Community Service + The Gospel

This morning I had the opportunity to speak to a class of college students at Grace College about the relationship between community service and the Gospel. These students are just into their semester and at Grace, the desire to integrate service into the whole experience at their institution is important. They will follow up this conversation with some service projects in a week or two.

My hope for the morning was to get them to beginning thinking critically about their understanding of community service and volunteerism from their background and personal context. Then to have them take their own understanding of the way community service has always been done, and consider how the kingdom of God has fit in the past, or could fit into that for the future.  

Our time together was spent talking more about how the reconciliation of our lives to God and those around us should be the fuel for our service to others. Living out the gospel among our neighbors and the marginalized around us through acts of compassion and grace should be the motivation of our community service. 

Tim Keller gives the definition of the gospel like this..

The ‘gospel’ is the good news that through Christ the power of God’s kingdom has entered history to renew the whole world. When we believe and rely on Jesus’ work and record (rather than ours) for our relationship to God, that kingdom power comes upon us and begins to work through us.”

I also thought it was important to press them on the idea of whether “more community service" is what was needed with some of our more pressing social challenges today, such as homelessness, drug abuse, poverty, etc. Do we just need to do more good things? Will that help? So much of community service is about dealing with the symptoms and not the root issues. Therefore, does what you choose to engage in make a true difference, or will you stay committed long enough to figure out what the real issues are?  Without the long-term commitment to either figure out the real issue or to do something about, and being intentional about developing relationships, we’ll have such a small impact that it will be like no impact at all. 

I’ve been wrestling with the how community service and the gospel come together for years. It’s in acts of community service that I began to understand the true essence of the Gospel. But those acts of service never got really transformational until I was pressed to give until it hurt. As much as I’ve learned in recent years the toxic or short-term results of a lot of community service, I still feel they are necessary elements of understanding what it’s going to take to see our communities transform. 

Even at NeighborLink, if we expect our volunteers to step into some of the lives of our the neighbors seeking help, it must begin with acts of compassion and service. What we must do as an organization however, is attempt to prepare the hearts and minds of those volunteers with the thoughts, questions, and resources they need to move beyond the symptoms if there are opportunities there. It’s the principles of relationship building that sustain our efforts. The situations will always drive us crazy. It’s the gospel that we need to stay committed. 

At the end of the day, community service and the gospel need to be united. Without the gospel truth of reconciliation between us, God, and neighbor, our acts of service will fail to provide lasting change in our community and most importantly, the thing we can control, our spiritual relationship with our Creator. 

The things I’ve learned through NeighborLink projects have almost always been about my own transformation. I’m working out the gospel truth that God wants to renew by using me to love others all the time. I just hope I’m able to impact others in the process. 

Here are a couple of videos I shared that we’ve been creating to support some of these thoughts. 

The Power in Showing Up from NeighborLink Network on Vimeo.

Living In the Tension of Serving from NeighborLink Network on Vimeo.