New Foundation Church continues to make slow but sure progress in the relaunch process. After Sunday, we have 5 large bags full of coats and other items for our Winter Gear Drive. Remember, items can be brought to church until December 14 so we can distribute them before Christmas.
We are now ten days from the start of the Advent season, during which we celebrate the birth of Jesus. In theological terms, this is called the incarnation of Christ, and in his translation of John 1:14, Eugene Peterson described this watershed moment in history like this: “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.” This description beautifully summarizes how Jesus was going to do life and ministry, and at New Foundation Church, we are striving to capture that same spirit in our own ministry.
However, “moving into the neighborhood” is largely meanignless if we do not take a moment to get to know our neighbors. Indeed, there are three key characteristics of the people we are ministering to.
They are utterly diverse.
The people of Northwest Des Moines are a diverse bunch. They come from a variety of ethnicities, socioeconomic, and education backgrounds. They come from all over the world and speak dozens of different languages. There are Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. In short, they look different, talk different, and think different. In order to minister effectively to such a people, we are going to have to be respectful (i.e., treat them with dignity), humble (i.e., don’t assume we have all of the answers), and gracious (i.e., be quick to forgive and even quicker to ask for forgiveness). We will need to develop what David Livermore describes as “cultural intelligence” in order to understand the different cultures present in our neighborhood and communicate effectively across those lines.
They are rather skeptical.
Our neighbors are skeptical of virtually everything and everyone. The government, employers, churches, and even people have failed to fulfill their promises, and the result is that people are rather slow to trust. Indeed, trust must be earned through consistency and service. We will need to show up in a positive way day in and day out in order to build trust so that they can believe the message we bring.
They are thoroughly secular.
While some of our neighbors do belong to churches and are familiar with basic Christian teachings and ethics, the majority are disconnected from church and the Bible. In fact, many people of Northwest Des Moines are two, three, and even four generations removed from any meaningful church engagement, and they do not recognize even the most familiar biblical stories. The result is that their values and lifestyles can be different from what the Bible teaches, and consequently, we will need to be both patient and persistent in ministering to them. It will take time to convince them of the truth of the Bible, and it will take time for them to be transformed into Christ’s likeness.
In many ways, the work of reaching Northwest Des Moines reflects the ministry to which the prophets Daniel and Ezekiel were called to. These men ministered in the days after the fall of Jerusalem, while the Jews were living in captivity in foreign lands. There, they were surrounded by people from all sorts of different cultures and walks of life. People were skeptical of everything because everything they trusted had been peeled away. And even though they called themselves “the people of God,” even the Jews were far more secular than godly.
In Ezekiel 3, God described what it would take to reach that generation. It started with going to the people (vs 4) who needed to hear God’s word. Ezekiel could not expect them to come to him; he needed to find ways to meet them and share God’s word where they were. It continued with consistency bordering on stubbornness (read vss 8-9 to see exactly how God worded it!). And it ended with unswerving obedience to do what God told him to do (vss 16-27). Only when Ezekiel was doing these things could he expect his neighbors to turn to the Lord.
And only when we are doing these things can we expect our neighbors to do the same.