My congregation has decide to join. work in cooperation with, and help pay for the support of Love INC.
From their website —
Love In the Name of Christ is a proven model that networks local church ministries and church volunteers, across denominations, to help people in need. Through Love INC, churches and individual Christians are mobilized to work together, along with community organizations and government resources, to provide coordinated help to the poor and needy.
But more than merely providing goods and services, Love INC aims to meet people’s needs with the love of Jesus Christ. Through Love INC, Christians are living out who they say they are by putting their faith in action and providing help, hope, and God’s love to neighbors in need. They are building caring relationships with those who are struggling, and moving beyond the expressed need to help address the underlying issues that contribute to poverty and hopelessness.
Love INC’s work focuses on six key areas that impact people in need, and nearly all Love INC affiliates provide supportive services in each area. Needs we address include Food, Clothing, Shelter, Health Care, Life Skills, and Family Support Services. The exact programs and services an affiliate offers depend on the needs of its local community.
What do you think? Should your congregation participate? If there is no chapter in your community, should you help bring a Love INC effort to town?
As a leader in a community non-profit and as a leader in the church, this makes so much sense! Thanks for posting this!
I do not see a difference between the dollars I use to help others and the dollars doled out through the church treasury, except maybe the convenience. The problem is we tend to separate our contribution from generosity. I am not familiar with Love INC but I am familiar with Church Traditions and Church of Christ Traditions concerning the Contribution. To answer the last question depends on whether the contribution is an act of worship, or is it for the poor, or is it to pay church expenses. Is giving to the poor to help the poor or promote the church organization? If the contribution is an act of worship does it need to happen on Sunday morning, does it need to go through the church’s bank account or can Christian give money or some other help to a poor person?
Dwilhoit,
I don't think our church-treasury doctrine begins with the treasury or "acts of worship." It begins with what the church is called to do and to be. And the treasury becomes what it needs to be for the church to be true to its calling.
While the scriptures say very little about how the church treasury is to be handled, the Bible says quite a lot about how a congregation is to act. We are the "body of Christ" and members of one another. Paul compares us to hands and feet and other body parts, with differing gifts but working together, in concert, toward a common goal.
What goals? To what extent are we to act in common? Well, we're the body of Christ, and so our goals as a community are Christ's goals.
(Mat 4:23-24 ESV) 23 And he went throughout all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every affliction among the people. 24 So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought him all the sick, those afflicted with various diseases and pains, those oppressed by demons, epileptics, and paralytics, and he healed them.
(Mat 25:35-36 ESV) 35 For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.'
Therein we find what the church — as the body of Christ — is to do. And sometimes that requires money. And we coordinate the use of our money through the church just as we coordinate the use of our other "talents" (literally, a bar of gold or silver) to the glory of God.
We participate in the local ministerial alliance for the good of the community and to assist the needy.
Praise God for your church trying to minister to those in need this way!
Mark 9.40.
Rex
The congregation I served as an elder in the Detroit area participated in providing shelter for the homeless with churches in our part of the county. One week each year, our building housed as many as 30-40 people who would move to another church building the following week. While they were there, we gave them a hot meal for dinner and breakfast the next morning, plus packing a sack lunch for them. From 8:00 to about 6:00 p.m. they were to be out, either at work, looking for work, or otherwise using their time to try to sort out their lives. All was well organized by a non-profit organization that gave structure and guidance to the project.
Participating in this did not damage our orthodoxy at all. I wonder why more congregations do not do things like this.
Jerry
My church was looking for someting like this.
The only danger I see in working with government and other outside resources is in the possibility that we, as the church, become results-oriented in a way that benefits "the state" or "society at large". That is, we are focused on things like reducing poverty, increasing graduation rates, lowering crime, etc.
While those are noble things and needed in any society, it isn't the primary role of the church. The church is to mirror God, that is, to be – in relation. To love first with no expectation of return. When we start raising the goals of the work above the act of the work, I believe we start to image the thinking of this world, and that isn't a good thing.
It is a delicate balance, one where assessment is still required and oversight is needed, but one where our metrics of success and failure are not influenced by the metrics of success and failure in this fractured world.
That is why when Christian benevolence is done right, it is unintelligible to the power structures of this world because of the very fact that it images God and doesn't put anything above Him – not even the noble goals to which our Christian benevolence is directed.
Communal, relational, loving first, no bounds, sacrificial – in a word, cruciform. This is not understood by the world. We need to be careful that we hold true to what it means to be Christ in and to this world, and not just be doers of good – for even the heathen do that.