Jezreel Discussion

Questions:

Some say they will give when they have more, and they never give. During the stock market boom salaries increased 6 times, and real giving went down. The more you have the more you want.

American culture is a “fix it” mentality. They care less about people than about solving a problem. The gospel calls us to relationship, kinship with people. It’s in relationship that we discover where we can be helpful to people. Some do charity without relationship. Authentic charity is being engaged in relationship. When this happens we can begin to help without a “fix it” mentality.

Welfare reform came out of a context that was not in relationship with the poor. As churches we must beckon to cross the tracks to relationship with the poor. When we cross the tracks it changes us.

How do we discern tactics to bring societal change?

The state can offer resources not relationship. It is the church that fosters relationship, welcome and engagement.

Do we need to redefine the responsibility of the Church in society and the definition of salvation? Or it needs to be expanded to be an expression of the Kingdom of God. Even the term “good news” is a political term challenging the military news of the Roman Empire.

Compassion and justice are not to earn God’s favour, they are evidence of God’s favour fully realized.

Jesus “wedding clothes” Revelation 19 says that the wedding garment is the righteous acts of the saints.

Doctrine and dogma are signposts to the experience.

The church must not send others away from the wedding feast, we must invite them in to the righteous acts of the saints.

“We do humanitarian work as a platform to sharing the Gospel”, we won’t fund anything that doesn’t end in sharing the Gospel and reproduction.

The Catholic context is that of Francis, “Evangelize always, if necessary use words.” We don’t help people to make them Christians, we do it because we are Christians.

To minimize compassion is a false dichotomy. Compassion and salvation do not compete.

What is the end of our mission? More than the next life but this life. We’ve confuse acts of love as a means to salvation. Salvation is a means to acts of love. Jesus sent us to preach the gospel and do good deeds.

The desire to measure spiritual impact makes us wary of compassion as inefficient.

We tend to make the Kingdom individual with no attention to the social dimension. We want to check of decisions when God has charged us with making disciples. Salvation is an input metric not an output metric.