Why Personal, Family, Communal (Church) Witness are All Needed

[James Nored]

Today I walked into the Starbucks that I frequent most at 380 and 75 in McKinney, TX. There the Batista, Rowdy (see above picture), asked me how my weekend was.

In keeping with my sermon on being a witness from John 1, I talked about what I spoke on on Sunday. I also told Rowdy that we would be encouraging families to go out after our Christmas Eve and spread a little "Joy to the World" by taking a card, care basket, donuts, etc. to someone who is working on that evening--hospital or nursing home workers, police or fire fighters, etc. We will be encouraging people to do this primarily in their families.

Rowdy had an interesting comment after I shared this. He said, "That's cool what you are doing. It seems like a lot of churches are just inward focused and don't get out in the community."

Rowdy's statement points to the fact that the church has a huge PR problem to overcome. The unchurched think that the church ought to exist for others, to serve the hurting and broken, and to be involved in the community.


There is a trend now towards doing things individually and personally to bless others. I am all for this. In fact, I love Michael Frosts' BELLS practices, which includes, among other things, proactively blessing 3 people each week on an individual level. In one
of my small groups, we come back each week and share who we got to bless. We need individuals and families living these kinds of lives everyday.

But we also need to provide a positive communal witness for the church. We need to do things in Christ's name and in the name of his church. When Jesus says, "You are the light of the world" and "You are the salt of the earth" in Mt. 5, he uses the plural form of you. Collectively we are to be salt and light, doing good things so that people might praise God.

This is why every church ought to have some core outreach ministries that the church does together and supports and gets behind. At High Pointe, a lot of this communal witness is provided through our food pantry and clothes closet ministries, our outreach to nearby Vega elementary, and, to some extent, ministries like Financial Peace and Dynamic Marriage. These are ministries sponsored by the church (though most of them began out of some member's heart) that have a lot of "church resources" behind them. However, even here, we have a number of families serving together in these ministries.

The missional movement has rightly criticized the overly programmatic church which has outsourced spiritual formation, mission, and everything else to the professionals. But I fear that some have gone overboard in this critique. Doing things collectively is not a bad thing. Organizing is not a bad thing. If we had a ship that was going down, would we disparage the US Coast guard for sending out an organized rescue team to save those who were drowning? Would we think just throwing out an announcement to people to go and rescue whoever whenever in whatever way is really the best strategy for search and rescue? Organizing is only bad if we let others do our work for us and never minister in a personal manner to those around us.

I remember I was at a missional seminar with Michael Frost a few years ago, and someone there said that in his church, they dismissed Wednesday nights permanently and just told people, Go out and do mission and service. Now, I love the idea of doing mission on Wednesday nights. In fact, I'm doing this! But what were the results in this seminar's participant's case? A couple of people went out, and almost no one else did. They did not know how, did not have ideas, and were missing two hugely needed elements--leadership and accountability. The fact is, not everyone is a self-starter, but many are willing to chip in and help if only someone will help guide them. And by accountability, I don't mean a Boston movement style of accountability. I simply mean the voluntary accountability that naturally comes when people come together to both plan for mission and then come back together and share about their mission experiences. The fact is, we need each other to do mission consistently in our lives. And by setting up planning and sharing times, and concentrating our efforts on a particular people, we increase our mission efforts 10 fold.

Rowdy might be touched if he knew that our family was going to do something on Christmas Eve for others. But knowing that a church is doing this helps overcome the negative stereotypes about churches that exist. And, as flawed as churches made up of real people are, I believe in the church. Most people need to encounter an authentic church in order to come to faith. And if they do not encounter a church during their conversion, then they have not really been fully converted, for the gospel is inherently communal in nature.

So, yes, serve individually and with your families. But also look for concentrated efforts that the church can get behind to provide that communal witness to the world.

What do you think about individual, family, and communal witness to the world? Which is most important?

[James Nored]

Excellent point, Chris. We must combine words with actions. We assume that people know why we serve. They often do not know. And they cannot fully praise the Father in heaven without this understanding.

 

Churches usually fail in either verbal proclamation or in serving. Both done together are powerful.

[Chris Walker]

One critical piece of serving is for our members to be able to share the reason / motive for what they are doing, or else, people are left to guess at our motives and we hope they guess right.

 

People can see our good deeds, but in our pluralistic environment, they may not make the connection to "praise our Father in heaven."  We still need words to set apart our love from the general community service of secular organizations that also do good works.

 

Read Is Neighborhood Outreach evangelism?

 

Faith without works is dead, but works without faith is just happy feelings and good will. 

 

I would agree with The Externally Focused Quest: Becoming the Best Church for the Comm... that Good deeds lead to good will which should lead to good news being shared.

 

Chris.