Sometimes churches get so preoccupied with their own programs and a get-it-done approach to mission that they lose sight of their ultimate purpose. Lee Roorda Schott’s experience as a pastor behind prison walls taught her that the true essence of the church’s mission must be love born of real, authentic relationship.
If you look at many churches’ newsletters and websites, you might think the most important thing is their programs. I’m not the first to urge churches to reclaim our priorities and not be carried along by programs. But I want to push the conversation further than many do toward relationship as the antidote.
It’s no wonder that so many church mission projects entail helping at a distance. We figure out who’s going to drop it off on our behalf, and we’re proud to report our results on Sunday morning. It doesn’t occur to us that in all that effort, we never interacted with the persons who would receive what we gave.
Pretty soon our missions take on an ominous “us and them” message. We get set up as generous helpers for “them” or “those people” who desperately need us. We get to be the heroes. We have expertise, time, and money that we graciously bestow on recipients we hope will appreciate what we’ve done. We feel proud of what we accomplished. But we don’t learn very much when mission happens this way. It doesn’t occur to us that “those people” might have wisdom and creativity that would enrich us, were we to get to know them.
Is it too much to say that the best thing we do as a church is real relationship? We might see relationship as an incomplete ideal unless it supports our high Christian purposes: getting people saved, making disciples, transforming the world. But if we approach relationship only as means to those ends, we can become manipulative. When we are in real relationships, the rest is possible—salvation, discipleship, transformation—in a sustained and not mechanistic way. Everything we do as a church, hangs on love.
This article is adapted from Foolish Church: Messy, Raw, Real, and Making Room by Lee Roorda Schott.