The one acid test that should be applied to all activities that claim to represent obedience in mission is do they or do they not produce disciples of Jesus Christ? Arthur Glasser, Announcing the Kingdom
At Servant Partners, we are unapologetically holistic. We work with the urban poor, so in many ways to fail to be holistic would be to fail to listen to those we claim to love. What I find as I listen to my neighbors is the realization that poverty can create considerable stress for families. Feeling insecure about where your next meal comes from can contribute to inter-parental conflict, which plays a key role in family dynamics and can be a precursor to negative child outcomes. Conflict can also arise between children and parents because of economic pressures. How can we carry out the Great Commission (to make disciples of all nations) in the spirit of the Great Commandment (to love God and to love our neighbor as ourselves) if we ignore the very thing that has become such a central disruptor in the lives of our neighbors, hindering them from living up to their fullest, God-given potential?
We are coming to the end of the year, so I’ve been engaging in a lot of reflection over what I’ve learned and what I’ve seen God do over the past year. It has led me to reconsider a familiar story. Shortly before His crucifixion, a woman anoints Jesus with some very expensive perfume. Upon seeing this, Jesus' disciples complained over the financial waste. Jesus responds to them in this way…
Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me.” - Mt. 26:11
Was Jesus asking His disciples to ignore the poor? Is Jesus asking us to ignore the poor? I don’t think so. There is probably much to be fleshed out in this verse. One of the things that I believe Jesus is saying in Matthew 26:11 is that ministry should not be directed at a social cause; rather it should remain centered on individual people and inviting them to become fully devoted to Jesus. Make no mistake, as followers of Christ our relationship with Jesus will have ripple effects into all of our relationships, into every aspect of our lives, and out into society. However, as I reflect on ministry during the year 2022, I can see that even in a holistic family development program that has economic development as one of its key components, we’ve seen the fruit that comes from keeping disciple-making the main thing.
In the past, we had the mindset that we would use business-producing strategies as a vehicle to develop people and make disciples. Now, we have flipped that upside down. We have the mindset to make disciples and use disciple-making strategies as a vehicle to develop businesses.
The way that looks practically is this: we measure every decision we make with the same standard - “will this course of action help or hinder us in our primary goal of making disciples?” Because of that measuring stick, we have occasionally compromised proven business development principles in order to prioritize relational disciple-making. As a result of those compromises, we were ready to live with less than stellar economic outcomes in our program; it seemed a small price to pay. However, what has surprised us is that prioritizing disciple-making has proven (so far) to be the most effective business development program we’ve experienced in our combined 3 decades of experience in holistic ministry to the poor in Thailand.
We cannot ignore the issues that the poor face. But a laser-sharp focus on the task of making disciples does not require us to. In fact, it seems this focus can enhance the process of helping poor families escape the stresses of poverty in more ways than one.
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