Practice?

We meet this young man named Eugene. He is 18 years old and is living in a temporary group home. He has lived in 6 different foster placements. He is sleeping on one of the beds we gave to the Angels of Mercy ministry. He is a student at ASU during the school year, but has no where to go during the summer. He is staying in this house by himself and has not had much contact with anyone for the past month.

He is a personable guy. What the heck, we invited him to come help us build last week. He jump on it. It beats sitting at home by himself watching TV. After we built, we turned off the saws and had some intense discussion time with the building group. On the ride home, he commented that he had never had a talk like that. He thanked me for our kindness to him.

This morning our new church, I had the following discussion with the pastor (paraphrased; it was more light-hearted than it probably comes across, but a serious issue).

ME: You need to hear about Eugene. He needs some of us to come along side of him. He has nobody. I don't know your congregation very well. What would happen if we brought Eugene to church?

I have this metaphor that people are like legos. They only have so many pegs and when all their pegs are filled up, there is no room for anyone else. Do the people at this church have their legos full?

G: I think we are no different than other churches. I think it is an issue of selfishness and unless we move beyond this selfishness then it is hard for us to reach out to the needs of others.

ME: Oh, man, you mean this church really is no different than other churches?

G: Well, we talk about following Jesus and him loving the needy in our community through us.

ME: So, the only difference is that you have great messages on Sunday morning (they are!).

G: Most people want to reach out but don't know what to do.

ME: They need to practice. If Eugene came to this church, then we would need to step up. We need to practice not just talking about it. You have to be attentive. He doesn't have much going on in his life right now. He is bored and needs a mentor, or at least some people to be kind to him. He would soak it up. He is a great guy and easy to get along with. It would be easy, inconvenient, but easy.

This seems like a no-brainer. Should we practice loving a orphan, minority, living in poverty that has no one? We come across people like this from time-to-time, if we started bringing them to church, would the congregation step up?

This raises some interesting questions about the church. First, many churches don't have to worry about responding to people like Eugene, because people like Eugene rarely coming across their path. Interesting to think why that might be the case. If a church is "no different than other churches", meaning that they contain people not inclined to be sensitive enough to notice someone like Eugene, much less respond with compassion, it is interesting to think what the heck the church is doing. If a church wants to be loving to people that have been disenfranchised by our cultural system but doesn't know how, what needs to happen? Is good preaching enough? Whatever it is, I would think it would require some intentional, well-directed effort.