Why is looking after the poor important?

God has abundantly poured out His generosity to us through His Son Jesus Christ. We have been justified and are heirs of God’s kingdom with Jesus. How can we not respond to this generosity by being generous ourselves and doing good works?

⁴But when the kindness and love of God our Saviour appeared, ⁵he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, ⁶whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Saviour, ⁷so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. ⁸This is a trustworthy saying. And I want you to stress these things, so that those who have trusted in God may be careful to devote themselves to doing what is good. Titus 3:4-8.

The bible says that we should particularly show this generosity by doing good works to the poor and the marginalised in our world. If we don’t, we don’t understand the gospel and are not saved. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” 1 John 3:17.

But being “bible based” Christians do we have time for the poor? We know that proclaiming the gospel is really important, but do we neglect the poor because we are proclaiming the gospel. However do we neglect proclaiming the gospel to look after the poor? How do we find the balance?

Tim Keller sums up how proclaiming the gospel and looking after the poor work together in his article “The Gospel and the Poor”.

“Jesus calls Christians to be “witnesses,” to evangelize others, but also to be deeply concerned for the poor. He calls his disciples both to “gospel-messaging” (urging everyone to believe the gospel) and to “gospel-neighbouring” (sacrificially meeting the needs of those around them whether they believe or not!) The two absolutely go together.

1. They go together theologically. The resurrection shows us that God not only created both body and spirit but will also redeem both body and spirit. The salvation Jesus will eventually bring in its fullness will include liberation from all the effects of sin—not only spiritual but physical and material as well. Jesus came both preaching the Word and healing and feeding.

2. They go together practically. We must be ever wary of collapsing evangelism into deed ministry as the social gospel did, but loving deeds are an irreplaceable witness to the power and nature of God’s grace, an irreplaceable testimony to the truth of the gospel.”

We should be concerned for both proclaiming the gospel and looking after the poor because they go hand in hand in declaring the good news that Jesus is the Lord and Saviour.

The Northern Settlement Service

HBC has a great opportunity to put this in practise through the Northern Settlement Service.

NSS is an independent community based not for profit organisation with a diverse funding base, delivering settlement services to refugees, migrants, and other new and emerging communities in Northern New South Wales. They provide multi-lingual information and referral, casework and counselling, community education and development, consultancy, cross cultural training, migration advice, and volunteer assistance. The volunteer programs are primarily engaged with dealing with Newcastle’s growing refugee community.

What are the Needs?

There are many opportunities available where HBC could get involved. These are always changing but currently these are a few pressing issues identified by NSS:

1. Family assistance: with a large family of six children and five grandchildren (no mother). Including general home assistance (a big clean up one day and the follow up), mentoring (the four oldest girls have children under the age of two and need guidance in many practical ways), supporting the father, English literacy assistance/homework help, practical support (bus routes, how to get to shopping centres, where services are located, etc).
2. Driving assistance: A lot of these clients are ladies.
3. Adult literacy: with a mother and homework assistance for her daughter in secondary school.
4. Baby Sitting: A Mauritanian lady needs a volunteer to look after her two children for a couple of hours a week while she does the shopping with another volunteer.
5. Assisting with the all-African basketball tournament: that is involving an NSS basketball team and other teams from Sydney and Canberra.
   a. Mentoring - least one male volunteer (but preferably more) is needed to assist with the youths who are arranging the event.
   b. Event Assistance - The Tournament is on Saturday October 9^th. Assistance will be needed with general organizational jobs, running the barbeques, etc. This will allow the youths involved to fully participate with their teams on the day.

How can you be involved?

1. Contact Pip Budden for more information. See Church Family Notices for details.
2. Come to a session (either on the weekend or a Wednesday night) where people from church can do the necessary training and get the necessary information.
3. Come to a working bee to help the first family with household maintenance.
4. Join the volunteer network and receive regular emails about opportunities to help out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at 1:42 pm and is filed under HBC:City, HBC:Lambton, Mission, UniChurch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.