This is the next instalment of the serialisation of my book – The Teeth of our Exertions – full details of which can be found here.
By this point, I am assuming that you have grasped the need to go to deprived communities and have understood both the cost and the joys of doing so. But what do we need personally when we go? Likewise, what do local churches in deprived communities need from the wider universal church?
Love the gospel
On a personal level, there are three broad things that we need. First, we need a proper understanding of the gospel. We have already seen that only a recognition of God’s grace to us will compel us to love people who, in the world’s eyes, are often entirely unlovable. But we need to properly understand the gospel itself if we are going to reach anybody in deprived communities.
The gospel is the simple message that we are, by nature, under God’s righteous wrath and only by faith in Jesus Christ can we have our sin forgiven and receive salvation in his name. No other gospel will do. We need a proper grasp of the lost estate facing people who reject Christ if we are to be moved to go to them. We should never seek to play down the seriousness of Hell or the judgement awaiting the lost because only such a horrendous reality will motivate us to go.
But merely knowing the seriousness of Hell, whilst it might motivate us to go, isn’t enough to see anybody saved. We must also realise the importance of making Christ known and the salvation that is found only in him. It is not our social works and youth events that will save anybody, it is only the gospel – focused upon the person of Jesus – that will lead anybody into the kingdom. It is not enough that we go, we must know the message that we proclaim and why it is, indeed, good news.
Love the lost
Second, we need a love for those who do not know Christ. We may well know the gospel but unless we have a genuine heart for the lost, we won’t be going anywhere. We can want to serve people for a whole host of unhelpful, ungodly reasons. For example, it is not uncommon for people to develop a ‘heart for the poor’ because it is an extension of their own saviour complex. Or, we can love the thought of helping people, or setting people on the straight and narrow, or teaching people, more than we actually love people themselves.
The fact is, having a heart for the poor is less important than having a heart for the lost.
When we truly understand the reality of the eternal punishment facing those heading for Hell, it suddenly matters not one jot what kind of lost people we are reaching. You may not feel you have a ‘heart for the poor’, but Jonah didn’t have much of a heart for Nineveh and yet the Lord was clear that was where he was to go. Mez McConnell has rightly said, ‘at the end of the day, it is being a person of real substance who loves Jesus and loves people that really matters’.[1]
[1] Ibid., p.141