INCARNATIONAL RESPONSE TO HUMAN NEED

It began with conversations, lots of them over a series of months. Each of the dialogues with human-service agencies started off with a question: “Where do you find yourself turning on a regular basis to find someone to help you do something that you can’t, and you keep finding no one there?” Then there was a bold statement, “That’s who we want to help the Church to become.”

Two and one-half years later the Human Needs Crisis Network (HNCN) has become a growing force for empowering the Church in her response to basic human need. An even greater miracle, this network crosses over a dozen denominations and throughout a three county area. The vision? Lives restored. It’s not enough for followers of Jesus to just pay a portion of an electric bill or provide a bag of food and send a person on their way. There should be a greater level of involvement.

An incarnational response to human need understands that the church is the body of Christ. In so being, she must be about life restoration – in this case, lives moved from crisis, to stability and, where possible, to self-sufficiency. The aim should be to come to a point when that individual or family doesn’t have to ask for help any more. That means personal investment and accountability. That’s where HNCN comes in.

HNCN provides churches with:
1. Growing levels of training for this redemptive response,
2. A regularly updated Church Resource Guide to assist them in response and
3. An Internet-accessed database for tracking the responses of other churches and agencies aiding in accountability.
All of these pieces to the Network provide empowerment for the Church to respond in such a way as to express the life-restoring presence of Jesus, as His body should.

See:
www.charlestonoutreach.org
www.charitytracker.net

NOT a Bridge

Our service to people should never be a bridge to something else - an under-the-covers agenda or motivation. When Jesus healed the sick and provided food for the hungry it was simply because they were sick and hungry and that was not okay to him. I am part of a new church that is sponsoring a Little League t-ball team this Spring. If the reason for sponsoring that team is for advertising purposes - banner on the field, name and logo on the shirts - it's about us and not the people. If the motivation is to be part of the community, have fun, and be a life-restoring presence, that sponsorship takes on a whole new expression. When people think you have an agenda it becomes difficult to connect. Agenda = non-authentic. People who are not part of "the church" believe that we always have an agenda, therefore trust never has a chance.

The purity of service with no ulterior motive becomes a breath of fresh, life-giving air amidst the stench of self-centeredness. Let people being exposed to Jesus not be an agenda, but a (super)natural reality because of the power of Jesus' presence through the whole of who you are.