For example, a friend of mine pastors a local church in the downtown area and one of the ways a lot of people in his church spend their free time serving others is through the soup kitchen. Is this “social justice”? Is this displacing the mission of the church and are these people no longer faithfully making disciples? Of course not! They’re simply loving their neighbors.
The church that I pastor though doesn’t have a visible need for soup kitchens because we gather each week in the San Diego suburbs, so our people don’t really spend much of their time serving in soup kitchens. (Though some do, for holidays or on a monthly basis by driving to inner city and downtown neighborhoods.). Since we live in a more affluent area, the needs of our local community look a little different and one of the ways we get involved in our community is by volunteering time, money and people to help improve the conditions of a nearby elementary school that has a very high percentage of not only low-income families, but homeless families sending their kids to school.
Spend more time thinking, planning and praying about ways your church can get people outside of your church into the primary place where disciples of Jesus are made, and less time wondering if an activity is part of the official duties of the church. If Sunday morning is the missionary event of the week, how are we facilitating and inviting more people outside of our members into this event? Thinking and talking more about this, and acting on some of the best and most appropriate ideas in our local context would do all of us a lot of good.
God calls each pastor to shepherd the flock of God that is entrusted to us specifically. As far as I can tell, he has only given me one flock, not two or hundreds or thousands.
I am not a universal bishop but am an ordinary, local church pastor. So I can share what we’re doing, and work toward encouraging others and can talk and listen and learn from others who share the same Gospel Commission that every other local church is participating in and have been given the same Great Commandment that every Christian on the planet has been given. Aside from that though, it’s better that I don’t meddle with stuff that’s not my business.
We can get so caught up in theological debates, but we need to do the work of the mission of the church that God has given, with the means God has given, and with the offices and people God has given to us wherever we are at. I wish more leaders and pastors would do the same.
We’ve got work to do. The harvest is plentiful and the laborers are distracted, and few.
This article originally appeared here.
