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!

As originally posted the blog: http://naruacomdeus.blogspot.com/2010/03/for-portuguese-speakers-vou-fazer.html. This is a transcript from a lecture Claudio shared at Surrender 10, in Australia. The full content of the speech can be watched clicking here.

Who Needs A Pastor?

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.

Sunday schooling our people for the sake of the keeping of them as religious consumers, the same who were being schooled during the week for the sake of a society of consumers, singing in choirs and worship teams, fighting over small issues, and splitting, splitting, and more splitting. The most frequent and subsequent temptation after having all that was this: seeking prestige in society more than the humble service that comes as a response to the God who has forgiven us.

In order to manage such a scenario, a professional version of a community leader has to be trained and created through seminaries and courses. The majority of those presenting themselves for the task have felt called to serve people, and in a godly and humble way, they have given their lives to be used by the Lord, even sometimes to the point of being burned out by demands. Demands that are not a consequence of their call, but a outcome of a life committed to programs run by structured institutions.

In a sense, the Christian church in the modern era - mostly the protestant, evangelical and pentecostal churches - have become organizations that emulate those existent [so-called “secular”] organizations in the capitalist society. That is, these churches are similarly specialized in providing services and products for their clients and partners and concerned with their own survival: a part of the established order, providing resources and charity to those oppressed by that very order, mostly through indirect agencies or programs and parallel organizations.

The professionals responsible for taking care of such organizations are called pastors or missionaries, and I’m convinced the Lord has called them to be so, but when all is said and done, when observing and paying attention to their job descriptions and the tasks required of them, one could call them managers, practical psychologists, cheer leaders, salesmen and women, strategic planners, CEOs, characters, counsellors, conflict managers, bureaucrats, visionaries, teachers, motivational speakers, peacemakers, troublemakers, marketeers, and so on. All fitting here and there into the structure, for the sake of the organization and its clients.

Meanwhile, the people outside the church walls continue to wait, with the whole creation, for the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God (Romans 8:19). As a desperate people, trapped inside a fantasy of development and progress, consumed by meaningless hard work and not knowing what to do with an apathetic state of mind, they wait hopelessly for pastors: the kind of folks that can act as links between them and their Maker; waiting for a people, who in their normal daily lives are prepared, trained, and aware of the fact that they are there not to make money and succeed, but to be faithful servants of the lord.

I’m convinced that people outside church walls are exactly how they are described in Matthew 9:36: “sheep without a shepherd,” “gone astray” and turned to their own ways. They are not clients to be attracted, nor needy to be helped, neither gentiles to be changed. They are, as my friend Jim Henderson says, the people whom the Lord loves more, AKA “the lost,” and they are ready to listen the voice of a real person, that walks along with them, lives the same life and likes to be with them. A voice of someone that is a disciple of the one that came and lived this kind of life among us.

For this kind of scenario, where a church can serve the people around it, church leaders – call them with the name that pleases you - must take seriously the task given to them by the Lord and change a little bit: instead of spending their time as described above, they need to be ready to be elders for their brothers and sisters, mostly sharing, as older folks, their experience in order that it can be used by the less experienced to create new and wiser ways to serve. They will do this by becoming real bishops, those that can oversee and help a community of faith to act with adequacy and in order to show forth a new way of life in their daily lives. And as shepherds that care if their flock of the church are healthy, safe and well fed, not to look nice and behave, but to serve outside as the real presence of Jesus in the World. The church has received such men and women, in order to help to prepare their brothers and sisters to live their lives in the world as priests, there is no reason to use them any other way.

But how have we been trapped inside such a situation and what could be the alternative?

As I said at the beginning, since some decades ago our imaginations have been captured by the myth of global thinking.

Why am I calling it a MYTH?

Global thinking is a myth because it creates its own narrative, heroes and goals. It’s a myth because it can give the impression that is something we can give our lives to. But lets analyze it a little bit.

In order to think globally, one would have to have a global vision, a kind of omniscience that could grasp the whole picture, in other words, you would have to be God. And this has always been our chief temptation and the source of this myth.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s “Creation and Fall”, he describes two types of humanity: the imago dei humanity, and the “sicut deus” humanity. A humanity that is humanity-in-the-image-of-God opposed to a humanity-like-God.

Playing God, but not being God, after hearing the serpent, we started needing to be informed about what was our task, since we do, in fact, lack omniscience. Having taken the first step, the serpent was there to push us a little bit further along the centuries and at the end informed us that we were surrounded by needs: education, sanitation, medical care, food, jobs, housing, empowerment, etc. To meet and overcome these so-called needs, two other myths were proposed and invented: Progress and Development. And that two must be delivered to all as the final solution for our damnation.

Knowing that other agents, governments and markets were doing their job with one third of humanity, inscribing them within those myths and meeting their assumed needs, the other two thirds were there, waiting for someone wanting to use what has become the most profitable businesses of the 20th century: the business of AID that aims poverty alleviation and to inscribe all into those myths.

In order to understand what I’m saying, let me tell you a history that the late John Seymour use to tell. He knew Africa very well before WWII, and in a conference he said, In his own words:

The one thing I remember about the villages of Zambia before WWII, is that I never came to a village that wasn’t prosperous, I never saw a hungry person, I never saw a person who seemed to me to be poor. I saw plenty of people who didn’t have any clothes. I saw hardly any people at all who had things like motorcars or motorcycles, radio sets and things like that…I never saw anybody hungry, I never heard of anybody being hungry, I never heard of anything like famines.

I never heard of unemployment. The reason there was no unemployment was because there was no employment. Nobody was employed. There were no jobs. Nobody wanted a job.

What…do you want with a job if you’ve got everything you need? You’ve got your house. Anyone that I met could build their house in a day with the help of his neighbors….I have lived in those homes and I can tell you that they are…comfortable–far more comfortable than the rubbishy ones that we [pinkies] used to live in.

For one thing there was a fire in the middle of the floor. And if you stood up, you nearly choked. But you found that when you sat down, the smoke was over your head, …and the mosquitos didn’t bother you….They got the whole thing figured out. Now I went to Africa after the war, and I flew around in a flying machine, …and I could see what seemed to me to be….Ok–progress. Progress is a wonderful thing. But see you can progress in any direction. [John Seymour Video Transcript about Africa in the 30s - click here to watch the original]

After 60 years of such good aid for progress in the world and programs for poverty alleviation, based on good intentions and tons of money, spreading things like the green revolution, western sanitation, massive schooling and job training, what have we achieved in the world? For the first time in history, since may 2009, we have 1 billion of our fellow human beings living in starvation! Just a little example of how bad we are running the business.

We also have billions eluded by promises of possible and future progress and development that will never be accomplished, abandoning their original lifestyle at the grassroots, leaving their villages and families, alienating their thinking from their work, humiliated while called excluded, underdeveloped, primitive, non-educated, living in slums and dangerous neighbourhoods far from where they work, being moved around by trains and mass transportation systems like cattle, working in factories to produce unnecessary goods, exposed to violence, abusing alcohol and drugs, producing more and more garbage and wasting their time, their energy, and the lives–all the time being lured into the same addiction to luxury experienced by the rich and all this for the sake of nothing good for them or the world.

[They are:] Sheep without shepherds while we play God.

Notice carefully how the serpent has done this: how we have been lured away (Gen 3:1-5a.)

Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’ “You will not surely die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God,”

According to Bonhoeffer, the paradox of the Fall is that we become less human, as described above, by trying to become “like God.” The Fall is the refusal to be God’s creatures or icons– the IMAGO DEI humanity, loyal and happy with the Lord’s order. The Fall is exchanging this for the attempt to “play God” and improve creation and God’s order, becoming the SICUT DEUS humanity - an humanity that thinks that it is “like God” and can play God.

Having said all this, we could affirm that development and progress are just expressions and false certainties of a “sicut deus” humanity. The irony is that by trying to play God, we have become less human, and by trying to improve the creation we have been led to a point close to extermination. I believe the most necessary at this point for us would be to listen to someone boldly simply saying: REPENT, stop doing evil and learn to do good.

(My brothers and sisters, that’s the bad news.)

The Good News…

The good news is that Jesus has another idea for us. The local church can push the restart button and imagine and experiment a different scenario and a different kind of action.

First, what if, instead of trying to have a global vision, we started having a local attitude? Instead of huge churches to which one must drive miles to attend, small parishes again, in walking distance from our homes?

What if pastors and whole congregations, began to think about themselves as the true priesthood for the sake of those outside their walls? Looking to all who are in their reach as their parishioners and responsibility?

What if the church becoming something like a real parish, recovering the Greek origin of the word para- oikia – around a home? And instead of long trips, what if we began sojourning around our homes – the verb paroikein in Greek, used to describe Abraham sojourning in Canaan.

What if instead of thinking of ourselves as a missionary people, we became open to being a diasporic people, with the backpack always ready to be taken? Ready to be sent wherever the Spirit send us, ready to follow the cloud, not for a global, monocentric domination of the universe, but as a network of multi-centric pluriverses, set in local communities and centered around Christ only because disciples know where the well is. This means a readiness to go, as an old Mennonite saying has it, where we did not plan to go. Avoiding Babel, following Pentecost, the cloud and the column of fire.

What if those in local churches, called to be bishops, elders, pastors – use your preferred word – become focused on training, preparing and sending their people as pastors and priests of their surroundings? Being neighbors of hope and who care about their folks.

What if, instead of letting the world set the agenda and use us to expand development and progress to the grassroots, we become a people ready to admire, observe and learn from the grassroots in order to learn from them, to question our lifestyle and to celebrate a multi-centric pluriverse of expressions of God. What if we establish dialogues and conversations from which we can learn a distinct lifestyle that can inspire us to stop what we are doing with God’s creation, assuming we are not rich but we are also impoverished at least as much as the others we try to help?

What if everybody becomes an authentic communicator by becoming a person committed to action in the world around him or her, taking the body and blood of Christ and sharing it on the streets, in the factories and inside offices?

What if, instead of strategic planning, we start to embrace contingencies, addressing them out of the local fellowship and its gifts and local resources, instead of milking rich churches to help us run our programs and organizations. Not addressing assumed needs, not doing things because of a bad conscience, or a sense of moral indignation, but as a communal overflow of the gospel that points towards what Leslie Newbigin calls that “greater reality which can never be fully grasped in a program of social action”?

I believe the world outside our walls needs a pastor, not a professional one, but a pastor in the form of a people, a people trained “to be there”, while working and living their everyday lives: in the market, schools, hospitals, government services, close our cultures or displaced, wherever they may be, being the very presence of the Lord in the world.

We could go back to our places reviewing our plans, ready to embrace contingencies and having the readiness to be there, simply paying attention and answering with the simple things we have in our hands as local communities building relationships with our neighbors, trusting that the Good Shepherd will be with us, every time we decide to be there with others.

North American Network Conf. Call 5/14/10 from Leah Hood on Vimeo.

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!

Shalom,
Karen, Bruce, and Leah

“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!

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.

We are not only meant to conscientiously object to the macro injustices that are so evident, but more importantly, we are meant to announce and manifest a new way — God’s way of peace and justice and mercy in even the smallest, unseen places.

It seems overwhelming, and out of our realm of possibilities, but the little ways we live out doing justice with our children, spouses, and neighbors, trains us for being effective seekers and doers of justice in the bigger social issues as well.   God wants us to hunger for justice. But do we?  What are we hungry for today?  Are we willing to check our appetites and seek a diet consistent with God’s menu for life?

On loving mercy…

What is mercy?  We most often define mercy as loving kindness or steadfast love.  The Hebrew word for mercy is chesed. Chesed conveys a covenant relationship and refers to God’s love for His people Israel–a steadfast and unwavering love that He promises to His children.  It goes far beyond the indiscriminate acts of kindness where no relationship is present.

Mercy in God’s sense of the word is a kind of covenant compassion, a love for the other that comes deep from the gut because you understand your connection with the other. It is ongoing and implies a kind of loyalty to the connectedness of being that we share.   It demands a deep commitment to one another, as God showed His mercy to us.

How do we love mercy then?  By recognizing unabashedly God’s mysterious, unbelievable love for us, undeserving of it as we are, and acting extravagantly upon that truth by reaching out towards others to manifest that kind of covenant compassion, a love for the other that is unconditional.  Loving mercy reflects our deep appreciation for God’s mercy for us as His children when we make that kind of grace available towards others as we seek reconciling relationships, fruitful connectedness, and integral healing.

God wants us to love others as He loves us…(as we love ourselves). But do we? How are we being merciful today? Are we willing to enter into the need, pain and brokenness of others to the extent God was willing to enter into ours?

On Walking humbly before our God…

Humility seems to be in short order these days, sometimes even among us as Christ followers. It seems more and more we seek to make a name for ourselves, even when talking, writing about, and spreading the message of God’s love and mission.

As compassion and justice has become popularized both inside and out of the Christian faith, the danger is that the real hunger for righteousness and justice is for the recognition, acknowledgment, and celebration it brings to our name or institution or church at the expense of Christ and His kingdom.

Jesus warned the disciples of the danger of our human tendency to celebrate our actions, our abilities, our capacities or anything other than the fact that our names are written in the book of life. He openly rebuked them for their over-enthusiasm about the incredible ways God used them in healing the sick and commanding the demons to leave the possessed, “Don’t rejoice in the fact that you can do great things using my name…rejoice that you have a name because of Me” (to paraphrase John 10).

When we understand justice as a foundational part of God’s character and throne, and realize that we are saved from our damaged condition by His covenant compassion and mercy, our honest response can only be to humbly participate in His plans to make all things new in order for His name to be known and lifted up.

God wants us to have a humble attitude when we are operating as His faithful followers, grateful for His central presence in our lives, and cooperating fully with the reconciliation and restoration process as we walk with Him through life. But do we? How are we guarding our hearts against self-aggrandizement for the things we accomplish using His name? Are we willing to lay down our lives, our reputations, our names for the sake of His?

Lord, have mercy on us. Forgive us. Restore us. Help us to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with you…Amen.

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.

The community of the Kingdom was present and continues to be present one year later as the process of restoration continues.

Another thing I experienced that was instrumental in easing my fears and pain was the wonder of being useful in God’s hands. I was a broken vessel used to bring water and life to others who were hurting around me.  My family was housed in a tent 20 kilometers from our devastated community for over a month while I served among those who lost everything.

To my brothers Raymond and Walter and all the Haitian pastors and church leaders, servants and collaborators of the Kingdom, I pray for you all.  I pray that you can come to know that these excruciatingly painful events, events that bring us to our weakest points, help us cling to the only hope we have– our faith in, knowledge, and experience of God. A God who promised never to abandon us. It is here that we fall into our God-ordained role as humble servants.  God has given us life and hope to reach out and touch others, to heal, comfort, rebuild.  This broken and hurting world will continue to cry out for restoration, harmony, and peace (the wholistic shalom that comes with life in the Kingdom).

We are with you in spirit and prayer and will accompany you and all the brothers and sisters in Haiti who are commissioned, in the midst of the crisis, to bring hope and life.

For he has not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help. (Psalm 22:24

Follow Up: After the earthquake, CSS opened its doors and served its community in many Kingdom reflecting ways. They are an example of how a community of faith can offer hope and show signs of the Kingdom. Amazing things happen when churches are obedient and responsive to God’s call to literally make all things new!

Due to the generosity of DCC partners, individuals, and churches in the RdC Network, over $66,000 was given to CSS to support relief and post-earthquake development efforts.  As a result, Roy and the large team of CSS volunteers:

• Repaired 87 houses
• Built 13 new homes
• Offered shelter to 323 people for over 3 months
• Made and distributed over 76,000 plates of food to local residents, police, and Red Cross workers
• Distributed 1,600 food kits to over 300 families
• Helped 4 local churches repair their buildings and supported their congregations with supplies and food during the rehab process
• Brought home-based medical care to more than 40 families, offered psychological counseling to over 100 families, and organized many home visits to follow up on patients.

Be Made New

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!

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”.

As followers of Jesus, living in Kingdom community and providing an attractive and distinctive love to the world by who we are and what we do, we become effective agents of transformation. Broken and poured out…a message definitely not as attractive as the wealth and health gospel that is marketed to us today, but true to the core of the Good News we claim and proclaim.

The mustard seed movement of churches connected together in the Red del Camino Network are living examples of small, often fragile, communities of faith that are pushing the limits that the world places on all as a means to measure “success”, and risking everything to make a difference in the lives of their neighbors, especially the least of these. Broken and poured out as they invest all they have in creative income generating initiatives to help unemployed small farmers find a just outlet for their products. Broken and poured out as they advocate for the homeless and the forgotten on the urban landscapes of Latin America. Broken and poured out as they help families and communities recover from the devastation of a natural disaster. Broken and poured out as they provide refuge and loving care to the forgotten, abused and ignored.

The communion table is set with the sacraments of the lives of the many men women and children who are willing to be broken before their desires and agendas, plans and personal economies, and poured out to their neighbors in love. They are “doing this” in remembrance of Him the author of our Salvation and Hope.

The communion table is set with the sacraments of the lives of the many men women and children who are willing to be broken…

Let’s continue to set the table and share in this banquet offering our lives as the bread and wine.

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.

The “Rich” and the “Poor”

And all of this started to grow in me and made me think about the text in Matthew 5:3 where Jesus tells the poor to march on with their lives and rejoice for being poor, because theirs was the possibility of having their lives driven and controlled by God.  Little by little, over these last few years, along with biblical reflection, I have observed how many extremely sincere friends come and go, getting very excited about serving, but soon afterwards loose their passion for serving as they get busy with their errands and preoccupations. Frequently, I also see how others pay for someone else to fulfill God’s loving service. They engage with the poor vicariously through others during certain periods of time, moved by real sincerity, even if from a distance and without personal involvement.

From another perspective I see how poverty takes over the lives of those who are poor, and how much it reveals their unfulfilled desire to own things, and have access to modern consumption – the destroyer of everything.  I see how their situation is built by the seduction of the same things that seduce and destroy the rich: the same individualism, the same selfishness, and the same tendency to feel comfortable and find their identity in being able to own things. I see their same absolute adhesion to a hoped for lifestyle and a way of thinking that imprisons them to the myth of modern needs, to the mythical desire to evolve and come under in complete and un questioned submission to the myth of modern development.

Without exception, rich and poor have the same conviction that what they need is something that the market, money, the government or some other agency can offer them.

They are all convinced that they will be happy with ownership, with a full stomach (some with bread, others with croissants) and with the constant flow of money that can seemingly do anything and solve everything.  And among this massive majority, there are a few well-intentioned people who extend their hand to “include” others into the lifestyle or the platform they achieved.

The stretched-out hand from top down…that’s what we call service.

Giving Up on Serving the Poor

Over the years I’ve discovered that the very position of serving the poor from a commitment to “liberate” them, has been filled with a sense of superiority.  A kind of superiority that is translated into giving others what I have, assuming through my actions that what I have or do is what he/she should have or do.  This subtle translation is noticed in the subtle arrogance of the so-called politics of “inclusion”, always trying to put the other inside the box where I live, including them in the sameness of my lifestyle.

All of this led me to give up on serving the poor. By making this kind of statement I am not taking sides with those who, from their positions of wealth, comfort and well being say, “See? That’s what I have always thought.”   I’m sorry to inform these people that in no way do I believe in or embrace their lifestyle.  A lifestyle that by design, separates them from contact with the poor, the sick, the hungry, the naked, the ugly, the smelly, and the “uncivilized” barbarians.

I do not side with those who pay their taxes or contribute to charity saying in that way they are fulfilling their role. To these people I keep on retransmitting the message of Jesus that confronts their blind, insensitive and arrogant lifestyles, a message that calls madness what the worlds calls security.

Seeing Ourselves in the Poorest of the Poor

I have given up on serving the poor for another reason.

Since 1993, when I regularly went to the streets with a bunch of kids to reach out to the homeless, I  developed a spiritual discipline. On the cold nights when we would go out to the streets of my city, I made a point to the kids that we were not going out to meet the “homeless” or the “needy”.  I would tell the kids that in all honesty, I never really ever felt excited about serving bread to a homeless beggar, or making him or her a bed, or clothing their nakedness.  The spiritual discipline we instated was to constantly use the motto “we go to meet Jesus in the poorest of the poor”.  Serving, feeding and clothing Jesus was our motivation. Now, that excited me.

We discovered each time we went out, that in each of these encounters with a camouflaged Jesus, the so-called “Miserable” would be transformed into Masters - into those who denounced our personal misery, and who were transformed into unveiling agents of our manipulative mechanisms.

We suddenly saw ourselves mirrored in the very “poor” we were serving.  We recognized that we were constantly using the same excuses and lies to get what we wanted - perhaps more successfully, and surely with more social acceptance and security mechanisms. But throughout this process we came to discover that we were “the poor”.

Those of us who experienced that spiritual perspective were freed of ourselves. We grew, and we changed. Confronted by Jesus and taught by him through the contact with his poverty and misery, many of us discovered what the Gospel (good news) really meant. During those days, many of us were transformed by Jesus’ touch and by the good news that he transmitted as we discovered ourselves as “the poor”.

An Alternative to “Serving” the Poor

However, this somewhat mystical sense of awareness was not always a constant burning flame.   I would so often return to that worldly perspective to serving the poor, letting myself believe that I was the healthy, privileged helper, many times forgetting my own misery. As I have already mentioned, the alternative is not to stay away from the poor, judging their conditions, circumstances and attitudes from a top of my comfortable superior social position.  Nor is it helping the poor, by raising their own awareness of their situation or “including” them in an unquestioning submission to the development politics of the last 60 years. The alternative I present here is different, discovered through encounter, recognition and identification.

I’ve given up on helping the poor, given up on serving and saving them. I have rediscovered a hard truth:

Jesus doesn’t have any good news for those who serve the poor. Jesus didn’t come to bring good news of the Kingdom to those who serve the poor; he brought Good News to the poor. He has nothing to say to other saviors who compete with him for the position of Messiah, or Redeemer.

God Shows Up in Our Need to Be Healed

Jesus’ agenda only brings a message for those who recognize themselves as poor, naked, hurt, tired, overburdened, needy and hopeless. As for the rest, his agenda has little or nothing to offer.

The only way to remain with the poor is if we discover that we are the miserable ones. We remain with the poor when we recognize ourselves, even if well disguised, in him/her who is right before our eyes. When we can see our own misery and poverty in them, when we realize our own needs and our desperate need to be saved and liberated, then and only then will we meet Jesus and live life according to His agenda.

God is not manifest in our ability to heal, but in our need to be healed.  Finding out this weakness of ours leaves us in a position of having nothing to offer, serve, donate, but reveals our need to be loved, healed and restored.

Herein lies the meaning that the power within us is not the power of our strengths, abilities and wealth, but rather, in the power that is present in our personal misery, so well hidden and disguised in our possessions and false securities.  As Jean Vanier says in a book I recently read. “We are called to discover that God can bring peace, compassion, and love through our wounds.”

How much more sense does Isaiah’s text about the Messiah make now: “by his wounds we are healed”. The remaining messiahs of this world tend to avoid Jesus’ example of emptying himself (kenosis) to the point of becoming one of us, of dying with us and thus opening the door of resurrection for us.

The power that Jesus used to heal us, and uses to keep on healing us, does not reside in his access to universal power, but in his identification with us on the cross; in opening himself in wounds, in becoming one of us, in living our life.

I have given up on serving the poor. I’m going back to encountering the poor and finding myself in them.

Again, I have discovered the misery that hides in the very-well structured lives of my own false security.  Seeing things from this perspective helps me understand this Jesus who talks with lepers and wealthy businessmen, with tax collectors in their parties and with the sick and miserable on the streets. In his identification with each and everyone, Jesus saw what perhaps no one else did: the extreme misery and poverty of the human condition, apart from any status or social gown.

Serving from the Bottom-Up

I came to re-encounter my poverty, to see myself in each situation of misery, and to get in touch with my inner pain. From there, I pray for healing, freedom, community and love. I ask for mercy and restoration.

Whoever serves out of the sense of having something to offer, serves from the top down.

Jesus calls us to become incarnate and to see ourselves in the other and to place ourselves under him or her as powerless dependents. He calls us to give up in trusting our own capacity to impart goodness and to change our direction in order to encounter and recognize our own wounds, weakness and pain. From there, we discover the power that lies in being less and not more.

I have given up serving on the poor. I have rediscovered my poverty. And with it I can cry out again: “Son of David, have mercy on me.”

About Claudio Oliver: Claudio is a pastor of Igreja do Caminho church in Curitiba, Brazil.  He is also a Red del Camino Network connector, both in the Brazilian Network and the regional Latin American Network movement.

Want to support the work of Igreja do Caminho?  Click here learn more.

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.