Three years ago, when Oasis opened the Elizabeth Baxter health centre a reporter from a well-known radio asked me what we hoped to achieve. I replied that our aim was to provide quality primary health care for central London's homeless population. He seemed unconvinced "After all" he told me, "you're an evangelical Christian. You people never do anything that's not aimed at notching up converts".
One of the biggest problems that has dogged the church this century- and one that is sadly entirely of our own making - is the dominant view that social action either detracts from or adds to (depending on your perspective) the real task of preaching the gospel.
For some, the urgency of giving everyone on earth the chance to respond to Jesus before his return has effectively put paid to all other activity, 'what really counts is getting people saved. Leave the rest to the social workers'. Others see it differently, arguing that social action is a complement to the task of evangelism; The gospel is like a pair of scissors, with twin blades; evangelism and social action. Though the evangelism blade is sharp enough to cut on its own, the social action blade increases its effectiveness.
But popular as these two views are they both fall a long way short of Jesus' own approach. For Him, social action was just as much an evangelistic task as anything else. It was part of the gospel, not an addition to nor subtraction from it.
When Jesus began his ministry, he set out his game plan publicly in a kind of manifesto, or job description, taken from the book of Isaiah:
Tragically, Christians have made various mistakes with this passage over the years. Some have over-spiritualised its message. When he says poor, they tell us Jesus is primarily, even exclusively, referring to the spiritually poor, Others by contrast, have despritualised it.When he says poor , they argue, he's really talking about those who are financially, politically and socially marginalised.
But the truth is that this false division between body and spirit just wouldn't have occurred to Jesus. It didn't exist in the holistic, Hebrew thinking that he grew up with. In fact, rather than coming from the old testament, or from Jesus himself, our compartmentalising tendency belongs to Greek philosophy!.By poor Jesus would have meant those impoverished by any kind of hardship in any area of life; spiritual, social, political, emotional, physical, psychological, educational, financial, etc.
When we separate bodily and spiritual concerns, we devalue Jesus' message. Either we deny or downgrade the validity of offering people a personal relationship with Jesus, or we attach such importance to it that everything else gets shunted into a very poor second place, with development work being more than a kind of necessary foreplay to the real task of evangelism - a device by which we earn the right to 'preach Christ crucified'.
Instead, our task must to be to respond to the whole gamut of people's needs, as they arise; for spiritual fulfilment and, just as readily, for clean safe water, safe and sanitary housing, good medical services, creative jobs and an empowering education.
Why? Because our word evangelism, which literally means to preach good news, is the word Jesus used when he quoted from the scroll of Isaiah. In doing so he made it clear that he saw his mission of evangelising the poor, not in terms or targeting them for conversion, but of responding to the needs of whole people. Healing, forgiveness, inspiration, direction, friendship, challenge, self confidence, self-esteem, acceptance and new life were all on offer.
All this must be part of the real good news for all of us too, if our evangelism offers anything less, then we preach something less than Jesus' gospel.
One of the biggest problems that has dogged the church this century- and one that is sadly entirely of our own making - is the dominant view that social action either detracts from or adds to (depending on your perspective) the real task of preaching the gospel.
For some, the urgency of giving everyone on earth the chance to respond to Jesus before his return has effectively put paid to all other activity, 'what really counts is getting people saved. Leave the rest to the social workers'. Others see it differently, arguing that social action is a complement to the task of evangelism; The gospel is like a pair of scissors, with twin blades; evangelism and social action. Though the evangelism blade is sharp enough to cut on its own, the social action blade increases its effectiveness.
But popular as these two views are they both fall a long way short of Jesus' own approach. For Him, social action was just as much an evangelistic task as anything else. It was part of the gospel, not an addition to nor subtraction from it.
When Jesus began his ministry, he set out his game plan publicly in a kind of manifesto, or job description, taken from the book of Isaiah:
| THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD IS UPON ME, BECAUSE HE HAS APPOINTED ME TO PREACH GOOD NEWS TO THE POOR.HE HAS SENT ME TO PROCLAIM FREEDOM FOR THE PRISONERS AND RECOVERY OF SIGHT FOR THE BLIND,TO RELEASE THE OPPRESSED,TO PROCLAIM THE YEAR OF THE LORD'S FAVOUR. Luke 4:18-19 |
Tragically, Christians have made various mistakes with this passage over the years. Some have over-spiritualised its message. When he says poor, they tell us Jesus is primarily, even exclusively, referring to the spiritually poor, Others by contrast, have despritualised it.When he says poor , they argue, he's really talking about those who are financially, politically and socially marginalised.
But the truth is that this false division between body and spirit just wouldn't have occurred to Jesus. It didn't exist in the holistic, Hebrew thinking that he grew up with. In fact, rather than coming from the old testament, or from Jesus himself, our compartmentalising tendency belongs to Greek philosophy!.By poor Jesus would have meant those impoverished by any kind of hardship in any area of life; spiritual, social, political, emotional, physical, psychological, educational, financial, etc.
When we separate bodily and spiritual concerns, we devalue Jesus' message. Either we deny or downgrade the validity of offering people a personal relationship with Jesus, or we attach such importance to it that everything else gets shunted into a very poor second place, with development work being more than a kind of necessary foreplay to the real task of evangelism - a device by which we earn the right to 'preach Christ crucified'.
Instead, our task must to be to respond to the whole gamut of people's needs, as they arise; for spiritual fulfilment and, just as readily, for clean safe water, safe and sanitary housing, good medical services, creative jobs and an empowering education.
Why? Because our word evangelism, which literally means to preach good news, is the word Jesus used when he quoted from the scroll of Isaiah. In doing so he made it clear that he saw his mission of evangelising the poor, not in terms or targeting them for conversion, but of responding to the needs of whole people. Healing, forgiveness, inspiration, direction, friendship, challenge, self confidence, self-esteem, acceptance and new life were all on offer.
All this must be part of the real good news for all of us too, if our evangelism offers anything less, then we preach something less than Jesus' gospel.
