What is the secret to working together with other churches in
order to multiply the resulting impact within the community? The answer is exceedingly simple, but often
difficult for some Christians or churches to accept: Don’t care which church
benefits. If you, or your church, are
more concerned with your numbers on Sunday morning than you are with fulfilling
the mission of the Church to care for the poor and needy, you might as well continue
to do what little you can on your own.
If ten churches work together to run a food pantry, a pantry that will
physically be housed in one of those ten churches, and as a result, new people
who are served by that pantry end up going to the church that is the host, that
is a cause for praise for all ten churches because the Church of Jesus Christ
is the beneficiary. There is no reason
for each church to try to have its own food pantry, clothing collection and
distribution program, after-school ministry, home repair team, or whatever
other avenue of ministry you can think of.
Each church should find out what their passion is, through serious
introspection and assessment of talents and resources, and focus on that area
while at the same time lending a significant hand to the area of focus of other
churches through financial and volunteer support and in turn allowing those
other churches to contribute to your focused ministry. The end result should have one church running
the food pantry, with all other contributing, one church running a clothing
program, with all other assisting, one church running an after-school ministry,
etc.
Why
shouldn’t such ministries be duplicated in each church? The practical objection is that it is a waste
of resources, as each does far less than the sum of them could do
together. The PR objection is that is
shows the Lost, those we aim to share the Gospel with, that we’re in
competition with each other and not cooperation. What does that say about the love of fellow Christians
for each other when they can’t even work together? The spiritual objection is that it fosters
the false belief that we own our local church, that we aren’t part of the
universal Church of Jesus, as well as depriving Christians of the positive
impact in their own faith walk of being part of a collective effort that will
actually make a difference in your community.
Last, but not least, it is in keeping with the prayer of Jesus before
his passion began that his followers be one.
We certainly aren’t “one” in structure, but we can at least be “one” in
spirit and “one” in cooperation.
There’s
another benefit to being a part of ecumenical ministry for your
congregation: It allows the men and
women of your church to take part in a ministry that they’re passionate about
even if your church doesn’t have that type of ministry. The alternatives are that they don’t utilize
that gift/talent/calling because no outlet for it appears to exist, or that
they leave to go to a church where they feel they can contribute. Does either of those options appeal to the
pastors and church board busy building a moat around the church building to
keep other Christians out?
In the
end, the final evaluation is beyond dispute: Are more people shown the love of
Jesus Christ when churches work collectively or when they work alone? You know that the answer is clearly when
collective efforts exist, how can a disciple of Jesus Christ, a committed
servant of the Kingdom of God, fail to set aside whatever objection he/she has
to ecumenism and start working with our fellow brothers and sisters in
Christ? Whatever the excuse is, it isn’t
good enough.
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