Two weeks for the world ...
Winnipeg churches are patting themselves on the backs these days as they participate in the two-week Love Winnipeg campaign. The campaign kicked off with a pastor’s pulpit exchange on May 27, and winds up with a "huge, city-wide praise party" at Rainbow Stage on Sunday, June 10. Between these opening and closing events, participating churches perform "Jesus-powered random acts of kindness" in their communities. Suggested kindnesses include,
- Free stamps in front of post office
- Pay for people’s shopping cart
- Bottled water giveaway
- Community clean-up (garbage, graffiti)
- Free windshield washing
- Bag packing at self-serve grocery store
This year, Love Winnipeg launched a one-day initiative called "Caring for the Core". Edge of Time Ministries, a Love Winnipeg participant, posted the following invitation on its website: "join hundreds of Christians when we invade the core areas to bring the love of God to the most depressed areas of our city".
While it's hard to argue with the feel-good vibe of Love Winnipeg, I've got to wonder, Is this the best the church can do? Random acts of kindness? For two weeks? Invading depressed areas of our city? For one day? I appreciate the enthusiasm of Love Winnipeg participants, but these token measures are hardly cause for self-congratulatory rhetoric.
This week on CJOB's GodTalk, Pastor Mark Hughes from Church of the Rock joined us on the air. Mark is one of Winnipeg's most successful pastors and a Love Winnipeg organizer. I asked Mark what it's going to take for churches to move beyond two weeks of random acts of kindness to getting out of doors and ministering to the world 52 weeks a year. Mark replied that the ministry priorities shift gradually and that it takes events like Love Winnipeg to motivate incremental change at the grassroots level.
Yeah, but I've been hanging around churches long enough to know that we don't rely on gradual, incremental, grassroots change when it comes to 40,000 sq. ft building projects or multi-million dollar fundraising campaigns. We lead these projects. We preach sermons on them, devote board and congregational meetings to them, publish them, pray about them (without ceasing), and create a ministry identity around them. And we get them done.
Why do churches spend almost all of their time, energy, and money on themselves and treat the world as an afterthought? What would the church look like if we did it the other way round? More importantly, what would the world look like?
Love Winnipeg is a good idea, but I hope Mark and his fellow organizers will makes it a 365-day campaign in 2008. The world needs all the acts of kindness it can get. They don't need to be random. Core area communities don't need to be invaded for a day. They need people who live there every day. Love Winnipeg leaders and their churches have the skills and resources to re-orient the church. The church has spent enough on itself. It's time to go beyond token measures.
1 comments:
The last time my mom came down to Winnipeg we talked on subjects along the same line as this.
I do definetly agree.. Love Winnipeg is a great idea. Two weeks of the Church in Winnipeg doing random acts of kindness in the City and spending a day in what some would consider the part of the city that needs the most help.
What I dont understand is that it is only going on for two weeks. We have had a handful of popular radio stations in the city that have had amazing success with the same concept, only they have been doing this same thing for the past year or so.
So this is what goes through my head..
If a radio station is doing the same thing the Church is doing all year round, impacting countless people around Winnipeg and creating a help your brother mentality without even batting an eye, what does that say about the Church.
Although the Love Winnipeg idea is a great one, I take a certin annoyance away from the Christian community in Winnipeg taking such a mild approch to this moral obligation. As a person that does random acts of kindness to friends and strangers when the situation arrives, when its on my heart or simply when I have a few bucks lying around, I feel that Love Winnipeg is a lukewarm attempt at being Jesus with skin on.
I think its time that the Church starts being Jesus with skin on every day of our lives.. its not hard to keep a book of Timmies gift certificates in your car and give them out to different people that ask you for money as you are driving around Winnipeg. Heck, it only cost me $25 a month to give out $2 to Timmies every time I saw a sign saying anything will help. There is plenty more that I could and should be doing.. but if every Christian in Winnipeg did something as simple as that monthly.. imagine how much further we would be to being Jesus with skin on than having a two week event where we do a few kind things for people.
Just my thoughts..
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