Compassion By Design

I am spending the week with local church leaders involved with Angel Food Ministries, and wanted to pass on the devotional I shared at our Wednesday meeting.

 We know the story of Israel’s journey from Egypt to the Promise land well.  I can still quote some of the lines from the Canaan songs I learned early in my Christian life (although I never knew what Canaan was until much later).  It makes for great drama–the clash of cultures, the power of God, the evil Pharoah and the humble leader with the big stick.   The last chapter of this story holds some important lessons for church planters–the response of the spies.

The work of the spies reminds me so much of the early days of church planting.   It reads like this:  Adventurous young man, strikes out with a few brave companions to see what God might do in the evil city.    They visit the city, meet some of the inhabitants, pick up some of the special fruit (music, art, culture, local flavor) and head back to the giant assemblage of tribes (sending agencies working in a network approach to church planting) to make their report.  Like the scripture, they say, “it is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us” (Deut. 1: 25 NIV). 

But the rest of the report is also important, because sometimes the future hangs on the words of just a couple of young spies.   The report of the spies, and the way that they see the city will determine what kind of new church will be established there– will it be a report that sees the city with fear–”the people are taller and stronger than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.” (Deut. 1:28 NIV).  Will it be a report that takes the nation (and the church planting team) into a defensive mode in which fear of the power of the city is greater than the knowledge of God’s promise to go before us?

The bigger question is this, based on the way we see the city– either as full of Giants (those pesky Anakites), or as the Place of Promise, will determine the kind of church that we will plant. 

Will it be a closed enclave best suited for robust transfer growth, protecting christians from the giants in the land, or will be it be a city transforming church, that is unafraid to take on the culture and influence of the land?

Do we believe that God can transform even the strongholds of culture, taking back the Rap, the Art, the Local Cultural and influencers? 

The gospel story transforms  our approach from a story of judgement on disobedient nations and fear of the inhabitants, into a story of redemption for even the most vile elements of culture.  I remember the day when the local pornographer came to Christ in our local church in Southern California.  He had lived a life that was full of evil and darkness, but loving christians did not shrink from reaching out with compassion to him, resulting in his conversion. 

Will you be willing to take your tribe deep into the culture, working with compassion to restore lives.? Will the other spies and the team be moved with love for the city, or motivated by a sense of dread?  So much depends on the tale of the chief spy– the planter.  And so much depends on the early responses to culture among the church planting team. 

And we don’t just tell the story with our words.  The action steps that we take, early in the church plant process communicate our heart to those who join us.   Compassionate service in the city, as an early part of your church history together, is one of the ways that you can ensure that a real heart and insight into the city will grow.  Serving takes us into direct redemptive contact with the culture in which we are serving.  It says that we are not afraid to reach people we don’t know, and we are going to take up the towel of Jesus to serve with love.  By starting early with compassionate ministry, the planter takes all of this beyond the realm of discussion into action discipleship. 

People who serve and love actively, cement their faith that local inhabitants are not to be feared, but as compassionate servants we can work effectively to bring redemption.  I would suggest that if you are planting a church among the Sons of Anak, that you bring along very large towel, since large feet take a lot of drying once they are wased.

Among the many maladies of the mind, we know that youth suffer from the personal mythology of invulnerability, churches from terminal myopia, leaders from founder’s syndrome, and organizations from group think.  Sometimes we all forget the limits of our personal wisdom, and suffer from what I call the Myth of Omniscience. In this malady, we confuse ourselves with the Prime Mover and Father of Lights, by forgetting that our knowledge has limits.  Let me illustrate: 

Recently a church planter was sharing with the team at Newchurches.org, the real disconnect that he discovered between what the demographics told him and what living people reported.  This planter was doing what any good needs assessment would lead him to do, meeting intentionally with local leaders to ask them questions (In a needs assessment, these leaders open their doors to the interview because they respect the role of needs assessment in the community, and allow the planter to access to their time and perspective).  During the course of the interview, the local leader began to share about the trouble he was having with a specific neighborhood, and the planter realized that he had uncovered a hidden population.  It didn’t show up on the official demographic radar, and could only be discovered using intentional interview techniques.  The planter had a decision– believe and act upon secondary sources, like lifestyle demographics, or believe the report of the local official who was telling stories about the significant need in this specific neighborhood.  The needs assessment provides a response to this situation, and would result in additional inquiry in this newly discovered population.   If this planter was suffering under the Myth of His Omniscience (or the myth of his demographic report), he would have discounted this verbal report and stuck with his original plan.  The problem was, the truth was not convenient (sound familiar?), and required that he adjust his plan to take advantage of a ministry and partnership opportunity that came from his intentional interview efforts.

In another church planter discussion, a planter looked me in the eye and told me about the depth of his community insight.  His whole team had been looking around the community, talking to those that they had met and had formed some very specific plans for community service.  These plans, like the planter above, involved a local school and community based ministry to its families.  The planter even described the local schools and their proximity to his project.  He didn’t know it, but he was in the grips of the myth.  Unlike the planter above, he had not followed an intentional interview plan, like those found in a needs assessment, and although he had asked around—he hadn’t gone to the horse’s mouth itself.  No interviews with the school principal, no interviews with local day care providers, no intentional interviews at all.  In this case the myth could have caused some real damage to the team—disappointment, missed ministry opportunities, lost face with donors –40 years in the desert. 

Those who are caught in the Myth of Omniscience (ours), have forgotten the cardinal rule of community inquiry—we don’t know what we don’t know.  And it’s easy to catch this virus, especially since so much of our leadership is rooted in our instinctive and discernment based knowledge.  In the community, we do need good spiritual “antennas” that help us discern and see the principles at work, but there is no replacement for taking those attennas around in an intentional search pattern.  If we were in a search and rescue mission (aren’t we?), we would work a grid pattern to make sure we didn’t miss anyone.  Needs assessment provides this search grid, allowing us to systematically meet, build relationships and listen to lots of important people all across the grid.  It employs our entire team in this process with us—multiplying the antennae corps and making each team member a part of the listening and relationship building process.  Our demographics are akin to a satellite view of this same community—but since we aren’t planning to minister in space, we need to do some purposeful walking around. 

They call this HUMINT in the intel business– Human intelligence—boots on the ground.  Like our nation, we have learned that if we want to win, we have to take the time and energy to place ourselves in personal proximity—I recommend an intentional needs assessment process to make sure we do this right.  Join me on a free conference call to learn some more about this process http://www.compassionbydesign.org/church-planting.html.