What if, Day 4

I picked up a new book this week I've been excited to read. It's by a guy who I have a great deal of respect for. I'm finding some pretty incredible ideas and some powerful things I've heard before but said in a fresh way.

I keep thinking about how we say things. I'm also still thinking about what we say through our actions and how those are often louder statements than we realize.

Our Know Sweat team is working through our old tag line of His Heart. Their Needs. Your Service. Originally, I loved it. Now, I'm not so sure. If you've noticed, we've dropped it to Heart.Needs.Service. One of the reasons for this is we no longer feel like communicating their needs and your service is healthy. See, we don't do service projects so that we can help them. That communicates that they can't help us.

And I don't like that.

Try this quote on for size:
"Mission or ministry with people who are poor or vulnerable often assumes that "our" task is to meet "their" needs. Whether their need is for the good news of Christ or for bread and a place to sleep, we tend to think that we have the resources and they have the needs. A focus on friendship rearranges our assumptions. What if the resources they have also meet our needs? What if Jesus is already present in ways that will minister to us? What if in sharing life together as friends we all move closer to Jesus' heart?" Friendship at the Margins

So it's time to redeem our terminology. It's time to stop treating people as projects and stop looking people who seem to have needs as our chance to drop our awesomeness on them. It's time to realize that poverty, real poverty, is actually broken relationships. (Thanks Molesky) And if that's the case, we are all poor. We all need help.

See there is a generation growing up that cares a great deal about the world. That gets me excited. What gets me more excited is doing something to help them/us learn how to honor and serve not in short bursts but all the time. What gets me excited is to see how when we care about one another we can fix a lot of broken relationships. And if we fixed that poverty that could really change the world. In fact, I could give the next years of my life to that.

Actually, I think I will.