Last week we received an email from our Regional office asking churches to send in our stories of community involvement and a few years ago we could have done that easily. In fact, a few years ago, The CHURCH ADVOCATE ran an article about our congregation's nontraditional VBS which was held in the community park, not on our own property.
These days, however, we are no longer writing those stories. We see the struggle to bring individuals to repentance as our commission. We no longer work for community transformation.
And, from our experience, when you function from the place in which you are practicing mercy and grace, both of which, by the definition we use, are undeserved and offered to people who have not earned acts of love, you don't often have happily ever after stories to tell.
We take solace in our frequent failures in the example of Jesus who was despised and rejected by nearly all who surrounded the cross that held His dying body. Success, by that standard, is defined by faithfulness to God's will, not by a happily ever after end to the story.
That brings me to an update on the woman I have called Janey in the past. She came to Evelyn because she heard that our church gives financial assistance to people in need.
We gathered information on her situation and, in the process, Evelyn proclaimed the gospel to her and explained the need for personal repentance. We have been schmoozed many times in the past. And, I believe that Janey wanted more from us than money. I think she wanted a spiritual life with God through Christ.
In the end, the rest of our group was ambivalent but Evie and I felt led to take a risk on Janey. All of our tithe and offering money goes to people in need. None of it goes to the church. So we took a decent sized chunk of what we set aside and sent a check to Janey's landlord, to whom she owed money.
Since then, the contact with Janey has slowly evaporated to the point that we are now hearing nothing from her.
Again, I truly believe that she wanted repentance for her own life, but, as Jesus taught in His parable of the soils, it seems that she will not, in the end, produce fruit.
In our gathering's discussion on what to do with Janey, our talk focused on Ephesians 2:10 which says that we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do and the question: Is this a work He prepared for us to do?
Evie and I decided that we had to act as if it was such an act. Others were not convinced.
Two thoughts:
1. Failure or not, I, personally, don't regret the investment of the money, or the time or of the love and mercy. It is the Lord's money and my conscience is clear.
2. It breaks my heart that, in the CGGC, we have no community beyond our own group in which to work through these decisions.
Without a doubt, the area in which the CGGC fails me/us most greatly is, to allude to the most recent eNews, in Reflecting, Processing and Debriefing.
ReplyDeleteI/we have been struggling for some time with the search for the line that separates acts of mercy from the enabling of sin. That line has been very difficult to see.
One teaching of the Sermon on the Mount that is disturbing is that it is only the merciful who will receive mercy. Therefore, finding that line is a matter of eternal importance.
It seems to me that in most of the CGGC mercy extends only so far as inviting people with less than clean backgrounds to sit in a pew on a Sunday. And, if some of those people do darken the church door, many of our people have been content to treat them like a Pharisee would a tax collector.
Based on Matthew 25, this could not be further from the Jesus definition of mercy. And, so, I feel as if, in the CGGC, we struggle alone to understand what mercy is.
All who wish to walk along side us are welcome to join us.