Our downtown location offers New City Church some incredible opportunities to be and proclaim the Gospel. One of those opportunities comes in engaging the poor of our city.Currently we have a number of people ministering to the poor - with the Macon Rescue Mission, in a Sunday afternoon meal in Third Street Park, and through countless encounters on our streets. Engaging the poor in our city raises some tough questions:
Is giving money to someone begging the best way to convey the love of Jesus and the Gospel?
Or, does it simply enable the cycle of poverty and dependence to continue?
Are to give without question?
Or is stewardship a part of the equation?
How can we best bring honor and glory to those who beg of us?
Tough Questions - and questions we are beginning to ask in leadership and work through as a gospel community. Look for more info coming soon and feel free to share your thoughts.
Here's a thought from Jessica Scott's blog - a New City downtowner and a nurse:
Words of Wisdom
"you can touch the sick, the leper and believe that it is the body of Christ you are touching, but it is much more difficult when these people are drunk or shouting to think that this is Jesus in His distressing disguise. How clean and loving our hands must be to be able to bring that compassion to them."
"you can touch the sick, the leper and believe that it is the body of Christ you are touching, but it is much more difficult when these people are drunk or shouting to think that this is Jesus in His distressing disguise. How clean and loving our hands must be to be able to bring that compassion to them."
~ No Greater Love, Mother Teresa
We had three homeless people ask us for money Wednesday night downtown. I had a patient curse at me this week and another drunk schizophrenic threaten to kill someone in the ER waiting room. My roommate literally washed a homeless patient's feet because they smelled so bad.
I was fighting to remember......"whatever you do to the least of these my brothers, you do it to me." Matt 25:40
