In the fall of 2023, I got an email that changed how I see my community.
The church I had planted and pastored alongside my husband had become known in our community for serving. We were 15 years into a yearly school supply drive that served less resourced children and families so that no child in our district would start the school year without supplies.
We sponsored a local apartment as a temporary stay for families who are housing insecure. We challenged the Christ followers at our church to live as missionaries in their everyday communities. And we used CarePortal to help us see and serve the most vulnerable children in our community.
And still, I had room to grow in how I experienced and saw my community.
I answered the email from a local school social worker who put in a CarePortal request for rent help for a single mom in our school district. Mom had missed some work and was behind on the rent. I made arrangements to provide rent help.
While speaking with this single mom caring for three teenagers, I asked her if she needed anything else. She said she needed groceries. I put together a few bags of groceries and delivered them to her apartment. She opened the door and invited me in.
I walked to the kitchen counter and she quickly tried to move things around to make room on the counter for the groceries. The apartment was not only messy, but dirty. She was embarrassed. We introduced ourselves, exchanged pleasantries, and then she gestured to the mess around her and said, “This is what depression looks like.” With those words of transparency, a meaningful connection was made.
I have now been friends with this mom and her children for nearly two years. I have seen her on good days and bad days. We have had some important conversations over lunch, at the laundromat, on the phone, and in the car. Around eight months after we met, we had our first spiritual conversation. And 12 months after we met, I prayed with her for the first time.
In some ways her life is like mine. We are members of the same community. Her children attend the same schools my children went to. She would do anything for her kids. She wants to make a difference and help other people. And like me, she has good days and bad days.
But in other ways, her life is very different from mine. She is a member of the working poor. She works, but still lives below the poverty line. She lacks stability for herself and her children because her income is not enough to maintain housing, transportation, and medical benefits. She is smart and resourceful. She can tell you what food pantries are open on what days but often can’t get there because she recently lost her car.
Sometimes I am unsure of when and how to help her and her kids. Sometimes I don’t want to see and know the difficulties of her everyday life. It hurts me to know how hard life is for her and her children. It’s frustrating to know that I cannot fix the difficult problems of working poverty.
But here is what I can do: I can be a friend. I can listen. I can serve. I can love. I can show up. I can SEE her and her children. I can know that they are there, even when I might prefer to pretend they aren’t.
Knowing this mom has broadened my perspective of my community.
It’s different knowing someone versus providing necessities without meaningful connection. When I give things (money, groceries, beds), that matters, it’s important and it helps me grow. But when I enter into meaningful connection with a person in poverty over time, I am profoundly impacted. This has been one of the primary keys to my personal discipleship. Because I interact with this mom several times a week, my heart of stone is transformed into a heart of flesh. I grow in compassion and love.
This has not only been true for me, it has been true for many in my church. People who choose to serve the most vulnerable children in our local community, experience character transformation and calling activation, two primary outcomes of discipleship.
There have been seasons of my journey as a follower of Jesus when I dialed into Bible study as the primary means of discipleship. Knowing the Bible is necessary, because when we read it, we encounter God, and encounters with God and Jesus change us. But I have been caught in reading the Bible and not putting into practice what I have read. That is like reading the rules of a board game without ever playing the game. You really learn the game, understand the game, and get good at the game, when you play the game.
Serving the most vulnerable in my community is playing the game, putting into practice the words of Jesus.
I am reminded of the parable of the good Samaritan. When asked what must I do to inherit eternal life, Jesus answered, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind; and, Love your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:27
The expert in the law then asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?” Jesus answers the question with the story of the Good Samaritan who encounters a man who had been stripped, beaten, and left for dead. The priest came upon the man and walked by on the other side of the road, the Levite came upon the man and walked by on the other side of the road. The Samarian came upon the man and cared for the man, bandaged his wounds, and put him up at the local inn.
And Jesus says, “Who is the neighbor?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” Luke 10:37
In my years as a pastor, I often felt slightly offended by this passage. It doesn’t paint the clergy in a good light does it? Both the priest and the Levite were not good neighbors. But recently, I have been considering that perhaps it is not a slight against the pastor – those vocationally employed by the church. Perhaps it is just an observation. The pastor is doing a lot of other things to care for the community. Instead of waiting for or expecting the pastor to be the neighbor, anyone (even a Samaritan, who in the days Jesus was speaking, was not a valued member of the community) can be a neighbor.
Anyone can be a neighbor. It is not up to the paid people, it is up to you and me. And when we serve and make a meaningful connection, we become a neighbor, a person of peace, purveyors of love. And in doing so, we might think we are saving someone else, but in reality we are saving ourselves.
