Church Transforming Lives

One of the concerns I have expressed in this blog is the fact that the Church has not been the champion of community change that it ought to be. I have argued that the Church has not been involved significantly in helping to transform the lives of our people from despair to hope, at least in significant ways. It is true that many who come to Jesus find themselves transformed – their lives taking on new meaning and impetus. But what about those who do not come? Does the Church have a responsibility to them also?

It has been my point, that as the bastion of hope and life, as the institution which most celebrates the fact that man is created in the image and likeness of God, the Church cannot ignore anyone in society. Instead, she should pamper that image, even in the worse outcast, and should do all to reverse the effects of sin, which threatens to denigrate God’s image in man. Sin threatens man in obviously spiritual ways, and the Church is right to call man to repentance as he sets himself on the path to renewal in God. But sin also threatens man in the other areas of his life – physical, social, emotional, etc. As such, the Church must be involved in ministries which will seek to reverse trends in these areas that are detrimental to man.

Take the area of the social. I believe that the Church’s involvement in the social dimension of man has been token at best, when looked at generally. That the Church is involved in much social action is not in doubt, but I believe that this had not been in a significant way to help in the transformation of the individual, except in minority cases. Let me try to explain.

Perhaps the greatest act of social involvement on the part of the Church in Jamaica took place with the creation of the Baptist Free Villages, just after Emancipation. These villages provided not only property for ex-slaves, but also a sense of responsibility and livelihood, as the newly declared freed-men sought to make a contribution to a new society. For the first time the ex-slave was his own man, farming his own land, building his own home and saving for tomorrow, in short determining his own future. He was released from the shackles of depending on the welfare offered by someone else, if and whenever such was offered. Whereas he was previously tied to the goodwill of others, now he was in the place of being able to largely determine his own and his family’s future. Church’s today offer a lot of social help, but not in the same way as the Baptist Free Villages did, at least not in the main.

Two examples from Jamaica’s more recent history (and as far as I know the only two that exist) continued in the tradition of our illustrious Baptist counterparts, and sadly, one struggles for survival. In 1940 a Methodist minister by the name of Hugh Sherlock established a project in a part of Trench Town to help transform the lives of poor black boys who lived there. Boys’ Town was created, and largely through sports and entertainment, Father Sherlock helped give hundreds an opportunity for advancement that they otherwise would not have. The significant Jamaicans that passed through Boys’ Town are too numerous to list, but include names such as the Late Collie Smith (West Indian Cricketer), Carl Brown (Jamaica’s Former National Football Coach) and Lyndel Wright (Manager, Jamaica Cricket Team). Unfortunately, Father Sherlock’s dream has not survived as a church based idea. Thankfully other social agencies are attempting to replicate some of what he did but apparently with the significant disadvantage of the absence of a certain essential morality that is a part of the church ethos.

The second example still exists in the form of Alpha Boys’ Home. Alpha Boys’ is an institution that caters to boys from economically deprived backgrounds, many homeless. As a boarding facility, the boys are nurtured in a Christian environment, where they are given an education and taught necessary values for life. But Alpha has become best known for the musicians it has produced. Boys are taught to play musical instruments, and the Alpha Boys’ band is of national renown. Many of its graduates have gone on to become world famous, and have escaped the poverty to which their backgrounds threatened to condemn them. The most famous Alpha graduates from yesteryear were Don Drummond and Roland Alphanso, but today Dwight Richards and a slew of others carry on the tradition of excellence that the school has become known for. The Alpha experience has not only met their social need for schooling, but it transformed them into men who command their own destinies as well as that of their families. Along with education it gave them a way up and out of a lifestyle of poverty and aimlessness.

Perhaps other such initiatives do exist in the Church, but they are not well known and are definitely not the norm. They should be. And it’s not about the Church blowing her own trumpet; it is about promoting life and hope…about showing an increasingly desperate populace that God has created them for achievement and progress. The life of being a noose around society’s neck and a dagger in the heart of others is not a given, especially when the Church becomes involved in promoting the full humanity of all, as this is the only way to fully preserve the image of God in which we are created.

What do you think?

A Contextual Reading of Luke 5:17-26

One well known rule when reading the Gospel of Luke is that we must see the evangelist as concerned with portraying Jesus as the liberator of the poor and outcast. Jesus’ initial declaration of the purpose of his ministry (4:18-20) clearly declares such, but the narratives form beginning to end are steeped with the concerns of the poor and outcast, whether they be the sick, the sinful, the foreigner, or women. Throughout, the faith of the outcast to come and receive from Jesus is always rewarded with a blessing, much to the chagrin of the “righteous.” Keeping this in mind will help us understand and apply the Gospel to our setting in very real and relevant ways. I hope to demonstrate this by looking at Luke 5:17-26.

The passage under consideration tells us of Jesus teaching in a house, apparently in Galilee. His ministry was growing in popularity, and a large crowd gathered to hear him speak. Seated close by him were Pharisees and Teachers of the Law from all over Galilee and Judea, listening intently to what he was saying. Because the crowd was so thick, some men carrying a paralyzed man on a mat, and who wanted to get him to Jesus for healing, could not pass through. They therefore made their way unto the roof of the house, removed some of the tiles and lowered the man in front of Jesus. On seeing their faith Jesus forgave the man his sins and then healed him, much to the amazement of the crowd.

Often, what concerns us is the confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders over his ability to forgive sins. They chaff under the implication of His pronouncement, which leads him to astoundingly heal the man from his disability. But there is so much more in the passage of relevance to us than Jesus’ identity, as important as that might be. We need always to keep in mind the question of the poor and outcast, and how God acts on their behalf despite the actions of the religious establishment of the day, to the contrary. When we do this many other points of application, very relevant to our context, become clear.

For instance, there are the many things that we concern ourselves with as religious people to safeguard God’s integrity, which indeed hinder his work with those who most need it. We camp around doctrinal matters and build fortresses around our ideas that bar non-conformists from entry while protecting the faithful. Unless outsiders are willing to toe the line they do not gain entry, and dissident insiders quickly find themselves on the outside. Protecting the truth about God has led to denominational schisms too numerous to count, and form the focal point of our existence. It saps so much of our energies that we easily ignore the maimed and pained who are looking in from the outside, longing to receive from God’s love. Many have stopped looking in, instead drinking from “broken cisterns” to have their longings met.

Additionally, the attitude of the friends in the story stands in stark contrast to that of the religious establishment. As they, along with other curious onlookers bar the way of entry to the one who needs Jesus the most, the friends make a way to get the crippled man inside. Do the maimed and crippled find it physically easy to enter our sanctuaries of worship? Do we have ramps for those bound to wheel chairs or seats specifically designed and set aside for those who find conventional sitting impossible? Just by the way we structure our pews we often send out the message that God’s word prefers the able-bodied and normal, which is in stark contrast to the message of the Gospel. God holds no favourites, and if He did his favourites would be those who cannot help themselves. Like Him, these people must be the focal point of our attention as we share the message of the Gospel.

Luke 5:17-26 shows us that we can be assiduously practicing our religious duties and still ignore that which most concerns God. Too often when we do this we end up ignoring the needy and thus become bad representatives of God. Each and every person, especially the one helpless for whatever reason is special to Him and so should be to us. It behoves us then to think on these things and design our ministries in such a way that brings hope, love and joy to those who most need it. Anything else means that we are merely taking up space.

As usual, what do you think?