Prepare
Pastors, seminarians, and potential church implementers ask me the same questions (Mez) about my ministry in Niddrie: How can we reach a poor neighborhood near our congregation?Should we establish a new church or should we try to revitalize existing work?Do I know if I’m not fit for this type of apartment?Should we move our church to an area in need or not?
- We don’t have time to answer all the questions in this chapter.
- But here are some of the most important lessons I learned during my trip.
Before arriving in Niddrie in 2007, someone sent me a copy of Fte Scotsman, a national newspaper that had a headline on the church I was going to pastor: “The new church is forced to adopt the stronghold mentality after the vandalos attacks. “. The story began like this:
A church built solely on donations from a New Town congregation was forced to spend 10,000 euros safely after being attacked by vandalos that caused thousands of pounds of damage. Members of charlotte Baptist Chapel on Rose Street have invested more than $700,000 to build a new community. in Niddrie, but a few weeks after the completion of the work, it began to be shattered, with the windows and heating part damaged.
I had just returned from my work with gangs in Brazil, so I was not completely oblivious to the harsh reality of ministry in the neighborhoods in need, but Scotland is very different from Brazil, despite violence and poverty, South Americans still feared God and had some respect. When I arrived in Niddrie, I was clear that although people worshipped God by mouth, they had no respect for the church and were not interested at all in my ministerial references.
I had inherited a building that was under the constant supervision of the children and young people of the place, often breaking windows, burning cars and assaulting members in the streets, the worst thing was that these abusive practices were so old that the destruction of buildings became practically a passing ritual for the local youth. Christians within the church building, most of whom resided outside the community, were easy targets.
The small group of Christians I inherited was made up of conscientious and well-meaning people who had a great love for Niddrie, the problem was that they were trying to contain decades of decline as cultural aliens from this environment. the community was during Sunday services and rare door-to-door flyer delivery campaigns. Even the way the services were structured and carried out seemed to focus on the culture of an important and rich church, without without a church located in a poor community.
When they looked for a shepherd, they wanted a man to come and continue to do what was always done. I don’t even need to mention that the first few months were particularly difficult for me. Members were concerned about the programs. One day I received an email from a disgruntled member who censured me for removing the forty-seven different types of evangelization pamphlets from the coffee area (in fact, it was the second email with this type of content), apparently I was destroying evangelism. Almost immediately, another email arrived asking for an explanation of my lack of encouragement to the traveling singing of the choir of the church of carols in the streets.
On the other hand, the Niddrie community around us had a very different set of concerns. The day before these emails were sent, I spent a few hours talking with a young man who had been raped as a child by his uncles and who now sold his body in town to support his crack addiction. Another woman was cut off for not paying. During the night, the children stole part of the church pipe and beat the church entrance with golf clubs.
In short, there was a total disconnect between the people who gathered in the church and those who lived around the church.
When I sat alone in the office this cold morning, I wondered if and how I could change this church. When I established the church in Brazil, I did it from scratch. Therefore, it was not difficult to insert the gospel into his DNA. My situation was now completely different, how could you unite these two completely different realities?Honestly, I really wanted to give up at the time. In the end, I stayed and faced the fact that it would be difficult. Existing churches in neglected areas die for a variety of reasons, and all are complicated. Planting and revitalizing are difficult tasks. There’s practically nothing romantic about this job.
Visitors usually come to the Niddrie Community Church, get excited about the ministry, and then say something like, “I really enjoyed this job. Would I like to come back and help here? Having an emotional attachment to work isn’t enough. I’m sure these people love Christ, yet within a few weeks, when they come home, the feeling usually disappears and they return to normal life. religious persons who sometimes have disorderly motives (Matthew 6. 1?6; Mark 9. 34; 12. 38?40).
We had the same problem in Brazil, the workers arrived and left within a few months, exhausted by the intensity of the ministry, which seems glamorous in an eye-catching presentation on missionary mural, or which seems fascinating in the pages of a book, is a little disappointing in real life. Starting a ministry from personal feelings or a romantic idea of love for the poor invites disaster in your life. Being passionate about people and loving the excluded is necessary, yes, but it is not enough to help in difficult times. reality of everyday life.
What would be a good motivation for this type of work?I confess that a smelly and tortuous addict does not inspire me to dedicate my life to him, only my love for Christ allows me to love these people, only the understanding of God’s grace in Christ and the fact that Christ died for a rat like me, in addition to a great appreciation for the Gospel, allows me to serve people like these with joy , despite your indifference and hostility, to my aid. In the end, I do not do this to please them, but I serve out of love for the Savior who redeemed me from the same jam.
A psychiatrist wrote
Like people in any other profession that involves helping others, the motivation to enter this ministry is sometimes gaining appreciation, attention and acceptance, which is personally necessary, but cannot be found anywhere else. Sometimes it is the unconscious desire to dominate others and they end up as if they were their pope, which is easy to achieve if someone cares about immature people. Many pastors receive a lot of unconscious gratification for being able to take people down a straight path.
I think he’s right.
So you ask yourself: why do you want to serve the poor? What are your motivations? Mercy and social justice ministries are on the rise in today’s evangelical world, as we have seen, the reality can be very different from the romantic notion that people have of this type of ministry. of our motivations, because they can scare us again if we do not think carefully before undertaking these types of departments.
By: Mez McConnell and Mike McKinley. © 20Schemes. Website: 20schemes. org. Translated with permission. Source: I work in difficult places.
Original: Working in difficult places. © Faithful Ministry. Website: MinisterioFiel. com. br. All rights reserved.