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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Overt evangelism is absolutely fine and to be commended.

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Originally posted by Humble Servant:
This is a general question about our motivation for offering help to others in need and then using that situation as an opportunity for evangelism. Do we have a responsibility to keep our voluntary work separate from explicit evangelism? Or do we have an obligation to God to do the two things hand-in-hand?

... But when we are showing God’s love by offering our time and skills to people in need, is it right to target those same people in such an explicit way? It makes me feel that our motivation for helping is not pure generosity, but a concern for building church numbers off the back of others’ misfortune.

... After all, Christ came to bring good news to the poor. If Christ is good news for me, shouldn’t I be keen to share His gospel with everyone under every circumstance, particularly those with debt problems?

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This dilemma has been central to the last 30 years of my life as we worked with refugees and other immigrants from Asia. We accidentally planted a church (Mr. Lamb had specifically promised me not to do so just then, but woman proposes and God disposes). And most of those who joined came from the ranks of those we helped.

We were concerned from the beginning about the possibility of "rice Christians"--false conversions done to secure some advantage or simply to thank the do-gooder. And so to avoid that, we took several steps.

First, we made sure that all of our human care services were open to people of any or no faith, and we let that be known. There were people who doubted us from the beginning, but as time went on, the community saw that we meant what we said. Nobody received special treatment for converting. Nobody was left out in the cold for not doing so. The conversion rate settled down to what, 1 out of 10 maybe? that we helped. The other nine went away with good memories of us and the church, and a strong tendency to drop back in when they needed more help. Plus, they recommended us to all their friends, Christian or not, indifferently, and so we had even more people coming through the (emergency room) door.

We never made our faith a secret. We never hid the fact that we thought Jesus Christ was the best gift they could have from us (okay, from God), or that we rejoiced when people came to faith. And yet everybody knew that they kept their own agency and adulthood when we were helping them, and that they were free to disagree with us about God or basically anything else. And boy, did they.
We even had some people insult us throughout the community and then show up the next week to ask some major favor. People, meh.
But based on that experience, I'd say that if you are straightforward and open about your faith, AND about the fact that you will serve them regardless of the position they take on Christianity--well, then, things will work out pretty well. Rather like the Salvation Army, I believe. No one takes them for secular activists, and yet plenty of people access their services with or without conversion.

Bottom line: If they know you are there and you care about them, they will come. Whether they come to Christ is between the Holy Spirit and them. You're just providing a meeting point.

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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Missed edit window - I meant to add that, though these projects are "social", it is evangelicals who are providing most of the impetus and personnel. I think this is because (a) the evangelicals are often strongly-motivated to "do stuff" and (b) their churches tend to be both larger and younger than many others.

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Originally posted by Lamb Chopped:

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Originally posted by Humble Servant:
This is a general question about our motivation for offering help to others in need and then using that situation as an opportunity for evangelism. Do we have a responsibility to keep our voluntary work separate from explicit evangelism? Or do we have an obligation to God to do the two things hand-in-hand?

... But when we are showing God’s love by offering our time and skills to people in need, is it right to target those same people in such an explicit way? It makes me feel that our motivation for helping is not pure generosity, but a concern for building church numbers off the back of others’ misfortune.

... After all, Christ came to bring good news to the poor. If Christ is good news for me, shouldn’t I be keen to share His gospel with everyone under every circumstance, particularly those with debt problems?

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This dilemma has been central to the last 30 years of my life as we worked with refugees and other immigrants from Asia. We accidentally planted a church (Mr. Lamb had specifically promised me not to do so just then, but woman proposes and God disposes). And most of those who joined came from the ranks of those we helped.

We were concerned from the beginning about the possibility of "rice Christians"--false conversions done to secure some advantage or simply to thank the do-gooder. And so to avoid that, we took several steps.

First, we made sure that all of our human care services were open to people of any or no faith, and we let that be known. There were people who doubted us from the beginning, but as time went on, the community saw that we meant what we said. Nobody received special treatment for converting. Nobody was left out in the cold for not doing so. The conversion rate settled down to what, 1 out of 10 maybe? that we helped. The other nine went away with good memories of us and the church, and a strong tendency to drop back in when they needed more help. Plus, they recommended us to all their friends, Christian or not, indifferently, and so we had even more people coming through the (emergency room) door.

We never made our faith a secret. We never hid the fact that we thought Jesus Christ was the best gift they could have from us (okay, from God), or that we rejoiced when people came to faith. And yet everybody knew that they kept their own agency and adulthood when we were helping them, and that they were free to disagree with us about God or basically anything else. And boy, did they.
We even had some people insult us throughout the community and then show up the next week to ask some major favor. People, meh.
But based on that experience, I'd say that if you are straightforward and open about your faith, AND about the fact that you will serve them regardless of the position they take on Christianity--well, then, things will work out pretty well. Rather like the Salvation Army, I believe. No one takes them for secular activists, and yet plenty of people access their services with or without conversion.

Bottom line: If they know you are there and you care about them, they will come. Whether they come to Christ is between the Holy Spirit and them. You're just providing a meeting point.

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Two extremely excellent posts about this topic!

sabine

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"Hunger looks like the man that hunger is killing." Eduardo Galeano

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Your experience may well be different to mine. All I can say is that, in our local context, the majority (but not all, by any means) of folk helping in the Night Shelter or the new Homeless Project or the Street Pastors seem to come from the more evangelical churches. That could simply be because those churches have more younger, active people in them.

It could well be that lots of Christians from other churches are helping in other projects and scenarios not specifically run by the churches - I wouldn't know. In any case, I suspect that the divisions between "mainline" and "evangelical" may be more pronounced in the US than in England.

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:

CAP is doing good work. There is no compulsion to convert, the service is provided for everyone. Sometimes lifestyles change because people have converted. What's wrong with that?

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
It isn't about compulsion, it is about the whole way that the thing is framed - for those who run the debt service, for those looking to run a service and the materials given to people who are on courses.

I dispute that CAP is doing good work. They are very visible, but there are a whole lot of other organisations (particularly secular ones) who are quietly getting on with doing a much better job without foisting unnecessary bible study at every opportunity.

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
It is honestly framed.

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
They call themselves Christians Against Poverty. They say on the front page that they want to help people free themselves from debt and to share the good news with them. They are up front about it. They say clearly that they work with churches.

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Originally posted by ExclamationMark:
"By all means save some" That's fine so long as overt evangelism is not involved - or so it seems .....

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Originally posted by The5thMary:

In Atlanta, GA and Seattle, WA and probably other cities in the U.S., there are Union Gospel Missions that help the teeming mobs of homeless folks that are everywhere. They feed people, provide emergency shelter, offer computer training, etc. All well and good, right? It would be if they fed the hungry without strings. In order to get ANY kind of food, the homeless have to attend church services. No church attendance, no food.

This, to me, is completely against what Jesus's life and mission were all about. As far as I know, Jesus didn't require hungry people to jump through hoops to get some bread.

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Originally posted by Martin60:

Debt is a good one. It's part of the evil we create at the micro, personal level that has overwhelming, synergistic power. Debt in business is something else. People DO need deliverance from, saving from, debt. Buying anything on credit apart from a house, a new car (even then); paying interest, is insane.

A generously orthodox, open, inclusive mission for that, involving the use and deconstruction of spiritual language as I have done, would be good news.

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Originally posted by The5thMary:
In Atlanta, GA and Seattle, WA and probably other cities in the U.S., there are Union Gospel Missions that help the teeming mobs of homeless folks that are everywhere. They feed people, provide emergency shelter, offer computer training, etc. All well and good, right? It would be if they fed the hungry without strings. In order to get ANY kind of food, the homeless have to attend church services. No church attendance, no food.

This, to me, is completely against what Jesus's life and mission were all about. As far as I know, Jesus didn't require hungry people to jump through hoops to get some bread.

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Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
Your experience may well be different to mine. All I can say is that, in our local context, the majority (but not all, by any means) of folk helping in the Night Shelter or the new Homeless Project or the Street Pastors seem to come from the more evangelical churches. That could simply be because those churches have more younger, active people in them.

It could well be that lots of Christians from other churches are helping in other projects and scenarios not specifically run by the churches - I wouldn't know. In any case, I suspect that the divisions between "mainline" and "evangelical" may be more pronounced in the US than in England.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
Saying you work with a church is a long way from saying that one of your core values is to save the lost.

They say "we bring good news", not "we share the good news".

I think that is dog-whistle talk. It suggests to Christians, especially evangelical Christians, that they do evangelism, but to anyone whose primary preoccupation is a mountain of debt it means "we've got some good news for you about your debt". It is ambiguous and in my view deliberately so.

I continue to be disturbed by the complete absence of anything approaching a list of core values anywhere I can find on the site, whereas the OP quotes (from where?) a core value that unambiguously includes "saving the lost".

I don't know anything about CAP beyond what I've read here, but the lack of up-frontness about this value combined with my own experience of evangelistically-inclined Christians in social action adds up to a significant concern on my part.

It is not enough to say "they do good work". Some of the results may well be good, but as discussed on the recent thread on manipulation, transparency of purpose is an important part of integrity.

Having a desire to save the lost is perhaps not a bad thing, but being covert about it is, in my view.

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:

quote:

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Originally posted by The5thMary:

In Atlanta, GA and Seattle, WA and probably other cities in the U.S., there are Union Gospel Missions that help the teeming mobs of homeless folks that are everywhere. They feed people, provide emergency shelter, offer computer training, etc. All well and good, right? It would be if they fed the hungry without strings. In order to get ANY kind of food, the homeless have to attend church services. No church attendance, no food.

This, to me, is completely against what Jesus's life and mission were all about. As far as I know, Jesus didn't require hungry people to jump through hoops to get some bread.

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And more than a whiff of Victorian-style moralising as per Orwell's Down and out in London and Paris.

But even this isn't on the same level as a service which is projecting itself as being for the whole community and which (to some extent) receives blessing from local and national government - if not actual funds from them.

One thing to be offering something from within your religious community. An individual can take or leave that. Another thing to be offering something which only those in-the-know are aware is actually seen as an opportunity to sell the church membership.

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
I really don't see any covert behaviour. They seem to want to help people both practically and spiritually.

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As was pointed out on the thread on manipulation, motivation is not the same thing as transparency of purpose.

They probably do "want to help people", but the stated core value of "saving the lost" as reported by Humble Servant in the OP and referenced elsewhere (by critics) is not present on their main website.

They are not transparent about it.

I keep pointing this out and nobody seems to think that's in the slightest bit odd.

It.Isn't.There.

No.Value.Statements.Are.There.At.All.

Covert means

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not openly acknowledged or displayed

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Christians Against Poverty offers a free debt counselling service to individuals and families releasing them from the pressure of debt through a combination of advice, financial education, budgeting and insolvency services. operating through a network of local centres which are run in partnership with local churches, we aim to help anyone regardless of their religious beliefs

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Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
The mission center that I am involved in serves lunch every week day (no preaching), breakfast on Saturday (no preaching), a dinner on Thursday beginning with a Gospel reading, a short explanation of the story, and a compact Eucharist, all the worship part taking fifteen minutes. The Communion table is completely open, no one is pressured to partake. People who know the set-up may come in at 6 PM for food and bypass the service at 5:45. The vicar is completely friendly and welcoming to everyone without strings. But the gist is that most of us are doing this because Jesus taught us to love our neighbors. We may as well own up to that. And giving people the opportunity to hear about his love is part of what we do. Sometimes I get the feeling that some people living in a very secular culture are a bit embarrassed to let others in on their faith.

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Originally posted by Lyda*Rose:
Sometimes I get the feeling that some people living in a very secular culture are a bit embarrassed to let others in on their faith.

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
As stated earlier, I think the litmus test for this on a personal level is whether you feel you have successfully completed your ministry effort even if you have not explicitly mentioned the Gospel; or is any social care you provide ultimately nothing more than a means to "saving the lost". Have you failed if you simply give a cup of water in the name of Jesus?

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
... no doubt they try to 'serve the community', but without manpower and resources their neutral Christian ethos is unlikely to predominate in the situations where there's hard work to be done. I've seen this issue in my own city.

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Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
If it is in the name of Jesus, it can't be wrong to mention the name of Jesus.

This doesn't imply that the prime motivation for the act is to convert the recipient, nor that a cup of water would be refused unless Jesus was acknowledged by the person who needed it.

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Originally posted by Enoch:


There's another thread running at the moment about the canonisation of Mother Theresa. She certainly neither hid her faith under a bushel nor that it motivated what she was doing.

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Originally posted by SusanDoris:
'The lost' have been mentioned quite a lot in this thread, so I wonder if CAP and members here have a specific definition of this phrase?

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Do no send to know whom they mean - they mean you Susan!

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

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Originally posted by Enoch:


There's another thread running at the moment about the canonisation of Mother Theresa. She certainly neither hid her faith under a bushel nor that it motivated what she was doing.

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Mother Theresa's faith didn't motivate her work? That surprises me.

Perhaps what you mean is that the movement she founded wasn't driven by a concern for evangelism. Maybe not. Yet it attracted nuns, volunteers and funding from around the world. Unfortunately, the social venture started by your local non-evangelistic Methodist church is unlikely to have any similar appeal or impact!

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Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:

But the recipients of charity aren't stupid, are they?

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