Last April when my family moved to Hannibal to plant Believer’s Church, we moved into an area where our neighbors were very different than us. We were no better than our neighbors, no more right than our neighbors, just very different in our backgrounds, our priorities, our views on money (saving/spending/debt/etc…), education and other things. Because of all this it got us thinking about several things: 1) Sharing the Gospel with people and not expecting spiritual change to automatically bring change in all those other areas and 2) understanding that many of those differences between us and our neighbors were subjective things that we should neither push for or expect change in necessarily. But a third thing that began to happen was a biblical analysis of our responsibility (as Christians) towards the poor. The first book I read in this journey was one called “What Every Church Member Should Know About Poverty” . Another helpful piece was a position paper written by the elders at Capitol Hill Baptist in Washington, D.C. The book helped me understand a little bit more about “generational poverty” and the culture of poverty. The paper helped me understand some things about the vast majority of Bible verses related to the poor and assisting the poor. Since then I’ve also read a very insightful book by Robert Lupton and have begun “The Irresistible Revolution” by Shaine Claiborne in hope of really fleshing this out.
The thing I’m wrestling with right now is who’s responsible for the poor; the the state, the church (corporately) or Christians (individually). Perhaps all three (at some level). The problem with most of the books I’ve read so far is they are either completely pragmatic (best practices, “how-to”), or they try to develop a theological basis for action, but their interpretation and application of Scripture is so poor it’s hard to take them serious (Shaine Claiborne’s book has been the worst so far). I have to admit though that if the church (corporately) is responsible for addressing the needs of the poor in their community who are outside their body, then our church is not pulling it’s weight. If it’s not church’s job, but rather ours as Christians (individually) to be “Good Samaritans” to our neighbors who are outside the church, then I’m failing.
These are important things to come to a conclusion about and then do something about. I fear the church and most Christians have just made assumptions, apart from Scripture, about who’s job it is and about who’s getting it done. As a result, most Christians are neither being obedient to Scripture or making much of a difference in their communities.
