Random Acts of Ministry

I think I like spontaneous ministry opportunities better than those we plan sometimes. While I enjoy our youth group on Friday nights, there are young people in the area (late teens) for whom our youth group would appear irrelevant at best. Most of our kids are in the junior high range. It's hard--maybe impossible?--to engage such a broad age range in one setting. Unfortunately, at the moment we don't have the resources (people and time!) to have more than one youth group. But thankfully God never leaves us without opportunities.

The other night I was on our back deck playing guitar. It had been a beautiful day, and the evening was also very nice. Cool, but not cold, and no bugs to speak of yet. Ella was already asleep, and Alisha was working at the church office. I had some time to myself. Now, our church, which is just across the road from our house, tends to be a loitering/hang-out spot for some local youth. Usually, they hang-out there mostly out of boredom. And on this particular evening there were a few young guys doing exactly that. I kept playing my guitar, foolishly thinking that the sounds may attract them to come closer. It didn't.

So I went over and invited them to come hang-out on the back deck and have a Coke. They came, and I learned some stuff about them that I didn't know already. A couple are taking their GED. All three are also working. After about 15 or 20 minutes they left. But they were grateful for the invite and the Coke.

I really like simple moments such as those. No pretense. No expectations. Informal. Casual. I can be myself and (hopefully) over time they learn that they can be themselves too. I think that sometimes moments such as those are more important than having these guys come out to a youth group meeting where everyone else is at least 5 years younger than they are. Aside from that, I just want them to know, even though I am a Christian and a pastor, that I am still normal. All I wanted them to take away from that evening's invitation is that I was willing to invite them over to give them a place to sit, talk, and have something to drink. And especially since this is most likely how I will be able to get to know the older young people in our community, I hope and pray that it happens more often.

There's something profoundly incarnational about not imposing on such moments any kind of evangelistic agenda. Jesus spent a lot of time eating and drinking with people--embodying not only the love of God the Father, but also the parables of the great kingdom feast to which all of the "least of these" are invited. Food and drink are great ice-breakers. Hospitality is itself a crucial expression of the love of Christ. In his book, The Jesus Way: A Conversation on the Ways that Jesus is the Way, Eugene Peterson says that the way we express and live out the truth of Jesus is as vital as that we express and live out the truth of Jesus. That is to say, the gospel is irreducibly relational and personal, and how we follow Jesus and invite others to do likewise have to be grounded in personal relationships. The gospel must become en-fleshed in us as the Body of Christ. To use a popular cliche, "People won't care what you know until they know you care." And God demonstrated his love for us by sending his Son in the flesh--and this is, ultimately, how he sends us. And send us he does: as his arms, feet, legs, hands, head, and heart. Jesus is God the Son incarnate; and we, through the power of the Spirit, are Jesus incarnate (in a manner of speaking!).

Spontaneous opportunities are, of course, not at all spontaneous in that they are truly random or accidental. But they are still opportunities--and we can take them or not, just like we can accept God's grace in Christ or not. While God sovereignly provides opportunities for us to demonstrate his love, he leaves it up to us whether we will, like the good Samaritan, stop and offer help to those who are desperately in need of aid whether they know it or not. And doing so reminds us that we too are that man lying on the side of the road, bloodied and beaten, and that Christ is the good Samaritan for each of us , the one who gives healing and hope.

"Life is what happens when you're busy making plans," John Lennon once sang. And it's true. Most of what is valuable in life can't be confined to our calendars and day planners and palm pilots. The good Samaritan in the story had no idea when he began his day that he would come across anyone in distress; it was unplanned ministry. Neither do we always know when such moments will present themselves. But we do have to be willing to step into the moment, at the prompting of the Spirit of God. I hope and pray that I will have opportunity to do so. For in doing so we too can experience the presence of Jesus that we intend to convey to those we minister to when such moments come along.