Reflections by Marianna Gomez, Gateway Community Church service learning team member
I studied Policy Analysis in school, and fortune would so have it that I would spend the next three years as a policy analyst for Medicaid. I have gained a wealth of knowledge and experience from my government job, but have always felt like there was something broken in the public health care delivery system.
We employ a top-down approach to public service: a legislator, who is elected to represent the people, creates a law that may get passed if other legislators agree it is in the best interest of the people. It gets filtered down the chain of command and then it comes to me. I try implement a “good in theory” policy, through several layers of bureaucracy, for people I never see face to face, and hope that it does some good.
But what is truly broken about this approach is that it wouldn’t even be necessary if we were all doing what Christ has called us to do - love your neighbor as your self (Mark 12:30-31). We need public safety nets because we are not collectively meeting the needs in our communities.
I saw the other side of the coin in the DR. I worked along side Christ-followers fulfilling the mission of the church to be the salt and the light of the world. They are meeting the needs in their communities from within the communities themselves, and walking in faith that God will provide every step of the way. The churches are even operating the same kinds of programs run by my office, back home in the states.
It took just one week for me to tangibly realize what had been lurking in my heart for all these years: the community-based, bottom-up approach, spurred by the love of God, and accomplished through faith is the most effective public service!
This truth that God revealed to me is far more valuable than anything else I’ve learned in the three years I spent working for the government. I’ll carry this experience close to my heart as I venture further out onto the path God has lead me.
That path is still public service, but cast in a new light. This fall I will begin a Master’s program in global health. I will shift my focus to operating public health programs in other countries and working with communities at the grassroots level to produce positive changes.
DCC has provided me with a glimpse of what that looks like in God’s kingdom. I am overwhelmed with joy as I embark on this beautiful adventure with my Creator!
To address this point I’ll try to make a twofold approach.
On the one hand, I would like to try to describe what, in my humble opinion, has been a general movement the church has taken since the late 50’s, but mostly in the 60’s and 70’s until today, and how that is at the origin of some struggles we have to address in our time.
On the other hand, I will at least try - if space and time permit - to question some of the assumptions that have led, even unconsciously, to the kind of answers we have proposed to the world.
A church going astray
After the end of the World War II, a phenomenon, surely pre-existent, started to become perceptible in the church, and eventually dominated the actions and deeds of mercy and justice that the church has been called to carry out. Far from [the church] being a victim of what I’m starting to describe here, all of this has come about because of an attitude that was proposed and taken up inside of its own walls. That attitude can be defined by the word “delegation.”
Mostly after World War II, acts and deeds of justice were performed as tools to address common assumed needs to be satisfied and strategically managed. What’s more, they were undertaken as a global task and an obligation, instead of being done as local attitude and a natural flow of love, contingent and out of a forgiven heart. Having taken on such a big task as a “call”, the church perceived, and at the end established, that the task was too big for a local congregation to deal with and–in greater and growing proportion after the late 50’s–that the task had to be delegated to agencies, para-ecclesiastical organizations, boards, committees and programs specialized to address those assumed needs. Alongside those inventions, church planting and missions were also delegated to similar structures, separated from local congregations. The local community of faith did not own the missional and mercy activities anymore, which became the job of separate agents, financed and supplied by the church, in order to have the work done.
Now, milked as a cow and free from the concerns with the world immediately around it, what was left inside of the church? Self-sufficiency and maintenance. As a world in itself, the church became concerned more and more with non-tangible issues, hyper-spirituality, how to teach people to escape to heaven, or how to wait for Jesus at a secure station.
Thank you to all who participated in May’s North American Network Conference Call last week! I found the conversation stimulating and enlightening.
Several comments from our partners in Latin America stood out to me, particularly as Claudio asked us to re-imagine and re-member how to be “the church as a localized people in the diaspora.” Carlos wisely reminded us that the work of the church isn’t “our” work or “their” work: the North and South must work together. Robert asked us to wonder with him about the structures of power that impact relationships. It reminded me that we should be talking about a theology of power that might give us wisdom for how to move forward together.
Please feel free to pass along the link to the audio recording above. There are many church practitioners struggling with some of the same questions that Carlos, Robert and Claudio addressed that could benefit from the conversation.
Again, thanks for your participation. We look forward to hearing from you!
“Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” 10″Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” “Hosanna in the highest!” Mark 11: 9-10
Jesus’ mind-warping triumphant entry into Jerusalem on a little borrowed donkey must have taken the masses by surprise. They knew he was on his way into the city and also that He had been openly announcing the coming of a new kingdom. They waited for this moment with baited breath, the conquering King would come and make things right, bring down the corrupt powers that be and release the Jewish nation from the Roman occupation.
But, in God’s upside-down Kingdom, the King doesn’t conquer with a sword on a white steed. Rather, by design, He chose another Way. Ignoring the powers that be and the systems of the world, He introduced the Way of love, in which God’s strength bursts forth in weakness and less means more. In spite of the symbolic message he was sending the crowds by his less than impressive entrance on a lowly donkey, the crowds maintained their focus on the false expectation for liberation from the all encompassing system of the empire that had them all enslaved. “Hosanna! SAVE US NOW!” was their cry. And it was a cry that came from a longing much deeper than the usual liturgical exclamations we make in our churches during Palm Sunday.
My question is, “shouldn’t our present day context compel us to shout from the depths of our souls the very same cry?” Shouldn’t we be exclaiming, “HOSANNA, SAVE US!” more often? Don’t we have the need for the same liberating King to come free us from our slavery to the empire and systems of this world?
The truth is that we know the King has indeed come. We understand that His triumph did not come as we all expected it to. We confess our enslavement to our old patterns, our old selves, and our old destructive “ways”. And in our hearts we accept Jesus. We confess our desire to become new creatures in a new system that our King established–the new “kingdom” he willingly gave His life for. But how easy it is for us to become entangled. How easy it is for us to mock His death, His power…His triumph by our adherence to the kingdom of this world.
The RdC network churches we serve and support as DCC are increasingly aware of the blatant influence and control the world and her logic holds over us. This world and its ways are normal to us. As the Church, “the called out ones,” we are commissioned to reveal the new Kingdom way of Jesus to the world bringing hope and transformation. We are called, in fear and trembling, to jump off that which the world claims is stable and safe, and to let go of the rope we so desperately cling to, in order to fall into the grace of the Kingdom of God.
A kingdom where less is more, the humble are exalted, the weak are strong, and the smallest, most silent and imperceptible bit of yeast of truth permeates until it reveals an integrated “wholeness” in the most blatant and beautiful way.
HOSANNA! Rescue us! Shake us free from our conformity and slumber! Wake us up to your reality and make us useful instruments in your hands!
Micah’s exhortation (6:8) to God’s people reminds us of what the Lord requires of us, and what is good, according to His eternal perspective. In light of the immense needs and injustices, as well as the absence of love in our own communities and in the world today, we need to continuously reflect on this penetrating truth, completely internalize it, and act consistently upon it.
On doing justice…
Righteousness and justice are the foundations of God’s throne (Psalm 89:14). God loves justice and abhors injustice. To know God, we must understand how much He delights in love, justice, and righteousness. But, even though we claim to know God, we forever turn a blind eye towards the countless injustices we see among us in the here and now. We accommodate ourselves to the systems of this world that favor a few and unjustly treat the rest. We seek our own well being above the well being of those around us. How is this so commonplace among us as followers of Jesus? Many would redefine the richness of biblical justice, which is referenced 134 times in the Bible, simply in terms of righteousness. And then we limit righteousness to personal rightness, upstanding character, or individual holiness.
Yet, the fundamental social implications of biblical justice go far beyond this kind of individualistic righteousness we substitute it with. We are required to right the wrongs, both big and small, in order to actively “do” justice. We are required to be aware of the distorted systems that frame our present world with injustice and to struggle against them as we follow Jesus.
By Roy Soto, Pastor of CSS Church in Fraijanes, Costa Rica
As a pastor, father, husband, and community member who was victim to the devastating earthquake that shook our region of Costa Rica just one year ago (Jan. 8th 2009), I know the feelings and emotions that come to my Haitian brothers and sisters now in the aftermath of the natural disaster of January 12th.
We suffer as we see our children and neighbors cry out in fear, pain, sadness, desperation, and impotency and weep from their wounds and losses. How do we respond to our wives as they ask “and now where will we live?”
In that desperation I found that I had one of two choices. Either I could give up and fall into hopelessness or see the crisis, with all its pain and suffering, as an opportunity to see God and experience His love and presence in the midst of the storm.
I chose to see Him in the suffering. By choosing that, God used me, broken and suffering as I was, to serve, cloth, feed and bring comfort and hope to my neighbors.
The circumstances of pain and suffering in our community didn’t disappear magically, but His presence and love broke through the darkness that surrounded us in beautiful and mysterious ways. His presence and love for us who suffered loss and destruction broke through in the lives of our RdC network family, churches that came and served us and brought us relief and aid, walked with us and cried with us and felt our pain; friends and servants from all over the world that prayed for us, sent offerings of love to help us rebuild and restore lives. Read the rest of this entry »
While working on DCC’s “to Be Told” video teaching series in Houston this month with DCC friend and colleague Travis Reed (www.theworkofthepeople.com), we shared a lot about the wonder of being made new, being born again, and the new eyes we are given when we embrace Jesus, the Way of the cross, and the new life in God’s Kingdom Community.
Travis created the following piece based on our conversations. We share it with you as a belated Christmas gift and prayer for the New Year!
The monthly and in some communities of faith, weekly, celebration of the Eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper, is an intrinsic element of the gathering of those who follow Jesus.It comes from Jesus’ radical revision of the Passover meal that he shared with His disciples the night before He was arrested and led to the culmination of His mission… the cross.
Jesus took the singular most significant and honored religious tradition among the Jewish people, the Passover celebration, which was very familiar to all Jews in his time with over 1,500 years of faithful practice, and He infused it with new meaning that has radical implications for His disciples.
His revised version came with a command that those of us who participate in the communion celebration must be aware of and mindful of its implications for our lives and His mission.As Jesus became the meal, offering His body broken and His blood poured out, He said to his disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me”.
Now whereas we so often hear this familiar verse recited during communion and take it to mean we should gratefully reflect on the unfathomable expression of love Jesus showed us by being broken and poured out on the cross, His command “do this” adds a level of complexity to the lesson He is conveying. His use of the verb remember is not merely asking us to recall and reflect in solemn gratefulness, but rather, He is saying DO THIS: “remember me by imitating me as the teacher become friend, be broken and poured out for others in my name”.
by Claudio Oliver of Curitiba, Brazil. Pastor and RdC Network Connector
Those who know me may find the above title curious, to say the least. Being with the poor is part of my history: My grandfather and grandmother were founders of the Salvation Army here in Brazil, and their ministry is a central reference point for my family. Their life was dedicated to the homeless, prostitutes, and in a special way to the orphans, the hurting and the renegades.
My teenage passion was consumed by the idea of fighting against poverty, hunger and injustice. Since I got married, 25 years ago, I have been involved in serving in slums, serving poor students, coming alongside needy populations, in peripheral neighborhoods, the beggars, the unemployed and other moneyless people.
I could report facts to support my pretensions over the years such as having helped “the poor” generate income, facilitated the restoration and organization of broken families, made bridges between rich and poor, fed the hungry, and facilitated the opportunity for some friends to discover professions, find their vocation and transform their own future. To “empower” people was once a key point in my practice in order to avoid creating dependency.
After all of this, or even because of all this, today I am called to question my whole life of “service” and to give up on serving the poor.
Asking “Why?”
Throughout my life I have kept the habit of always asking myself whether what I am doing makes sense, whether my heart is aligned with God’s will, and whether or not I am missing the point. This discipline, is essentially the Three “Whys?” Rule. It forces me to question each given answer with the kind of question that only children ask, and which helps me to generate a permanent transformation vector of self-criticism and of personal adjustments. Thus, in each step I take, for every thing I do, I ask: “why?” Whatever the answer might be, again I ask, “why?”. I feel I am in the right path when what I am doing surpasses the third “why”, and then and only then, will I move on.
For some time now I have reflected on Jesus’ life, on the principle of kenosis (emptying) based on the text of Philippians 2:1-11. I’ve thought about Jesus’ incarnation into our reality and into the numerous contacts and conversations he had with miserable people such as the lepers, and rich people such as the publicans, the synagogue chiefs and princes of his people; how he spent time with middle-class families, with proprietors and with servants and beggars.
I have reflected on what Jesus saw and how he acted.
As Terri and Elen were practically falling out of their chairs in a belly laugh, I could not help but to think how much I value the RDC/DCC.
Without the RDC/DCC, there is not a chance in this world that this Dominican pastor’s wife, who knows little English, would be sitting on my porch swapping stories with my wife, who knows little Spanish, to what is now a long series of inside jokes between the two of them.
Without the RDC/DCC, Esdras and I would not be swapping tearful pastor stories and learning from each other about how to become more Kingdom minded. If it had not been for the RDC/DCC my church and I would not have been able to go to Esdras community, to listen and learn and find ways to help him serve his piece of the Kingdom.
If it had not been for the RDC/DCC, Esdras and Elen would not have been able to help me “fund raise” for my family to come to the DR, by cooking a Dominican meal for my neighbors. Or at least that is what it was fronted as.
Esdras and Elen were well aware that they were doing for us what we get to do for them in their neighborhood, helping my wife and I serve our community, who are scared to death of the idea of darkening the doors of any church, but are fascinated/curious about the Kingdom work we are doing and are hungry to check it out. Esdras and Elen were helping us to reach our unchurched friends, in the same way we get to help them.
After all, isn’t that what partnership is all about?
One last story. I took Esdras to a block in the streets of Baltimore that is filled with drug use, prostitution and crime. I showed him where we do block parties to help a local mission to practice holism, finding ways to help them to serve their local community. Yet that is not the best part of this story.
After pointing out all that we get to do downtown, I was able to point out that the only reason our church is able to do what we do, is because of what we learned from him and the RDC/DCC!
Our partnership so transformed and revolutionized our church, that we came back to our piece of the Kingdom work in Maryland and began doing church in a new kind of way.
Tom and Dee, I am so thankful for the RDC/DCC – thank you for doing what you do.
I studied Policy Analysis in school, and fortune would so have it that I would spend the next three years as a policy analyst for Medicaid. I have gained a wealth of knowledge and experience from my government job, but have always felt like there was something broken in the public health care delivery system.
That path is still public service, but cast in a new light. This fall I will begin a Master’s program in global health. I will shift my focus to operating public health programs in other countries and working with communities at the grassroots level to produce positive changes.
As a pastor, father, husband, and community member who was victim to the devastating earthquake that shook our region of Costa Rica just one year ago (Jan. 8th 2009), I know the feelings and emotions that come to my Haitian brothers and sisters now in the aftermath of the natural disaster of January 12th.
For some time now I have reflected on Jesus’ life, on the principle of kenosis (emptying) based on the text of Philippians 2:1-11. I’ve thought about Jesus’ incarnation into our reality and into the numerous contacts and conversations he had with miserable people such as the lepers, and rich people such as the publicans, the synagogue chiefs and princes of his people; how he spent time with middle-class families, with proprietors and with servants and beggars.
As Terri and Elen were practically falling out of their chairs in a belly laugh, I could not help but to think how much I value the RDC/DCC.