Insiders and Outsiders: Part 2

Now the tax collectors and sinners were all gathering around to hear Jesus. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” –Luke 15:1-2

By Bishop Mike Rinehart

Who was Jesus hardest on in the gospels? Jesus was a magnet to outsiders, and he took a lot of heat from the insiders. He loved them all, but seems to be exasperated with the insiders. When I ask people, church folk and unchurched folk, “Who was Jesus hardest on in the gospels, “sinners” or “Pharisees?”, they all know the answer. It’s funny. Everyone knows.

Jesus enters Jericho and he immediately gravitates to the most disliked person in town. It just so happens he is up in a tree. Zacchaeus is drawn to Jesus as well. He has become rich collecting taxes for an occupying army. Zacchaeus admits openly to fraud. Jesus goes to his house for dinner. Reading the story carefully in Luke 19, “all” begin to grumble. If you pay attention to outsiders, the insiders will grumble. Expect it. Love the insiders anyway. Pay attention to the outsiders anyway. Live in the tension, knowing that it leads to a cross.

What does it mean, to become focused on reaching outsiders? No one can give you a checklist. There is no recipe. One cannot spell out what it means to love the “other” in every context and every place. There simply are no shortcuts. Here it is: You simply, honestly, really, really have to care for the outsider in your context. If you care for the outsider, you will get to know the outsider. Once you know the outsider in your context, what you need to do in your place will start to become clear.

An analogy. Someone may say: “The key to a successful marriage is to love your spouse.” It’s obvious, but true. Then you might ask, “What do you mean by love your spouse? Be specific.” But no one can tell you exactly what things you need to do to love your spouse. What does your spouse need?  You have to get to know your spouse, know his or her needs, joys, hopes, sorrows. There is no shortcut. People can give you hints, but you simply have to know the one you love, in order to love fully.

There are, however, some basic human needs which you could meet for your spouse. Begin with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Food. Shelter. Gifts. But what kind of gifts? There is work to do. Love takes effort. It is the same with outsiders. You can begin with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but you will have to get to know the stranger in order to reach out to the stranger.

Once someone starts making suggestions we move from gospel to law, and it gives the illusion that you don’t have to do the hard work of getting to know the other. Just do this list of things. It doesn’t work that way. The truth is, there are no shortcuts to becoming totally invested in the well-being of the other. There are no shortcuts to getting to know your neighbor, those outside your walls, the marginalized on the fringes, the outcast.

After talking about focusing on outsiders, one caring and committed church member said to me, “But we already give to the food pantry.” She was saying, in essence, “Look, we already do care for the outsider and it hasn’t improved our membership.” Several responses:

First, the needy are not just the hungry. There are a lot of people out there who have few material needs, but are hemorrhaging from spiritual needs. Every church should support a food pantry, or become one. Feeding the hungry is part of Jesus’ agenda if one takes Matthew 25 seriously. But people are also lonely, grieving, searching, broken and in debt up to their eyeballs. They are wounded from divorce. They are trying to figure out how to make blended families work. They are trying to find meaning. So, while we start with Maslow, we can’t leave it at that.

Second, loving the outsider is not a membership strategy. Loving your neighbor may or may not grow membership. It must, however, be our priority. Proclaiming and living the gospel is about following Christ, regardless of the consequences. Peter preached and three thousand were baptized. Stephen preached and he was stoned to death. Churches that really care about the world are magnetic, just as Jesus’ ministry was magnetic, but there are no guarantees. Context matters.

Third, taking food to a food pantry, while a very kind thing, is not getting to know your neighbor. One can give to a food pantry without even meeting the neighbor. Giving to someone else’s food pantry could even be a strategy for avoiding meeting the neighbor. We can feel good about ourselves for being “charitable,” without actually having to get into the messy business of engaging the other. It also affords us the luxury of giving to those in need without questioning the underlying realities that lead to poverty.

If we don’t care enough about the outsider to get to know him or her, then anything we do will be patronizing. It will seem like a hand-out. It will seem like we are just trying to feel good, or pad our rolls. Outsiders can smell that a mile away. If the purpose for doing evangelism, to use insider terminology, is institutional survival, if it is to feel better about ourselves, to find people to sit on our committees, or to pay our bills, they will not experience this as the Christ who comes to save. If we do not care to know those outside the church, they will not experience the “love that will not let me go,” the love that draws me irresistibly, the hope of the world.

My first call was to a congregation in Iowa, St. Paul Lutheran Church in Davenport. I was privileged to serve there. I learned volumes with these folks. One thing this congregation did each winter was shovel the sidewalks of the houses adjacent to the property. They also shoveled the driveways of any widows nearby. If this brings a tear to your eye, it should. This is the kind of thing a caring community ought to do. But it was also serving a purpose. It was caring, but it was also a very conscious witness to the community. It’s not easy to live next door to an active church. People are always parking in front of your house, sometimes in front of your driveway. There are cars everywhere, youth group kids prowling around the neighborhood doing all kinds of crazy things, you name it. This church understood they needed to be an asset to the neighborhood, not a liability. There ought to be some benefits to living next door to a church.

This wouldn’t work where I live. We have no snow. You have to know your neighbors, and be attentive.

No one can tell you what to do, exactly, but a few ideas on how to get to know your neighbor might be helpful.

1. Do a survey of your community once a year. It really doesn’t matter what you ask, it just matters that you ask. Show some interest. Maybe it looks like a door-to-door survey in the old-fashioned way, with the clipboard. Don’t ask people churchy questions, but questions like, “What do you perceive to be the top three problems people in our neighborhood/community are facing?” Or questions about family life. Take time to learn. Listen. Remember names. Leave a card or a brochure. Caring conversations will happen. Train your callers.

2. Reroot in the community. Invite a few neighbors to the church for a conversation about life. Also invite the mayor, if you’re in a community small enough that the mayor might come. Invite the local police chief or precinct officer. Invite a public defender and a few teachers from the school system, and so on. Gather these folks together and talk about the assets and challenges they’re facing. You will learn volumes, and position yourself as a healing center of the community. Here’s a question I read once: How effective would Jesus’ preaching of the Kingdom of God have been had it not been accompanied by his ministry of healing in the community? One church in our neck of the woods noticed the astronomically high divorce rate, and began a series of divorce care groups/classes. Their electronic marquis on their sign lists the time the Divorce Care group is available. They are announcing to the community that this is the place where you will find healing for the sorrows in your life. This is a place where you will not be judged.

3. Minister to your visitors. Getting to know outsiders begins with connecting with those who show up on your doorstep. When someone visits a church, they are telling you “We’re looking for something.”  By visiting, they have already shown interest. Every person who walks through your doors is looking for something. Why did they come? Have they just moved? Moving is near the top of the list of stressors. Are they looking for friends? Are they survivors of a church fight elsewhere? Have they recently been through a divorce? What’s going on? Care enough to find out. Organize for this. Contacting the visitors is more than recruiting. It’s ministry. Callers need to be attuned to the spiritual needs of those they’re calling. Whether the pastor calls, or trained lay callers, the point is someone cares.

At some point, there has to be human contact with a real, live, human person. There are a lot of churches where this is not the case. You can visit a church and not talk to a single person, and not receive a visit or a phone call after. I know it seems inconceivable, but it’s happened to me. As a visitor, I was even ignored at the passing of the peace at one church my family and I visited.

Loving our neighbors means getting to know our neighbors. Survey. Listen. Reroot in the community. Follow up with the visitors that show up at your church’s doorstep. But don’t stop there. There are many ways to get to know the outsider. Engage, and the God stuff will happen in the mix.

At the end of the story in Luke 15, Zacchaeus gives away half of his stuff, then agrees to repay those he has cheated fourfold. Then Jesus says something astounding: “Today salvation has come to this household.” Jesus had to endure the grumbling, but in so doing, a life was transformed. Evangelically-minded people live for this. Transformed lives are what make this worthwhile. Lives turned from being inwardly focused to being outwardly focused, by churches that have been turned from being inwardly focused, to being outwardly focused.

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