Reach Out - or just "outreach?"

Okay, it's been a little over two months since my last post here - my life went crazy busy and I suppose I could have handled it better, but what  happened happened, and here we are.

I've been thinking recently about the concept of Christian Outreach.  The original definition I learned about it was that this was specifically to reach the unsaved with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  Though that is a basic definition, it cannot be divorced from the concept of reaching out to meet peoples' needs.  The scriptures say this:

If a brother or sister is without clothing and in need of daily food, and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and be filled," and yet you do not give them what is necessary for their body, what use is that? Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself.
(James 2:15-17 NASB)

What good are your words if you aren't demonstrating your care by meeting peoples' needs?  I've often heard it said that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.  Sadly, I have been in that high-minded group of people that said, "brother, sister, be warmed and be filled" without doing one thing in the warming or filling of my brother or sister for whom Christ died and rose again.  What that makes me, friends, is a very big hypocrite, God forgive me.

Many of us sit in our pews in Church, Sunday after blessed Sunday, all warm and fed, deliberately insulating ourselves from those who desperately need our help.  We comfortably invite people to "come to church with us" so that the Pastor or the Deacons can do all the work.  This is not following the example of our Lord Jesus.  Jesus did not teach in the Temple, but instead went to where the people were or where they could gather.  John the Baptist, for what it is worth, practiced the very same strategy; he went out to where he could meet peoples' needs.

We must have a greater vision of what "outreach" means.  Think of how YOU became a Christian (assuming that has happened for you).  Jesus came to you and met you on the ground of your need and dealt once and for all with your greatest need.  I do not think that He did so with the intent that you can "sit back and rest" because now you are "going to Heaven" or some such other nonsense.  (Yes, I do believe in Heaven, before all the modern-day Pharisees come for my head.  I do not believe it was the main point, and neither should any real Christian.)  I read in scriptures that He saved us - and then called us with "a holy calling" (I Tim. 2:9), which then talks about how we were not saved for our own works, but to HIS!  I once heard a song put it this way, and it made me think:  "If we are the body, why aren't His Hands reaching?  Why aren't His words healing?"  I believe it is because we have grown comfortable and have insulated ourselves so that we do not have to face the needy.

People, we need to REPENT.  That means we need to CHANGE OUR MIND about what we are doing and do the exact opposite.  Instead of sitting in our collective pews, let us rise up and actually HELP.  Because if I hear of one more needy one being lost to the church because someone said, "Welcome brother, Jesus loves you," when they really should have asked, "brother, when was the last time you have eaten" and immediately bought him food, YOU will be solely responsible for driving souls away from the Lord by your own hypocrisy.  No wonder we collectively have a bad reputation these days.

Now if you're sitting there like me, feeling like an real idiot at how you could have let this happen to you, be encouraged.  It means that God in His mercy, has called this to our attention so that we can change it for our benefit and His glory.  I don't know just how yet, but I'll be doing a lot more meeting of needs than I used to with the limited resources I have.  Leave a comment below and let me know you're going to join me in the quest to really REACH OUT instead of just "outreach."

---
"You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
-John 8:32 (NASB)