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!
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. (more…)
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.
Note: Roger wrote this reflection after a trip to the Dominican Republic where he served with ICC, a Network church in the capital city of Santo Domingo.
Micah 6:8 says: Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.
My definition of justice had always been some sort of “righteousness or consequence” idea. In leadership my definition was a sense of keeping things going in the right direction, “the rules of community”, or something like that. I think my evangelical background tied justice to God’s perfect justice which was overcome by Christ’s sacrifice of perfect love for us.
But the linkage between justice and mercy in this verse never made sense to me.
But here, at ICC in the Dominican Republic , I saw clearly for the first time that justice was about each of us having the same rights, the same reception, the same love, the same presence with Father God.
We all are sons and daughters of the same King. And if my brother or sister is in trouble, I am to love them with Mercy. I saw it with you, my new Dominican brothers and sisters. I saw you live it in your ministry to the homeless, I sense it in your love for each other. I feel it in your love and acceptance of us, of me, into your community.
When I see your justice practiced with such love and mercy, it is a true gift to me. It humbled me to be with you. I walk humbly with my God, home to Chicago , more rightly motivated to live DOING justice.
I have heard people say that the most important thing in life is what we think about ourselves.For example, if we think we are a piece of junk we will act like a piece of junk.This is true and it is important. But infinitely more important than what we think about ourselves is what God thinks of us. The Bible is raw and honest.God is raw and honest.So, no one needs to be dressed up and on his or her best behavior to make a connection with God.
You were a twinkle in God’s eye before there was anything. Before the creation of the world God chose you. God had all the time in the world to have said, “I know what this person will be like, and I don’t really want them around.I think I’ll make someone else.”So, the very fact that you are here means God spoke your name.He said, “Let there be…you.” He made you and knows you and He has said you are “very good.”God even went so far as to brand your name on his hand.The book of Isaiah says God has a tattoo across His chest with your name on it (49:16).
God created everything. He made novas and dolphins; butterflies and the sea; and these things are wonderful, good things.But none of them are stamped with God’s image.None of them have personality, and language, and creativity, and intelligence, and freedom to choose – like God.
Only men and women can do these things.Only men and women are able to be more like God than even the angels or seraphim.It is men and women who are “fearfully and wonderfully made” in God’s own image (Psalm 139).In fact, God looks at us and sees Himself.We are not junk.Before God, we (both men and women) have equal value and worth.Like an artist delights in his work, or a parent delights in a child, God looks at us and loves us.There is nothing we can do to make God love us more.And there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.
In Jesus’ day people had forgotten what God said about how much men and women matter.Women were treated like property.They didn’t count.They couldn’t testify in a court.They couldn’t worship with men, or be educated like men.Women couldn’t have men friends.And a really “holy” man would never make eye contact with a woman, let alone touch her in public. In fact, there was a group of men who were so committed to not looking at women that they put their eyes down whenever they saw women in the street.Consequently, they hurt and cut themselves running into walls.People called them “bleeding Pharisees.”
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.