This book shows even with our best intentions at being a Church engaged with its community that we still often are caught in a self-centered monologue on church concerns: how has the church lost its way in mission, how does church leadership need to reform, how do we become an outward-focused church? Taking on the perspective that any solid missionary to a foreign country must also look equally at 2 other conversation partners along with the church: the culture and Scripture.
Imagine you are sent to be a missionary to Japan. If you were a missionary worth your salt, you would become a learner of that culture and language and keen on finding Scriptures that could interface with the cultural context you find yourself in. You would also interface with the Church in Japan but since Japanese Christians only make up less than 1% of the country, spending all your time with the Japanese church would be missing out on what's going on in 99% of the population.
Why should the approach you take going to Japan be any different when we are here in the local community? And yet, we typically start with the church as the focus of our conversation when it comes to viewing our faith here at home. Sitting with neighbors and people in the community to actually listen to their needs and hopes typically isn't part of the outreach strategies of the local church. We are too used to wanting to be in control, and too used to talking about our own concerns and desires (like, "how do we get them into our church?").
One of the stories talked about a pastor interviewing his congregation about his leadership in various areas. One of the participants, a member of that church and seminarian involved in their community outreach program told him after a long silence her views on the church's overall community engagement: "From what I've seen, the church is closed to the community. We push the annual denominational missions offering. To some extent we push Samaritan's Purse. But when it comes to a local child in the community, we're less likely to help...I visit a lot of the churches in this area through my volunteer work. I think ours, like most, is self-absorbed."Ouch!
We will be less self-absorbed if we allow our conversations to go beyond just talking about ourselves. More thoughts on that at a later post about this book.
