RESOURCES

Read Christianity Today’s interview with Tim Keller on his important book, Generous Justice

Read Christianity Today's interview with Tim Keller on his important book, Generous Justice

Williamson County, TN is one of America’s richest 25 counties. It’s also the home of Fellowship Bible Church, an evangelical congregation of 2000+ members. And the church is home to Dave Ramsey, the financial planning guru whose “Financial Peace University” is taught in hundreds of churches. Fellowship Bible—a daughter church of Fellowship Bible of Little Rock, AR—began with four key core values: worship, community, growth, and service. Not surprisingly given its context and unique assets, it has added generosity to that list. That led to a dramatic increase in congregational giving. And that has made possible hundreds of thousands of dollars in Kingdom investments with partner ministries in the developing world. Today many of Fellowship’s members are characterized by the radical generosity of time and money that Tim Keller argues is “one of the marks of living justly.”

Genesis of Generosity

A few years into the church plant, leaders at Fellowship recognized that without good teaching and modeling of radical stewardship they’d never achieve their mission “to mature people in the faith and equip them to give their lives away.” So the elder team resolved to intentionally focus several years on this critical theme.

It took guts. After all, many pastors shy away from preaching on money. It’s uncomfortable. It’s risky. It’s open to misinterpretation. At Fellowship, though, staff understand what Fields of Gold author Andy Stanley argues: that preaching on stewardship is about “focusing on what you want for your people, not what you want from them.”

“The genius of generosity is [that] it is always win-win,” says Teaching Elder Lloyd Shadrach. “Being generous is the most intelligent way to live. It’s the only way of life that makes any sense.”

Shadrach and Fellowship’s other key leaders, Bill Wellons, Tim Schulte, and Michael Easton, have preached multiple sermon series over the past ten years focusing on various aspects of stewardship and generous living. What that’s created is a congregation where generosity is truly embedded in the DNA of the flock. Fellowship’s members have reduced their lifestyles, upped their giving, and invested millions of dollars in gospel ministry among the poor and suffering at home and abroad. Here, pulpit leadership has changed a culture and catalyzed remarkable joy and impact.

The key has been preaching that has combined unapologetic exegesis of the Scripture’s persistent emphasis on money; blunt challenges to church members; and plenty of outside-the-box applications and experiments.

Fellowship’s Unconventional Applications

In one well-remembered sermon from the very first series, Shadrach taught from Luke 12 on the foolish rich man who built bigger barns for his crops, only to die before he could enjoy his prosperity. In it, Shadrach stated uncomfortable facts—like the fact that one third of the flock wasn’t giving at all. He then added to that bluntness some memorable one-liners, like “Generosity is to materialism what kryptonite is to Superman” and “Generous living protects us from our own stupidity.” Reading the parable, Shadrach asked the congregation: “What would Jesus say about our mini storage units here? Clothes, mattresses, coats, etc. all sitting in a 10x10ft square when some people don’t have clothes or beds. We use them to hold on to things that we can’t use but don’t want to get rid of. It is a stupid investment.”

But the real clincher came at the sermon’s end. Shadrach invited the ushers to pass out the collection plates—but not in order to collect. The plates were already full–of $10 bills. He invited each member to take one bill and figure out how to give it away wisely and well. He gave them three guidelines: “One, you cannot put it back in the offering plate—invest it; two, give it personally, don’t drop it in the mail; and three, you must prayerfully give it away.” Needless to say, this was a unique experience for members, and for the next week the church’s phone buzzed with calls from congregants wanting to tell what they’d done with their $10 bucks.

Shoe Day

Then there was the crazy, unforgettable Sunday in 2005. That morning, Shadrach emphasized that generosity was TNT—something for “today, not tomorrow.” He was kicking off a 9-week preaching series called “Beyond Belief.” Focused on stewardship, the series really was more about faith—the kind of faith that so trusts God it approaches life open-handed, ready and eager to give and to bless. To help the flock go deeper in their own understanding, the series was accompanied by a small group study based on Stanley’s Fields of Gold . On September 18, Shadrach told the congregation about Dave, a Fellowship member. Dave had visited a distressed neighborhood in Biloxi, MS after Hurricane Katrina. There he met Tyron, who told him he needed shoes. Realizing that his feet were about the same size as the man’s, Dave took off his work boots right then and there and gave them to the man.

Shadrach walked down from the pulpit then to conduct a quick interview with Dave, asking him how it felt to give his shoes away. Dave said “he didn’t really think about it,” but it “was just the step right in front of me. He needed some shoes so I gave him my shoes.”

As Shadrach returned to the platform, a photo was projected of children from a school in Africa that Fellowship supports. The picture zoomed in on the children, and it was clear most were wearing very oversized shoes. “The kids can’t go to school unless they have shoes,” Shadrach explained, “so the parents give their shoes to their children.”

Shadrach then took a deep breath. “There are adults and children in Africa who need a pair of shoes,” he said. “There are adults and children here in Nashville who need a pair of shoes.” He continued, “God’s invitation for us this morning is to go beyond. We all know that someone out there needs our shoes. So let’s go beyond knowing and do something.” And he took off his shoes, and invited the congregants to do the same.

Some 1800 people left the church in their stockinged feet that morning.

The kind of persistent boldness Fellowship’s leaders have displayed in calling their flock to radical generosity is not for the faint-hearted. Sometimes congregants have gotten angry. Pastors have agonized over whether they’ve pushed too hard. Elder Jeff Schulte reports, “as we’ve talked about this as a church, we’ve been spiritually and emotionally rattled, challenged, and stirred.”

[Click here for Shadrach's September 18, 2005 sermon]

Modeling, Vision, and Celebration

After the first two preaching series, Fellowship’s staff conducted research to ascertain what the average amount of giving was among church members. They discovered that member households were giving about 5.6 percent of their income to the church. The leadership team mounted a campaign to encourage everyone to move up gradually toward the tithe (10%).

Leaders knew they needed to show the way by modeling greater generosity themselves. Shadrach and then-Executive Pastor Neal Johnson admitted to the Body that they were only tithing and publicly committed to greater giving. Leaders set a church-wide goal of increasing the average giving by households by 1 percent each year so that by 2010 it would be 10%. Jim, a Fellowship member, admits that the exhortations from the pulpit “rocked his world.” But he saw the preachers practicing what they preached. “They lived out generosity before our very eyes,” Jim says. “We trust them. We know what kind of cars they drive. There is authenticity to what they teach.”

In addition to modeling, church leaders cast an ambitious, specific vision for what would be done with additional dollars given. In the first year of the effort, Fellowship’s giving rose from an average of 5.6% to 7%. That freed up big bucks to invest in exciting projects abroad, including the construction of a new church and community/training center in Nigeria. Staff also tracked the ripple effects of the campaign on member families, gathering the stories of what people were doing and how they were changing their habits. The effort was capped off with a special celebration service at a local convention center that highlighted members’ testimonies.

Chris Willard, a staff member at Leadership Network who has studied the journeys of generous churches over the past several years, reports that celebration is a key element for effectiveness. “Celebration engages hearts in a way that’s different than instruction and exhortation,” Willard says. “People are enthusiastic about giving to their church when they realize their church is serious about being generous in the community and the world.”

“People are enthusiastic about giving to their church when they realize their church is serious about being generous in the community and the world.”

—Chris Willard, Leadership Network

Liz Swanson, also with Leadership Network, has identified factors that generous churches hold in common, and Fellowship Bible is marked by them all: unapologetic preaching and teaching; casting an exciting vision that elicits greater giving; modeling of generosity by leadership; and celebrating the stories of life-change.

But Swanson notes that another step is critical. “It is not enough to simply motivate people to greater stewardship and generosity through impassioned preaching,” she argues. “Once motivated, many people need practical instruction on how to get themselves financially healthy before they can truly live a generous life.”

With Dave Ramsey in the pews, Fellowship Bible certainly had a leg up in this arena. Leaders have encouraged parishioners to participate in Ramsey’s “Financial Peace University” (FPU) and talked openly about the need for Christians to get out of consumer debt in order to free up resources for the Kingdom. The main application point in the church’s recent preaching series (titled simply “Steward”) is to attend FPU classes.

“One of the worst things you can do for a person who loves Jesus is show them a need, and them ask them to help meet it when they haven’t got any capacity to help meet it. All you’ve done is make them feel bad,” says Willard. Fellowship’s frequent encouragement for members to take FPU, he explains, was motivated by the leaders’ desire to “give their people the opportunity to say yes.”

Generosity and Justice

Once Fellowship Bible laid the theological foundations—with pithy statements like “God owns it all” and “you can’t out-give God”—they began directing the congregation’s attention to practical needs in the developing world. For the past few years the church’s Christmas project has connected the dots. Its slogan simply reminds parishioners, “Less under our tree means more for the world.” What churches like Fellowship Bible have done, Willard says, is help their congregants “ask a counter-cultural question: ‘What could God do with this money?’ not ‘What could I do with it?’”
 

“The cornerstone principle (is this): When I feel that all God wants is something from me, faith believes that all God wants is something for me.”
—Lloyd Shadrach, Teaching Pastor

In the third preaching series, Shadrach got parishioners thinking about the stewardship of their stuff. For two months the church parked a large tractor-trailer in the parking lot that would serve as a collection center. “Over the next eight weeks we are going to take all the unused things and put them into God’s economy to meet the needs of His people,” Shadrach announced. One hundred percent of the proceeds benefited local ministries.

Fellowship’s executive pastor Neal Johnson knew the motivational power of connecting the messages of generosity and compassion. He completed a financial analysis of the flock’s giving and ran some numbers on what would be possible if each household grew their giving to the Biblical tithe. Armed with that data, church leaders presented a bold vision. “If we all ‘raise the tide’ of our giving to 10 percent,” Johnson explained, “the opportunities to fund Kingdom work both here and around the world will be staggering.” With a community of tithers, he demonstrated, the church could invest over $60 million in projects to meet human needs, educate indigenous pastors, and plant new churches.

The Generosity of Front Porch Living

In December 2011, Fellowship’s Christmas project netted over $313,000 for its global partners. Clearly, wallets have been loosened at this congregation. But church leaders’ goals go beyond the nurture of financial generosity to whole life stewardship for advancing the Kingdom. The genuinely generous congregation, they realize, is one that is as openhanded with time as well as treasure. Cultivating that level of sacrificial living requires ongoing preaching on stewardship and generosity—as well as on the church’s other core values of service, worship, and community. Staff don’t believe they’ve “arrived” yet. The ultimate mission, Fellowship’s leaders stress, is equipping their members to “give their lives away” for the Kingdom. “It isn’t about the shoes or the stuff,” Lloyd Shadrach has said. “It is about God’s heart being formed in us.”

This continual emphasis has led not only to new levels of financial generosity but also to some remarkable life changes for some members. The Hazelip family is a good example. Today these former suburbanites live in a struggling neighborhood on Nashville’s northeast side. They live openhandedly with their time, giving themselves relationally to the community’s numerous fatherless kids. Their renovated home’s front porch has become a hive of activity and fellowship, a safe gathering place for conversations, games, popsicles, and counseling. Thom Hazelip reports it is a whole new way of life for his wife, himself, and their four small children. “We were back porch people,” Thom explains. “We had a pool and a pool house and we lived our lives out in the back yard. We were challenged and what’s happened is we’ve become a front porch family.”

The Hazelip’s adventure began back in 2004 when Thom was driving around McFerrin Park, one of the distressed neighborhoods on Nashville’s northeast side. Initially he was looking for potential investment properties, inexpensive units he might be able to purchase, remodel, and flip. But between Fellowship’s teaching, the Holy Spirit’s drawing, and the neighborhood kids he was getting to know, Thom’s heart started moving in an unexpected direction. He sensed God calling his family to relocate into the neighborhood to share its life and bear its burdens. When he first broached the idea with his wife Michele, she told him the idea was crazy. “I thought he’d lost his mind!” she says.

But God kept working in both of their lives until the call to urban living was clear.

“Living out on the front porch, in the front yard, is vastly different than how we used to live,” Thom says. “We know all our neighbors now. We know all the kids. We know what’s going on in their lives. We have people knocking on our door constantly.” The Hazelips’ home has become the hub of a new spirit of community and neighborliness on the street. “The change they have [brought] to the neighborhood is a blessing to me from God above,” says Armentria Kelly, who has lived in the community all her life. “They have touched many lives around here.” Another long-term resident, Sennithia Hendricks, adds, “Our community is closer now than it’s ever been.”

Michele Hazelip admits that sometimes the neighborhood’s needs can feel overwhelming. But knowing of God’s lavish generosity and abundant power and provision has cultivated her confidence to give what she can and trust God for the rest. “One thing we’ve learned is being available and being willing can be enough,” Michele reports. “We let God do the rest. He can flow the ability to meet the needs through us.”

(Thom and Michele Hazelip with neighborhood kids)

RESOURCES

Thomas Nicholas: January 26, 2003 Sermon Excerpt

Excerpt from a sermon by Thomas Nicholas at Reformed Presbyterian Church, Ephrata, PA

Including the Excluded: Reformed Presbyterian Welcomes the Disabled

by Kelly Givens and Amy L. Sherman

In the gospels of Mark and Luke, and briefly in Matthew, we are told the miraculous story of Christ healing a paralytic man. Not far into his earthly ministry, Jesus’ words and works had already caught the attention of critical religious leaders and eager residents of the area. Luke tells us that the Pharisees and teachers had come “from every village of Galilee and Judea and from Jerusalem” to hear Jesus speak. It’s no surprise, then, that a group of men carrying their paralytic friend on a bed couldn’t quite reach Jesus through the pressing crowd. Urgently desiring to get to the Messiah, they took the tiles off the roof of the house where Jesus was. And, in what must have been something to see, they lowered their friend directly to Jesus’ feet.

It’s easy to imagine Jesus in this situation gazing down lovingly at the paralytic—being filled with compassion and healing him. Pastor Tom Nicholas of Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPC) in Ephrata, Pennsylvania, thinks something else may also have been going on.

“This is really a passage about advocacy,” Nicholas explains. The text, he recalls, says that when Jesus saw “their faith, plural,” then he healed the man. Jesus wasn’t just looking down at the paralytic; he was looking up at the guys sticking their heads through the roof!

Nicholas, whose mother has been crippled by Multiple Sclerosis for over 60 years, can relate to the friends in the story. “As a kid, I always imaged doing that for my mom,” he recalls. “They had a lot of guts. They really believed if they could just get this guy in front of Jesus, that would be enough….It wasn’t just this individual faith; there was this advocacy for this person. We’re not even told if [the paralytic himself] believed. He might have been totally embarrassed….I know my mother would have been like, ‘Don’t you dare! I’d rather be paralyzed!’ But they knew this was the right thing to do. And Christ praises them for their faith.”

Nicholas’ family history with disability has sensitized and softened his heart towards those with special needs. So, in the mid-1990s, when a series of events started propelling Reformed Presbyterian toward a more organized ministry for the disabled, Nicholas says he was “all on board.“

At that time, RPC had recently added on to their building, purchasing an old, three-story, community hall. “It was a disabilities nightmare,” Nicholas jokingly recalls. Although church leaders faced sticker shock when presented with the costs to remodel the facility to ensure handicapped accessibility, they recognized the need to ensure welcome for all. Once the building had been restructured with elevators, ramps, and other accessibility features, an influx of families with disabled members flowed into the congregation. Pastor Nicholas believes this was God’s providential timing. “Before,” he explains, “our facility wasn’t prepared to handle it. Maybe our hearts weren’t either.”

Around the same time as the building renovations, multiple members in the church gave birth to special needs children. RPC member Stephanie Hubach, whose son Timmy was born with Down Syndrome in 1992, worked with these families to help RPC develop a more organized ministry for the handicapped. Soon a Special Needs Committee was formed, which serves to equip and resource the rest of the congregation on how to minister to and alongside those touched with disability.

“[When we first started] our emphasis was primarily on congregational inclusion,” Stephanie explains. The ministry enlisted the help of other local disabilities organizations to train teachers and other church leaders on how to include those with special needs. Although the church is relatively small--membership fluctuates between 200 and 300-- the congregation had a significant number of families with special needs children. Realizing the particular need was for the kids, RPC first focused on children’s ministries. “You start out with who you have and where they are,” Stephanie says.

Over the years, RPC has watched their children with special needs grow into teens, then adults. The process has presented unique challenges. “Churches are good at crisis care, but we’re not good at situations that are ongoing,” Hubach says. “I think one area where we can improve is: How do we stay engaged with families that have long term needs, needs that change over time?”

Hubach is passionate about congregational inclusion for those with special needs. She leads the Presbyterian Church in America’s denominational focus on this and is author of Same Lake, Different Boat. It’s a manual geared toward helping churches understand inclusion of the disabled—and how such an emphasis is rooted in deep Biblical theology. In an interview with ByFaith Magazine, Hubach explained:

“…[A]s Christians, we need to practice identification that is like God’s example to us: one that’s not solely based on what we have in common, or exclusively on how we’re different, but identification that’s intentional … This approach recognizes that as human beings, we’re essentially the same but experientially different. So identifying with each other is a choice—a choice that can have tremendous blessing.”

Hubach says that Westerners especially can find it difficult to be willing to identify with the disabled. As she told ByFaith, “In Western culture, we’ve been pretty effective at attempting to sanitize our lives of any association with difficulty or discomfort. If we’re honest, we don’t like to deal with people with disabilities because it reminds us of our own vulnerabilities.”

The willingness to truly see others and identify with them is part and parcel of treating them justly. The biblical perspective shows us that disability is a normal part of a fallen world, Hubach argues. A result of the Fall, it touches us all to some degree. Yet that same biblical perspective reminds us of the essential human dignity of everyone, regardless of our condition, rooted in the Imago Dei.

Besides working to include those with disabilities into worship services, RPC also labored hard to educate the congregation in this sort of biblical grounding on the topic. Leaders have addressed this subject as part of a broader focus in the church on the sanctity of human life. RPC has held several special Sanctity services—all of which, to varying degrees, have addressed ministry to those with special needs. These services steer clear of the highly-charged debates typically associated with pro-life gatherings, and instead focus on “being pro-life in the fullest sense,” Rev. Nicholas explains. “I think the church hasn’t always been kind and loving in its expression of being pro-life…if we have a Sanctity of Life Sunday, it’s rarely about abortion. It’s usually more about celebrating life and the glory of God and the image of God.” (Click the link in the right panel to listen to a clip from one of Rev. Nicholas’ Sanctity of Life sermons.)

Nicholas’ characteristic teaching during these Sanctity of Life Sundays focuses on the value of all human life—regardless of disability—because of the glory of the Imago Dei . “What gives human life value?” Nicolas asks. “The Bible’s answer is clear. It’s God who gives value. The Creator. He created us, and just by the fact that he made us, we have value. Just by the fact that he made anything, it has value…Not only that, we have value because he made us in his image. The likeness of God gives us value.”

After Adam and Eve sinned, the image of God in man was marred, Nicholas adds. And yet, it was Jesus, who is “the image of the invisible God,” who restores our value. “He restores the brokenness of our image,” Nicolas preached. “He begins to renew and make within us his image. He began to address the brokenness at all levels, not just on the inside of the heart, but the whole person—body and soul. That is the renewal Jesus brought.” The handicapped are in need of such renewal—and we are all handicapped to some degree.

 

“I think our premise as a church is that we’re all disabled.”

— Rev. Tom Nicholas, Reformed Presbyterian Church

In addition to holding such Sanctity of Life services, RPC partners with existing community organizations to reach those in the neighborhood touched by disability. For example, at the very onset of the ministry, Stephanie recalls the Special Needs Committee drafting a mission that they hoped in five years would lead to adopting a local group home. “Five weeks, not years, later, I got a call from the guy who was the president of Friendship Community (a local disabilities ministry),” she remembers. “ He said, ‘You know, we’re buying an apartment complex two blocks down from your church. Would you all be willing to be the sponsoring church?’” RPC jumped at the opportunity, creating “friendship families” that the residents could contact in order to get connected at the church.

More important that any programming the church does for the disabled, though, is the fact that church leaders have given this ministry focus such support and enthusiasm from the pulpit. As a result of it, Hubach reports, RPC has a culture of acceptance, of inclusion, one that doesn’t emphasize differences but sees the similarities in us all. “It’s really just the gospel,” Pastor Nicholas says:

I think our premise as a church is that we’re all disabled. We’re all broken, we’re all needy, we’re all disabled…there’s a brokenness in all of us, whether it’s from family of origin or how we’re born, things that occurred to us. We’re in a broken world. And disability is just part of being in a broken world. I think when Jesus came, His Kingdom ministry just immediately began to touch all kinds of brokenness, whether we call them special needs or disabled or sick, whatever. It was a full orbed, holistic view of restoration.

Throughout his time as head pastor, Nicholas has often used his time in the pulpit to speak into the hearts of his hearers about disability. Hubach, in her book Same Lake, Different Boat, lovingly refers to RPC as a model of excellent mercy ministry in this arena. Recalling the words of Pastor Nicholas at a denominational conference, she writes:

This ministry does require some flexibility. Sometimes when we sing, some of our members with special needs sway, or—horrors—even dance!...Sometimes I hear the ‘clack, clack, clack’ of seven-year-old Matthew’s metal walker as he ambles down the aisle during the prelude. Some Presbyterians may not like that noise. But we remember when Matthew could hardly walk, and to us it is a joyful noise. God in his grace has taught us these are the kind of worshipers that Jesus seeks. “Let them come, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.”

Over the years, RPC’s disabilities ministry has slowly grown from a mercy ministry to one that also emphasizes justice. Pastor Nicholas testifies to the way the disabilities ministry has evolved. “The problem with starting with justice is that God doesn’t start with justice for us. He starts with mercy. But then we find out that his mercy is just. His grace is actually just grace…we always thought of this as a ministry of grace and mercy and compassion. Bu I think once we crossed the threshold into really consciously not just inviting and including people with special needs, [but] really [making them] part of our Body, part of our life as a church…to think of going back and not doing it that way would be unjust. It wouldn’t just be unmerciful, it would be unjust.”

¹ Interview with ByFaith Magazine, Author: Stephanie O. Hubach, Same Lake, Different Boat: Coming Alongside People Touched by Disability . Accessed: September 2011

Sonbeams Ministry: Worship for All

By Kelly Givens and Amy L. Sherman

Six years ago, on one of John Kwasny’s first days as director of Christian Education and Children’s Ministries at Pear Orchard Presbyterian in Ridgeland, Mississippi, a couple walked through his doors. They brought a question that in many ways would not only shape his ministry, but that of the entire church. “Are you,” they asked, “really interested in ministering to all of our children here, or just most of them?”

The couple—an elder of the congregation and his wife—had a 28-year-old special needs daughter. Like many families with a special needs member, they often felt as though more could be done to minister to families like theirs. They had come to John with a purpose, hoping this new ministry leader would see the importance of ministering to the disabled.

“Of course,” John recalls, “I told them I’m here to minister to all of the children of Pear Orchard. That’s when they got me [though], because then they said, ‘Did you know, in our nursery, we have three families touched by disabilities?’” Three young families at Pear Orchard did indeed have babies with Down Syndrome. That conversation led John to put together a special needs subcommittee of the children’s ministry.

This marked the very beginning of “Sonbeams,” a disabilities ministry that would eventually grow to impact all the ministries of Pear Orchard. When John and his wife Martie approached their Session (governing elders) with the idea of starting a disabilities ministry, they posed a question similar to the one that John had been presented years earlier. The Kwasny’s looked at their brethren and asked: “Do you believe that corporate worship is for the educable and the non-educable, or just the educable?”

Martie remembers the effect of that question. “It really challenged our elders as well as our staff on what that means. Who does God choose to have in corporate worship? It didn’t take long for us to all come to the conclusion that it’s not just for the educable, it’s for the [whole] Body.”

After leadership gave the green light to start Sonbeams, John and other interested volunteers kick-started things with a “Disability Awareness Weekend.” Partnering with the Joni & Friends International Disability Center, a speaker addressed the congregation on a Friday night, then met with the special needs committee and families. That Sunday, Pear Orchard’s senior pastor Carl Kalberkamp preached a sermon specifically on special needs. On Sunday night, church members heard testimonies from families touched by disability. “We hit the ground running,” John recalls. “People were excited.” In his sermon, Rev. Kalberkamp laid the foundation for what he hoped the church was beginning to learn and experience through the disabilities ministry:

We are learning a deeper side of the Lord’s character as the champion of the ‘least of these my brethren.’…We are learning what it means to bear another’s burdens and to see through another’s eyes in fresh ways. We are seeing afresh that ministry is rarely convenient, yet always joy-producing if the heart is humbled. We are learning that gospel fruit-bearing always requires identifying with those we would reach.

We are learning that launching new ministry avenues takes great patience, endurance, giving and extending forgiveness, etc. In other words, it can only be well accomplished in the strength of Christ, not the flesh.

We are challenged deeply to see that if we give all to the poor, have all faith and knowledge, but HAVE NOT LOVE, then we are only making noise.

With the encouragement and support of Kalberkamp and the congregation, the disabilities ministry outlined a vision and mission for Sonbeams. It focused on integration and inclusion, at first specifically within children’s ministry. Sunday school teachers were trained on how to integrate special needs children into classes, and an advocacy system was created whereby each family with a disabled child had an assigned advocate in the church. Advocates meet monthly with the family to see where the child is at and how Sonbeams could better serve and support the family.

On Sundays, volunteers serve on a rotation where they sit with children and adults with special needs through the corporate worship service, taking them out into a special room if there are disruptions. This system allows the family to worship freely, without the usual distractions. “We have many families that have come and they haven’t been able to worship together for fourteen years or more,” Martie explains. She remembers one missionary family that came to Pear Orchard for a time after serving in France. Their son, Michael, had a chromosomal disorder. “In Paris, [the ministry organization] really wanted to send [Michael] abroad and institutionalize him… That’s when they came off the field,” Martie says. “They stayed with us for about eight months before the Lord redirected them. They would worship with us [while we took] Michael and the family would worship together. It was beautiful, [the mother] had tears in her eyes when she said, ‘We are in ministry and we’ve never been able to worship together as a family.’”

As much as is possible, the focus of Sonbeams is on building and developing relationships and integrating special needs kids and adults into the life of Pear Orchard. They have worked hard not to make it about building programs. “These families are inundated by professionalism,” Martie remarks. “They don’t necessarily need professionalism at the church….so often we want to prepare a better program for these families and often we miss the family by replacing them with the program. And it’s not about a program; it’s about integrating them throughout the life of the church.”

After a while, the committee started focusing on respite care for community members. The best way they felt they could serve the community was by offering temporary relief to caretakers who often attend “24/7” to the needs of handicapped family members. These bimonthly “Sonbeams Night Out” have been a huge success in the community. The first night alone, ninety people show up. They average between 80 to 100 special needs kids or siblings, and about 150 volunteers from the church. Normally, more than half of the families that come are unchurched. It’s an event that ministers to the entire family touched by disability--the adult children who never get invited to parties or events, the siblings who never quite feel accepted or comfortable, and the parents, who are worn out from life’s daily burdens.

  Rev. Kalberkamp notes these family difficulties in a video promoting Mission to North America’s (MNA’s) special needs ministry. “There are many challenges that those with disabilities face at the family level. These families have a daily-ness and a lifestyle that is impacted 24/7 by that need. Part of the unique struggle of beginning to move into that ministry with Christ’s heart, is to try to own what it means never to be able to walk away from that, and be able to come alongside folks and say, ‘How can we help you at that place?’

John and Martie both agree that church leadership, especially the leadership of Rev. Kalberkamp, has been crucial to the success of the ministry. “From what we hear [from] other churches,” John says, “the most disappointing thing for them tends to be a lack of embrace by the church leadership.” This has never been the case at Pear Orchard. There, elders, deacons and ministry leaders not only embrace the ministry; most are actively involved in it. John remembers one deacon who felt a strong call to reach out to a family in the congregation who had a disabled son. The mother was a single parent. The church had hired her to work in the nursery on Sundays. Because of that, her son couldn’t come to church. The deacon realized that the boy could really benefit from a male presence in his life, and so he and his family offered to sit with him at church, take him to Sunday school, and even take him to lunch with the family after church each week. “They did that for years,” John says. “We saw the change [it made] in his life.”

Rev. Kalberkamp, along with many other officers, will often show up at Sonbeams night out, helping out in different capacities and just loving on the kids. “[Rev. Kalberkamp] just has a heart of mercy, and so from the pulpit he really exudes that heart of mercy and that heart of grace,“ Martie says. Rev. Kalberkamp often incorporates the special needs ministry into sermons, highlighting how, because of the Fall, all of humanity is broken. “Some are just more broken in the physical sense,” John observes. For Pear Orchard, this emphasis on “getting the theology right” is one of the reasons the ministry has thrived. “Sonbeams gives us the opportunity to apply that which we know,” Martie says. “What I find in this ministry, as well as any other ministry, [is that] your knowledge always precedes your ability. That’s important. Our knowledge will always precede our grace.”

Through the Roof Ministries: Helping Everyone “Fit in” to Church
by Kelly Givens

We often complain about not “fitting in” in certain situations or with certain groups of people. Maybe we dress or speak differently, have different interests or ways of thinking. We long to be a part of a place or group of people who make us feel welcome, where we feel like our ideas, personalities and gifts are useful and encouraged. Certainly, churchgoers feel this desire—a new person comes into a local congregation and sees how he or she might "fit in" with the activities and worship going on at that church.

Imagine, however, literally not being able to “fit into” a church of which you long to be a part. You are wheelchair bound. You can’t get through the door, much less reach the water fountains or comfortably use the restroom. Or imagine you are deaf. You can’t hear the songs in worship or understand what the pastor is saying in his sermon. Now imagine that this happens over and over to you, at every church you visit.

These are the heartbreaking stories that Margaret Matasic, a doctor of physical therapy, heard repeatedly from her patients. Crippled after accidents, they often told her that they could no longer fit into their church. Reaching out to these people became a passion of Margaret’s, and eventually she went to the senior pastor of her church (The Chapel, a nondenominational fellowship in Akron, OH) with the intent to start a ministry. Margaret’s enthusiasm was contagious, and it wasn’t long before the entire church was behind her and “Through the Roof” was born.

Crippled following accidents, handicapped individuals told Margaret they could no longer fit into their church.

Margaret recognized that in order for her ministry to be effective, she needed the support of The Chapel staff. Head Pastor Knute Larson allowed Margaret to come to a staff meeting where she held a “disability awareness” training. She hoped this would show the staff in a tangible way just how difficult it was for the disabled to worship at their church. After fitting everyone with blindfolds, earplugs, wheelchairs, etc., Margaret asked them to do a series of simple tasks. “We had them go through the church, or go and get a cup of coffee, or go into a restroom, or try and get through…hallway doors [that] at the time were closed.” Her training was effective— staff realized just how hard it was for a disabled person to maneuver around. The Chapel soon began making modifications to their building, adding automatic door openers, adjusting the height of fountains, adding large print bulletins, and adjusting the pews to accommodate wheelchairs. Little changes that, over time, helped make the church a place where anyone could worship.

Margaret knew it wasn’t only the building that needed to be disabilities-friendly. She and her team spoke in front of the congregation, and they also invited people with disabilities to share their testimonies during worship. As the congregation became aware and convicted of the need for a disabilities ministry, they began to volunteer.  The disabilities ministries inside The Chapel now include multiple “Assisted Learning” classes, where volunteers “buddy” with a disabled person to help them join in on lessons. They have an interpreter in worship services and frequently hold large training events at their church, to help equip other churches for disabilities ministry.

Reaching out into the community, Through the Roof has a Fellowship of Friends outreach, targeted to local group homes and families in the community affected by disabilities. They sponsor fun activities like bowling or visiting local zoos and museums, which those with disabilities might not normally be able to participate in. Because of the work they are doing both within and outside the church walls, The Chapel has over one hundred people affected by disabilities attending their various classes and community outreaches.

Today Through the Roof functions as an auxiliary of the church; it has its own nonprofit status.  Margaret serves as Executive Director. The ministry has both a local and international focus, all centered on its mission: to make the message of the Gospel available to all people, “doing whatever it takes to bring people to Jesus.” To serve Ohio, Through the Roof currently offers an online Bible Study and a speaking ministry led by Shanda Grubb-Gobeli—a young woman with cerebral palsy. Internationally, Through the Roof sponsors a “Wheels of Hope” program that helps bring wheelchairs to those in impoverished areas, as well as mission trip program that reaches out to those affected by disabilities.

“Salvation is indeed the greatest need of every person,” Margaret affirms. “But the Great Commission includes more than evangelism. We believe it is also our responsibility to disciple and equip people with disabilities to use their gifts to expand the body of Christ.”

RESOURCES

Bless the School 2008

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United Methodist Church of the Resurrection serves Troost Elementary in Kansas City

Adam Hamilton Sermon Transcript

Rev. Hamilton's sermon on Kansas City Public Schools, May 2001

“Impossible Not to Get Involved:” Church of the Resurrection’s Decade of Faithfulness in the Public Schools

by Amy L. Sherman

Ten years ago, the Kansas City public school district became the first district in the nation to lose its accredited status, failing all of Missouri’s performance standards. In response, Pastor Adam Hamilton of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection in KC stood before his flock and said bluntly, “This is a huge, big, hairy problem to wrap our arms around.”

Earlier in the year, Hamilton had decided to preach a sermon series on what it meant for the body of Christ to live out its faith in the real world. To help his congregants understand what was going on in their city, he partnered with local news station KNBC 9. Every Monday, the station handed Hamilton and his worship team a packet of news stories. The team spent hours studying and researching one particular issue each week, considering together, “What is God’s Word in light of this one story?” When the difficulties of the Kansas City school district came to their attention, Hamilton knew God had something to say.

Facing his congregants that Sunday morning, May 6, 2001, Hamilton proclaimed, “This is the greatest issue facing the greater Kansas City area right now. Nothing is more crucial to the future of our metropolitan area than this story.” He then showed a broadcast from KNBC 9 describing the dilemmas plaguing the local schools. “I did not know how hard it would be to foster change,” one of the interviewed community members said into the camera. Another interviewee added, “Schools are the most vital thing in our country. They predict our future.” 

“What does this have to do with the church?” Hamilton asked his congregation. He acknowledged that some of his listeners might be wondering just that—thinking that church is the place to talk about “spiritual things,” not about something “better dealt with by the Kansas City Star.” And he admitted that he’d felt that struggle himself. But in considering whether he should devote a whole sermon to the topic, Hamilton explained to his parishioners that he had had to ask himself two questions. Did God care about the issue, and if so, what would He be doing about it?

“Is God concerned about the 34,632 students being raised up in the Kansas City Missouri Public School system?” Hamilton asked. “Does He care about the 5700 teachers, administrators, and staff members facing difficult circumstances? I realized, if God doesn’t care about that, I can’t imagine how He cares about anything.”

Answering his second question, Hamilton argued that God would want His people to be part of the solution. “How would God go about making a difference?” he queried. “The answer is: God uses His people--Christians, who are open to the work of the Holy Spirit, who listen for God’s voice and who are ready to get their hands dirty in the world. That’s how God accomplishes His purposes.”

While Hamilton knew the call to seek answers to the school district’s problems was clear enough, he admitted he was not sure what those solutions should be. “I would have loved to have come here, and in one 30-minute sermon, solved the whole problem,” he said. “But it doesn’t quite work that way. . . . There is no one simple solution, no one sermon that is going to fix it.”

But he was confident about one response: intercession. “One thing I know God is calling us to do is to pray.”

This call—given its predictability—might have fallen rather flat. But the team at Church of the Resurrection (COR) had determined to make the invitation to intercede as concrete and actionable as possible. They obtained a list of the names of every one of the 5700 employees of the school system, as well as their job descriptions. Each one was written down on an index card. As soon as Hamilton issued his call to prayer, ushers began distributing the cards to the congregation. He asked each member to take a card and to commit to do two things that week: to pray for that individual and to mail them a card with a note of encouragement.

“Can you imagine what it will feel like to get a note like that when you feel like no one appreciates you, and no one cares?” he grinned.

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“United Methodists have historically had a commitment to public education. In Kansas City the first public schools were started by Methodist missionaries and churches.”

     —Senior Pastor Adam Hamilton
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The sermon turned out to be a landmark in the church’s history. A decade later, it’s clear from interviews with numerous parishioners that the seeds Hamilton planted that day have borne much fruit. Today, COR boasts a thriving Education and Life Skills Ministry. It is deeply involved in six district schools. Volunteers from COR have opportunities to read to kids, mentor children and adults, and serve as Lunch Buddies and classroom assistants. For the past four years, COR has partnered with the district in massive “Bless the School” events. Through these, an estimated 1,500 COR volunteers spend a few weeks in the summer going into selected elementary schools to help rebuild and restore the facilities and grounds. They paint classrooms, auditoriums, and cafeterias, create murals, install classroom equipment and shelving, construct new playground equipment, and donate all sorts of balls and toys for recess. After the army from COR transformed Troost Elementary, teacher Terrie Perry enthused: “When I saw this building and saw these hallways, I was amazed. My spirit went this high . . . [The kids’] hearts will be filled.” Principal Judith Jordan Campbell, her voice shaking with emotion, added, “This is what it means to work in the community and really have a heart and desire to make a change.” (Click here for a short video on Bless the School at Troost Elementary.)

Bless the School is an entry point into the Education and Life Skills ministry, explains COR’s Jeanna Repass. She serves as Director of Kansas City Mission Programs. It’s a great first step intoministry, one that can be done as a family or with one’s small group. Volunteers who want to continue their engagement can join the Backpacks for Hunger initiative, through which COR packs and supplies kids’ backpacks with nutritional snacks for the weekends, and delivers those to schools each Friday. “We run about 1200 backpacks every week,” Repass reports.

For Hamilton, COR’s engagement in the local public schools is part of a long United Methodist heritage. “Many churches are involved in offering private schools, and they do a terrific job in educating children, but United Methodists have historically had a commitment to public education,” he explains. “In Kansas City the first public schools were started by Methodist missionaries and churches.”

The experience has been eye-opening.

Ann’s friend Paul Yarick has led the Bless the School initiative the past few years. He says Adam Hamilton’s dynamic leadership and inspirational preaching get people up out of the pews and into the community. “I can just tell you,” he says, “that whenever Pastor Hamilton speaks in the pulpit, people react.” Cheryl Jorgenson, COR’s school liaison for Wendell-Phillips Elementary, agrees. “Basically Adam plants many, many seeds. And it’s up to the person to take advantage of those seeds . . . and to help them grow into fruition. He’s an amazing speaker. He’s very motivational. You know, you listen to these things over and over and you just think, ‘Why not me? I could do this.’”

_________________________________________________________

“I really feel that everything that happens at Resurrection is directly tied to the teaching that [Pastor Hamilton] does . . . Whether it’s that he finds a compelling story and he can share that in a way that moves people, or whether it’s that he’s just aware of the needs and he can bring that to the congregation in a way that makes sense, in a way that it’s almost impossible not to get involved.”

                   —COR Member, Jennifer Cutler

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Importantly, Hamilton’s motivation includes a call to own the city’s woes. Each year when the city’s school test results are published in the newspaper, Cheryl explains, Hamilton references them. “He says: ‘This is our problem, too. This is our city. We need to take ownership of this problem and somehow help out.’”

She says she has learned from COR that “If we really want to change the lives of people in the community, [service] has to be on-going, it has to be shoulder-to-shoulder, face-to-face.”
 

Many church leaders around the nation say that they want to make a positive difference in their community. Not so many, though, see their very first step in that process as one of listening. The leaders at Second Baptist Church in Springfield, MO are among the exceptions. They engaged in a nine month listening process before they moved forward.

Starting in 2003, the church began hosting a monthly breakfast. It invited clergy members and business leaders from around the city, and at each session hosted one public official. Each official—the mayor, the sheriff, the school superintendent, and others—was asked to speak briefly on a few key questions. What did they see as Springfield’s greatest need? And what did they think the churches of Springfield might do to help?

Lead Pastor John Marshall from Second Baptist was the initial driving force behind the listening sessions. He’d gone on a mission trip to China and there felt like God broke his heart for his own city. He returned and sat down with his staff. Bob Roberts, the Minister for Springfield, recalls that Marshall told his team simply, “We need to be more mission-minded.”

“That’s when we sat down and identified all the individuals who influenced this city and some 15 churches that we needed to chat with,” explains Roberts. Not only was Second Baptist more ready to engage its city, it realized that it should move forward in partnership with others rather than alone. “Pastor Marshall wrote a personal note to all 15 of those church leaders, inviting them to get together for a [brainstorming] lunch.” Roberts acknowledges that it would have been easier for Second Baptist to just get something started on its own—and enjoy taking the credit. “It would have been easy to put all the feathers in our hat,” he says. “But it would have been a short term [thing], six or eight months. It wouldn’t have affected our city the way it has.”

At the end of nine months of the “listening breakfasts,” Second Baptist hosted a discussion time where they reviewed with attendees the major themes that had come out in the process. In the end, representatives of a few dozen churches agreed that the central action they should take was a multi-church, city-wide, in-school tutoring program for at-risk 3rd graders. This was an initiative that felt both ambitious and feasible and was relevant to what they had learned. The sheriff had explained during his breakfast presentation that one of the key factors state planners used in forecasting how many new jail cells would need to be built was the percentage of 4th graders who couldn’t read. That factoid galvanized the group to focus on helping such children. The new tutoring program grew to engage some 75 congregations. Within two years some 725 children were being served.

Today involved congregations collaborate with 23 elementary schools in the district. Some churches have “adopted” a local elementary school, getting engaged in clean-up and repair efforts, throwing appreciation parties for teachers, and sponsoring book drives. While tutoring remains important, the Churches of Springfield’s principal focus now is on afterschool “Good News” Clubs that engage hundreds of kids. Most recently, some congregations have started helping local schools to establish raised bed vegetable gardens.

In the past two years, the churches’ team effort on behalf of the schools has spawned a new multi-church initiative—this time, to address the needs of Springfield’s homeless. “We learned to work together as a group under the umbrella of Churches of Springfield,” Roberts explains. “Now,” he continues, “between 40 and 50 churches are working collectively to affect homelessness in our city.” The churches take turns hosting homeless residents during the winter, providing shelter, food, and mentoring.

Today, Second Baptist continues to sponsor a quarterly breakfast for church and Christian business leaders. As new public officials are elected or appointed, Roberts explains, “We introduce them into the faith family.” Church leaders continue to ask their questions of public officials, and to listen to their responses. “We make a mistake when we think we’ve ‘arrived,’” Roberts counsels. “We never ‘arrive.’ Things change. That’s how we got involved in the homelessness [initiative].”

RESOURCES

Zimele women in class

South African women from a Self-Help Group participate in an educational presentation. Zimele is a Zulu word meaning “to stand on your own two feet.” ODW chose to partner with this organization because of its long-term, developmentally oriented focus to cultivate “self-reliance by equipping individuals with the skills and tools necessary to develop emotional and financial independence.”

© Photo courtesy of One Day’s Wages

Congolese seamstress from HEAL Africa

ODW has provided $25,000 to HEAL Africa, a CBO active in the Congo, to provide “Fresh Start Kits” to women who have been affected by the violence in the region. The kits provide small business training and equipment to enable women to launch small income-generating enterprises.

© Photo courtesy of Photo courtesy of One Day’s Wages

Eugene Cho doesn’t want to be all talk and no action when it comes to global poverty. He launched One Day’s Wages (ODW) to make that commitment real. The nonprofit raises funds for community based organizations in the developing world. “My wife and I knew the statistics about global poverty but we wanted to do more than just talk about it or blog about it,” Cho says.

The concept is simple: you calculate 0.4% of your annual salary—one day’s wages—and donate it through the website. One hundred percent of the donation goes directly to a project you choose from among ODW’s offerings. ODW partners with charity:water to bring clean water to the destitute, with Not for Sale to rescue girls from sex traffickers in southeast Asia, with HEAL Africa to help Congolese women get a fresh start in microenterprise, and with a handful of other worthy, usually small, nonprofits.

To get ODW off the ground, Cho and his wife put their money where their mouths were: they donated their entire 2009 salary. The first $50,000 came from their savings; the rest (another $18K) from scrimping on expenses, selling Cho’s Mazda Miata, and, eventually, subletting their furnished home to renters for a season. The sacrifice didn’t go unnoticed. News outlets no less grand than the NY Times, CBS, and NPR have all carried stories on the initiative. The Cho’s weren’t trying to toot their own horns by going public about their contribution, Eugene explained to a news reporter. “We wanted to make sure that we weren’t asking people to do something that we weren’t willing to do ourselves.”

Cho’s passion for tangible action in the face of global need is rooted in part in a concern he has about himself—and the current generation. He described that concern at a gathering of some 600 high school students in Knoxville last year, wondering aloud whether he, and other Christians, had fallen in love “with the idea of loving and serving our neighbors” rather than “actually loving and serving our neighbors.” True, there is much talk about justice in Facebook entries, blogs, and tweets, he admitted.

But: While talking about it over those mediums is part of the process of doing good work, my fear is that we stop right there, and then we pat ourselves on the back as people who have great social consciousness. We have to realize our resources, our time, our talents, our treasures need to be inclined toward making changes in our larger system and in ourselves.

Cho credits members of Quest for helping him to move beyond words to personal action and sacrifice. He’s seen one couple reach out to Burmese refugees in Seattle. Several teachers from Quest have chosen the hard route of working in needy inner-city schools. One Quester spends her Friday nights ministering to street-walkers. Those examples, and then Cho’s face-to-face exposure to global poverty on trips abroad, galvanized his desire to act. 

The beauty of ODW is that it provides such a feasible opportunity for ordinary folk to move into action. For most people--even the 20-somethings Cho is especially gifted at reaching--donating 0.4% of your salary to fight global poverty is doable. So is creating a Facebook group to spread the word, or hosting a birthday party at which you get your friends to donate to ODW instead of buying you a present. 

Money isn’t the sole answer to international poverty, Cho admits. But he’s eager to show that small contributions can have a big effect. Before launching ODW, Cho traveled to Myanmar (Burma). There he visited a jungle school on the border with Thailand that served impoverished Burmese kids. The head of the school told Cho that his biggest challenge was teacher retention: many left to take better paying jobs in the neighboring country. When Cho asked him what was needed, the director replied, “$40.” Cho thought he meant $40 per week—or perhaps per month. But he meant $40 per year. “It hit me,” Cho recalls. “$40 can make a huge difference.” 

So when a class of first grade students from Whittier Elementary School donated $44.38 in collected coins to ODWs, Cho was quick to calculate the benefits on ODW’s website. That modest sum, he explained, was enough to provide clean water for two children for a whole year, or to pay a child’s annual school tuition in some countries. “I love Mother’s Teresa’s wisdom,” Cho wrote. “‘If you can’t feed a hundred people, then feed just one.’”

Dig Deeper: Starting a poverty fighting nonprofit while pastoring a congregation has proven very difficult. Although the values of Quest and ODW align beautifully, Cho discovered that he could not communicate enough with the church’s leadership and members to reassure them that, despite his busyness with the new endeavor, his heart was still with them. Read Cho’s reflections on his journey here.

RESOURCES

Interview with Desmond Tutu

In this interview, Desmond Tutu speaks on his perspective of human nature in light of the world's marginalized.

"We are far too frequently prone to push the most vulnerable to the end of the queue."

In this interview, Desmond Tutu speaks on his perspective of human nature in light of the world's marginalized.

"I believe very very fervently that evil and wrong will not have the last word."