Abdication

In 1936 Edward VIII of England abdicated his throne. He gave up his rightful place in order to pursue a relationship with a divorced American woman, Wallis Simpson. Within a few years the Christian church in the United States began the process of abdicating their position to President Roosevelt and the U.S. government. Locked in the grip of the Great Depression, Roosevelt came up with the New Deal. This broad social program began the government takeover of the job that God assigned to families and churches.

"True religion is this, that you care for widows and orphans and to keep oneself from being corrupted by the world." James 1:27

I was once offered a job at a church with a school. Some of the teachers at the school were recipients of government food stamps. When confronted about this, one of the elders of the church said, "I'm glad they're taking advantage of that program, that's what it's there for." We don't even think about it anymore, but it's time we did. Over the last 60 years the church has become less and less relevant in the lives of people. Could this be due, in part, to our willing surrender of our genuine responsibilities? I'm wondering how much of our resources, on average, go to help widows and orphans today.

Last night I was watching Extreme Makeover: Home Edition on ABC. It struck me that, while this is a wonderful show, maybe the church is, once again, abdicating its responsibility. This time we're gladly letting Hollywood, Sears and Ty Pennington get all the credit for caring about families in need. In last night's episode the contractor that built the house was a guy who had just built the house the week before! He was tearfully thrilled to be making such a difference in the lives of people and rallied 400 workers to help. It got me to thinking.

What if churches could inspire the contractors, tradespeople, financiers, cooks, seamstresses, babysitters, etc., etc. within their congregations to donate time, materials, services and more for the sake of their neighbors? What if every church went out in their community on a weekly basis and selected a widow or a family and helped them? What if every church committed to at least painting, inside and out, one house each week in their community? How could we reclaim our place in this culture by helping the hurting, hopeless, damaged people all around us? And we should do all this, not to make these people followers of Jesus, but because we already are. I'm not saying we shouldn't tell them who we are and why we're doing what we're doing. I'm saying that we need to stop measuring our success on whether or not the people we help come to faith in Jesus. I'm convinced that if we start to really do what we're called to do, the Holy Spirit will take care of the rest.