“I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for the least of these; you did not do for me.” Matthew 25:45
God wants us to do something for the least of these! The church has been called to respond to the needs of those within the body of believers and those in the community.
The little things that we do to others are important, because we represent Christ. God has been so gracious to us. All that we have is not ours because we are better than others. We have prayed to God; He has heard us and He will also bless others through us.
In trying to extend our blessings to those in need we must not make people feel that they are really vulnerable or that they cannot do a thing. We need to identify the need and see how this can be used as an opportunity to reach people with development and the gospel.
It reflects the ministry Jesus started himself by feeding the hungry, healing the sick and caring for the disadvantaged and the widows. He accommodated the lepers and others who were not supposed to come near him according to the Jewish culture. In all the gospels, it clearly indicates what Jesus did while he was on earth, especially during the three years of his ministry. We have to take from them and learn from Jesus what He did.
An example is the feeding of the five thousand found in Mark 6:30-44, John 6:1-13 and Mathew 14:13-21. In analyzing this feeding, we see Jesus did not have the food himself. He asked the disciples to feed the crowd. The disciples then wondered where they could get the food to feed the big crowd. Jesus then asked to know what they had. They turned to the crowd and a small boy had his lunch - five small loaves of bread and two small fish. That is all that was in the crowd. Jesus took it, blessed it and it multiplied.
Mark 6:34-44 demonstrates the principles that Jesus used to solve a community problem. There was a big crowd that day. Although the Bible gives only the number of men, since a boy had bread and fish then it is safe to assume that there were also women, young people and children. This was a big community.
The following were principles used to organize the community work plan.
The identification of needs:
a) Lack of community organization (sheep without a shepherd, verse 34)
b) Hunger (verse 36)
c) Lack of shelter (Luke 9:12 – a parallel passage)
In the passage, the most important need was food (verse 36).
The passage outlined two solutions:
a. Send the people away (promote disorganization, verse 36);
b. Feed the people (promote organization, verse 37).
It then presents two types of leadership:
a. Leaders who say: “It is not our problem. Send the people away and let them find their own solution.” This means we are members of the community but we do not care about the community problems.
b. Leaders who say: “Let us feed them. We are part of this community and community problems are our problems.”
Identification of resources:
Any time we talk about resources, one of the answers we get is: “We are poor; we do not have anything; we need your help.”
In this passage in verse 38 Jesus asked the disciples, “How much bread do you have? Go and see.” This last phrase is an order that means open your eyes and see what you have around you. God will multiply what we have no matter how small. We have to learn this from Jesus. It is not a matter of looking for someone to bring things to us but by using what we have, even in small amounts, we can do something.
In this passage the resources that were available were five loaves of bread and two fish. From the five loaves of bread and two fish, Jesus prayed and it was multiplied. The people were fed and there were leftovers. Which means with the little we have we can do much because God will multiply what we have.
From the beginning of our church, compassionate ministry was a focus. The denomination’s founder, Phineas Bresee, had two pillars of ministry: holiness preaching and a passion to meet the people’s physical needs. Before each service the pastor welcomed those who arrived. If there was one that came in ragged clothing, the pastor embraced him and gave him the best seat in the sanctuary. When the pastor went on pastoral visits he carried a little bit of money, but he never returned home with it. He knew there were those who needed it.
If we follow Bresee’s example, as the church we need to consider the needy inside and outside the church. In building the Kingdom of God, we have to consider those who are out there so that we can bring them to the church.
Take for example fishing. We have several places where we can fish: We have a dam or pond with fish that have been brought in fro
m the big river or lake; we have rivers, lakes and even the ocean where we have many fish. If you need fish, you go and fish in the river so that you can get all types of fish. If you go to the pond or dam, you will get fish, yes, but maybe only one type.
Sometimes we are so concerned with those who are in the church, we forget that outside we have those who have not even read the Bible and they do not know Christ. Our responsibility is to bring those people into the church and disciple them so that they can disciple others.
This is where we get compassion evangelism. We deal with the whole person, not only spiritual but also physical. Three words that convey the idea of compassion well are formation, information and transformation. There should be formation of people by touching their lives; and they need to be informed by giving them the message, which is God’s Word. Then their lives will be transformed.
When their lives are transformed they will be new creatures in Christ. We can then disciple them and lead them to disciple others.
-- Elizabeth (Bessie) Musimbi is the Nazarene Compassionate Ministries (NCM) coordinator for the Africa East Field. These thoughts are taken from a booklet she wrote.
-- Photos by Don Gardner, Africa East Field strategy coordinator. (Food distribution - Ewaso Ngiro - January 28, 2010)