Random Insight Dump and When Helping Hurts

Aug 12 | Pastor J.D. | 1 Comment |

I’m sure this doesn’t get to count as an official blog, but I’ve had some really great insights given to me over the past couple of days. There is little rhyme or reason to them, but there’s some good stuff there. I spend yesterday with some pastor friends, including Matt Carter, Bob Roberts and David Platt processing the Great Commission, and some come from that… and there’s some just from time with God.

• The greatest church planting center of Acts, Antioch, wasn’t planted by an apostle, or even a church leader, but evidently by businessmen who carried the testimony of Jesus with them. Acts 11:19-23. When Paul finally got to Rome, where he dreamed of establishing a church planting center, he was met by Christians, “regular” believers who had preceded him because their business or persecution carried them there. What is your job, where is God allowing you to go, and how is God using it to further the Great Commission?
• We know from history that the ones who most spread the Gospel in the early church were converted soldiers and Christian businessmen and businesswomen.
• We won’t see a church planting movement until “laymen” understand their role in the planting of churches.
• Leadership is recognizing fleeting moments & acting w/ boldness and courage in them.
• Joseph came to throne of Egypt , but through imprisonment and slavery. Paul finally got his dream to preach in Rome, but he arrived in chains. Jesus is seated at the right hand of Father, but he got there through the cross. Do you see a pattern? What is God doing in your life? Where does that mean He is taking you?

Finished reading When Helping Hurts. What a fantastic book. I’ve made it required reading for all Summit pastors, as it is the ‘bible’ we will live by in ministering to our community.

• Most “Western” compassion efforts misdiagnose the “disease” and so administer the wrong medicine (metaphorically speaking).”
• The only time you should do relief in an area is when the local community is either unable or unwilling to do it.
• You hurt people you intend to help when you do for them what they can and should do for themselves.
  • There are 3 different kinds of compassion efforts
    1. Relief is the urgent and temporary provision of emergency aid to “stop the bleeding.”
    2. Rehabilitation seeks to restore people and their communities to the positive elements of their pre-crisis conditions.
    3. Development is the process of ongoing change that moves all the people involved closer to being in right relationship to God, self, others, and the rest of creation.
    • One of the biggest mistakes that North American churches make–by far–is in applying relief in situation in which rehabilitation or development is the appropriate intervention.
  • Development is not done to people or for people but with people.

Finally, what a great night of prayer we had the other night... There is something so real and pure about God’s people coming together just to call on his name. That’s what we were to be known for–people who called on the name of the Lord. We are a “house of prayer for all nations.” I believe the church is most purely the church when it is gathered together praying. Leave your comments about prayer meeting on our church facebook page here.

One Response to “Random Insight Dump and When Helping Hurts”

1. Tori says:

   August 14, 2010 at 1:47 pm

   JD,
   I agree completely! This is a fantastic book that everyone who cares about the less fortunate should read. It is so convicting to think that in our own prideful American way we may have already hurt communities that we have tried to help. I read it before going to Liberia this summer.
   Awesome required reading assignment.