29 March, 2024

A Healthy Church Helps Make a Healthy Community

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by | 9 January, 2015 | 0 comments

By Nate Bush

The gospel is powerful (Romans 1:16). The gospel”s power to change a heart on the spot never ceases to amaze. A healthy church must embrace the power of the gospel in preaching and personal evangelism, but for a church to be healthy she must also embrace the purpose of the gospel. The gospel”s purpose, or its end, is the restoration of the redeemed world.

 

Embrace the Purpose of the Gospel

Jesus is going to make everything new (Revelation 21:5). One day Jesus is going to bring complete restoration to the material world (Romans 8:20-25). Although we cannot experience this restoration in full right now, we can experience it in part. Jesus tells us to pray for God”s will to be done “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). Churches ought to be answering the question, “What would be different in my community if God”s will was done on earth as it is in Heaven?” If we are praying “your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” shouldn”t we be expecting it?

N. T. Wright puts it this way at the end of his book Simply Christian, “We are called to be part of God”s new creation, called to be agents of that new creation here and now. We are called to model and display that new creation in symphonies and family life, in restorative justice and poetry, in holiness and service to the poor, in politics and painting.”1 If the church is expecting to experience some of the future restoration now, and is praying for it, she will participate in that restoration.

 

Listen to the Bad News

I believe there is a good news solution to the bad news problems of our communities. I pastor a church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a city known as the setting for Breaking Bad. Though it is a work of fiction, that TV show sheds a certain amount of truth in areas that New Mexi- cans would rather not acknowledge. New Mexico is the poorest state in the country, according to recent U.S. Census data,2 and New Mexico is touted as the “worst state to be a kid.”3 Since 2004 the Albuquerque police department has shot and killed at a rate two times greater than Chicago police and eight times greater than New York City police.4 Albuquerque has plenty of bad news stories. And I”m sure your city has plenty of bad news too.

The church”s mission in her community is to confront the bad news problems with good news solutions. Churches need to show the world what Jesus is going to do when he makes everything right again. For New City, the church I pastor, the bad news is obvious. We have a bad news problem of education, poverty, and crime that needs a good news solution. What bad news problems need a good news solution in your city?

 

Be the Good News

The church needs to share the good news, but she also needs to be the good news. When churches become the good news solutions to their communities, the communities become more open to hearing the good news message.

The first step in being the good news is recognizing that “Salvation comes from the Lord” (Jonah 2:9). In other words, you are not the good news; Jesus is the good news. Jesus is the One who is reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians 5:19). Man never ascends to God; it is always God who descends. God pursued Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:8, 9), he came down on the tabernacle (Exodus 40:34, 35) and temple (2 Chronicles 7:1, 2), he came down in bodily form as Jesus (John 1:14), and even the new heaven and new earth will come down at the end of time (Revelation 21:1, 2). God is on the move because God is a missionary God.

Lesslie Newbigin wrote, “If God is indeed the true missionary, it was said, our business is to not promote the mission of the church, but to get out into the world, find out “˜what God is doing in the world,” and join forces with him.”5

The second step in being good news is to find out what God is already doing. At New City we recognized that poverty and education are big issues in our community, but knowing where to begin was a huge challenge. We had to get out into our community and start serving alongside other groups who are doing good things, whether they are Christian or not.

We met a young woman named Laura Jenkins who had moved with her family into a section of Albuquerque known as “the war zone.” It has that name because the area lives under the oppression of prostitution, drug abuse, and gang violence. Laura has lived in this community for eight years, and has created an after-school program that cares for children in her neighborhood. About 80 kids are involved in her program weekly. Most of the mentors she uses are kids who were mentored in her program. She not only serves her community; she also has managed to help the community own its solutions.

We met Laura and fell in love with what she is doing. The only problem is, there is only one Laura. I remember praying about Laura and her ministry. I asked God, How can we clone Laura in other parts of our city? We believe the answer is found in the name of Laura”s ministry, Juntos. In Spanish, Juntos means “together.” Togetherness is essential to mission.

01_H_Bush_JNThe third step in being good news is to move beyond serving to mission. Serving is good, and I don”t mean to demean it. However, we ought to distinguish between serving and mission. Serving is what we “do to” people, while mission is what we “do with” people. You can serve people you don”t know and don”t necessarily love, but you cannot do mission without knowing and loving your community. Mission requires working together.

We started by serving a local elementary school. We provided backpacks. We conducted food drives. We cleaned the school. We hosted parties for the teachers. We gave away gift cards. We cared for specific needs of families at the school. We did a lot of good things as we served the school. However, we still needed to move beyond service to mission.

Every year our church gives away our Easter offering. In 2014, we decided to let the public school decide how to spend this offering. We asked the principal, school counselor, and PTA president for a meeting. We told them we were willing to invest in the school and then asked, “What do you need?” After a few minutes, the principal said, with tears in her eyes, “We need a mentor program.” She shared a few stories of kids” lives that were clearly heavy burdens she had been carrying around. And then she paused and said, “What”s your angle?”

The fourth step in being good news is to love without expecting anything in return. I replied to the principal, “We have been loved with a love we cannot repay (Psalm 116:12). We simply want to love the school and don”t expect anything in return.”

Whenever there is an agenda attached to generosity, that act of generosity denies the gospel. John Stott says generosity with an agenda is like putting “the sugar on the pill, the bait on the hook.” If our generosity comes with an agenda, says Stott, “the smell of hypocrisy hangs round our philanthropy.”6 The gospel is a free gift. Generosity with an agenda denies the gospel because it is not free.

This year our church will be investing around $20,000 into a local elementary school. We are in the process of cloning Laura in our new hire, Sarah, a recent college graduate whose sole job is to be our local missionary to elementary students.

A few weeks ago I got to watch our new club at the local elementary take off. Laura has been mentoring Sarah, and now we are cloning her missional heart.

As we expected, being the good news opened up good news sharing opportunities. With tears in his eyes, the school counselor told me, “I have never seen love like this.” That conversation, centered on the purpose of the gospel, was the first of many when I could talk about the powerful love of Jesus.

________

 

1N.T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense (New York: HarperCollins, 2011).

2www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/09/13/new-mexico-poverty-rates_n_1881321.html.

3http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/the-sideshow/mississippi-no-longer-worst-state-kid-200921073.html.

4http://krqe.com/2014/04/10/comparison-apd-shoots-kills-more-than-other-agencies/.

5Lesslie Newbigin, The Open Secret: An Introduction to the Theology of Mission (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995).

6John Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1975).

 

Nate Bush serves as lead pastor with New City Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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