What Could You Do That Would Make a Difference?

Yesterday I attended the Get-Together -- a networking group I have written about before whose purpose is to use their social networks to provide "stuff" that several inner city ministries need. Barbara Elliott, who wrote the book Street Saints and leads The Center for Renewal talked about the good things that Christians are doing all over the country to make a difference. And she suggested that the next step in Houston may be to develop an effort that will place hard to employ individuals in jobs and provide mentoring and support to help them succeed. There are a number of good programs in place to prepare underemployed or unemployed individuals for employment in Houston, but none to help them take the next step.

We then heard from two ministries that have summer programs for inner city teens, efforts that have a track record of making a difference in their lives.

The thing that occured to me is that there is no shortage of needs to be met, or even of ideas for how to meet them. All that's missing is people and resources to step up and make it happen -- and connections between people to link the needs and the ideas and the resources.

We're all to one extent or another stuck in a paradigm that the church will take care of all this. And the church does to an extent. But our paradigm of church has become highly focused on taking care of the church, and reaching out to take care of our neighbor's needs is generally a peripheral effort. What if our paradigm shifted to individuals as church with individuals taking on efforts to meet their neighbors' needs? What if our paradigm shifted to churches focusing on meeting their neighbors' needs as the focus and taking care of their own needs as the peripheral effort?