considerable grace

I am praying for UrbanServant and her beloved family as they make the trek to Colorado Springs. (Oh! Do click through and read of God’s glory and work through this dear woman if you are not yet already familiar with her blog. Enjoy! And please also pray for them. I’m really hoping—and taking steps to try!—to be a blessing to this family as they transition to our Mountain Time Zone.)

And I am taking notes and more notes from this John Piper sermon:

Helping the Children to Love the Different People

Worth the time. Truly. I strongly urge you to listen and I pray that we will all live out the truths that he expounds.

I could write a hundred quotes from his message, but I’ll close with just two:

"Help your children to understand that their sin is uglier than any thing they think is physically unattractive about another person."

“God is on your side for one reason: Christ paid for your sins and imputes to you an alien righteousness which you receive by faith alone and everything in life flows from that gospel reality. The power to be that kind of parent / friend / person in general; the power to help anybody love those different from themselves; a power to love those who are different from ourselves, is a power that flows from that experience, that truth, the gospel. We want to accept because we are already accepted.”

Amen and amen.

And blessed Sabbath to you all—

Yours,
Tara B.

Worth the (quick) read (and very doable!):

Ten Prayers for the Sake of Orphans

And if you have just a few more minutes, you’ll enjoy:

The Manliness of Adoption

As I type this, Fred is meeting with our other church elders and deacons to pray, study, and discuss how our church can be more missional in serving our local community. We were talking about the same topic at our women’s study last Wednesday. Later in the week, my friend shared about a new relationship she has with a young woman who is facing some major troubles — and she’s praying about how she might become more intentionally involved in her life.

How grateful I am for these reminders and helps to NOT “shut down”, do nothing, and hide away in my easy life simply because the mercy needs around me seem so complex. The truth is, they ARE complex! But God gives us grace and resources to do SOMETHING to help.

Another great (stunning, actually!) reminder and advisor to me on missional, mercy living has been the blog, “UrbanServant.” Read yesterday’s post and you’ll see why:

Emergency Preparedness

(Oh! What a cushy life I have. What can I do, even today, even feeling nauseous and very, very pregnant, to prepare and to serve?)

Our elders and deacons are working hard to help us all to become more aware of, and involved in, mercy ministries in our local community of Billings.

So you can imagine how excited I was to attend Pastor Randy Nabors' workshop on Mercy Ministries last week. (That link actually brings you to his church’s website and a page filled with essays he has written. I can’t say I’ve read them all! But I hope to and I thought they might give you even more insights into these important topics.)

I took THIRTEEN pages of notes from his workshop because he just DRIPPED with love for God, neighbor, AND WISDOM based on DECADES of ministering in an inner-city church that is committed to integrating “middle class” Christians and “poor” Christians. Let me share just a few highlights with you:

- Pastor Nabors was raised by a single mother in the housing projects of Newark, New Jersey. He was told, “You are a statistic. You’re from a broken home. You live on food stamps. You have NO future.” BUT JESUS SAVED HIM. And then the church came around him and his mother and intentionally entered into their lives.

- Currently, their church has over 1,300 people in attendance every week at three services. They have a thriving college ministry wherein they “DO NOTHING” for their college students. No special class. No special attention. They just call the college students to GIVE THEIR LIVES AWAY for Christ and there are so many ministry needs that the students do exactly that. (And then many go on to found churches, ministries, work with the poor, etc.)

- Pastor Nabors entitled his workshop, “The Babylonian Exile of the Middle Class” and asked us all to consider HOW DID WE GET SO FAR APART? He argued that we middle class people MUST integrate our churches with the poor and NOT rely on “professionals” and “heroes” in inner-city ministry because a few “heroes” will never be able to make the impact needed in our cities.

- Most of us middle class Christians are untouched by what is happening in our cities because it doesn’t spill over into our lives. But there is a hard-core CATASTROPHE happening in the inner-cities. People need us, yes. BUT WE NEED THEM TOO.

- Prosperity has many tendencies: Affinity (we want to be like the people who are like you; it’s easy to communicate and you all know the social rules); Avoidance (we avoid inconvenient people who don’t have the same culture as us; we tend to do “drive-by mercy” and send people down the street to the Salvation Army).

- Poor people have their own problems: Provincial (tightly bound in geographical areas and cultural norms; prejudiced against learning new things); Locked-in (live on the edge; no props; no escape boat; no margin).

- There are obvious hindrances to doing mercy ministry: Accessibility (no public transportation); Acceptability (racial/socio-economic “unacceptable” to us); Dysfunctional (we’re just like ‘em but we hide it better and “look normal”); Dangerous (Pastor Nabors and his wife joke about writing a book entitled, “Murders I Have Known.”); Inaccessible Teaching (how do craft Sunday school materials that appeal to the highly educated members of your church AND those who are functionally illiterate?).

- We are called to be MOTIVATED TO MODEL AND MENTOR. For most of the inner-city children who come into your church, they will ONLY EVER see a functional, happy, stable marriage and family during church. They won’t see it at home or in their schools; they don’t see it on t.v. Patient instruction and modeling plus humility and teachability equals TRANSFORMATION.

- WHY WE NEED EACH OTHER: The poor need help/resources and relationship modeling. The affluent need CREDIBILITY. (“Jesus loves you.” REALLY? How many non-Christians look in the windows of our churches and see our good works and praise our Father in Heaven? NOT MANY.)

- PRACTICAL TIPS: Must have both salvation AND discipleship (socialization/social skills too; we don’t just put our inner-city kids in with our church kids or else all they do is BEAT UP our church kids; first we teach them, mentor them, disciple them … THEN they come into the church). Relationships are everything. Interpretation is necessary for integration (constantly explain to people WHAT is going on and WHY we are doing it this way—part of our vision / mission / values). Intentionality must be RENEWED (people love our integrated our church is but they have NO idea all of the CHOICES we have made to get here; we don’t deny our differences but our UNITY IN CHRIST IS GREATER). Intervention prevents abuse (neither side is allowed to abuse the other). Celebration must replace patronization.

Oh oh oh! I have so far to go in my own heart. And our family does too. And our church.

May God help us to live mercy!

And thank God for Pastor and Mrs. Nabors and the incredible (truly THE most hospitable church I have EVER been in) ministry of New City Fellowship, Chattanooga.

Yours gratefully,
Tara B.