce, age, disability, per­sonal problems? Beyond your street, do you see needs in the community? Ada Alexander saw the South East Asian families pouring in. The Millers saw the homeless sleeping in the woods and in cars out in the country.

What is the principle here? The family needs to ‘look in close’ before it ‘looks afar’. You must be sure that there is no bleeding man right under your nose, in your family, church or neighbourhood. ‘Who is my neighbour?’ asked the law expert. Anyone you find on your road! So look down at the roads you are walking along now. A family’s mercy ministry should develop naturally, not according to a formal programme. It should be comprised of the needs God has led you to.

The number of needs near us, in our own personal ‘circles of concern’, are actually quite numerous, if we but open our eyes to see them.

STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN

Perhaps now we are beginning to see that we need to develop a whole new way of looking at our world, if we are to become ministers of mercy.

Do you really stop, look and listen in the middle of your church and neighbourhood? If you do, you will notice a multitude of needs. There is a college student who has had to drop out for lack of funds. Over here there are numbers of elderly folk without sufficient support from children, who need transportation, friendship and other aid. Turn in another direction and listen hard. You will hear single parents, divorced and widowed people, struggling financially and emotionally to be ‘both mother and father’ to children. They often don’t seem all that poor and threadbare to the eye, but a sensitive ear will hear the anguish. Now see the families temporarily in need because a mother or father is sick or injured. Other families struggle under more permanent dis­abilities; one has a child with learning difficulties, another has a father forced to retire early due to a severe back ailment, ­another family has a mother with Alzheimer’s disease. Then there are the terminally ill – families struck by cancer, leukaemia and other such maladies.

Many personal problems that are more obvious in urban areas remain hidden in the suburbs. There are the alcoholics or drug addicts, unwed mothers, abused children, juvenile offenders and ex-convicts trying to re-enter society.

BUILDING BRIDGES

One of the reasons we do not ‘stop, look and listen’ is because we do know how many needs there are out there, and we are afraid. Afraid of what? There appear to be two major fears. First, we do not know how to make contact; we are afraid of ‘breaking the ice’. Second, we do not think we have the resources to help; we are afraid of failure.

DEALING WITH FEARS

Let’s look at the first fear. Many of us do not know how to approach another person who is suffering. We know how difficult it is to ask for help or to admit weakness, and we do not wish to embarrass or hurt the person further. So we become passive, fearing to help anyone in our road unless they call to us.

But there is a better strategy to take. We can make it easier for a hurting person to express his or her need and weakness. Your job is to initiate contact. You must turn strangers into contacts, contacts into acquaintances, and acquaintances into friends. A minister of mercy looks around his or her church and community and makes deliberate efforts to develop relationships in ...