Pastor: Community Involvement Central to Christian Ministry
Community involvement should not be merely an afterthought in church ministry or even one of its aspects. Serving the community lies at the heart of everything the church is and does, according to pastor Ed Delph of Church@Community.
In fact, pastors are "supposed" to equip Christians not primarily to serve better in church but to serve better in their workplaces. This is what Ephesians 4:11-13 teaches, Dr. Delph noted. He highlighted that pastors equip God's people to do their works of service.
Lay Christians play a no less important role than pastors. Using the nation of Israel as a model for God's people, he pointed out that God instructed but one tribe, Levi, to take up professional roles in the tabernacle or temple. As for the other eleven, they were to take up professional roles outside the tabernacle or temple, as working people.
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"They made their living out in the community," he said.
It is also clear from Israel's model of the division of labor that God's working people are primarily to do just that – work in their respective spheres, helped by the priests and Levites. He described the eleven tribes of working Israelites as "living Gospels" to all people in the context of the community.
Indeed, "everybody who is a Christian is a full-time minister," the 61-year-old pastor expressed. Church members "can become pastors to their employees, their customers, the people they order supplies from."
While many believe it is the pastor's role to equip working people to be ushers at church, he said, "important as that is, it's not [the working person's] ministry." The working person can "serve in church, but his ministry is in the community."
And that is true of the bulk of Christians. Most of them serve in church, but their ministry is in the community, he highlighted.
Describing the scope of the ministry of working people, he said, "It's the people you meet. It's the job you're at. It's leading by influence.
"Many times, actions speak louder than words."
Delph was speaking to The Christian Post in a recent interview. He was in Singapore for several speaking engagements.
The role of working Christians is to hear the sermon on Sunday and go out into the community on Monday, he expressed.
"All there is to do is just be themselves, just be people of Christian values, Christian wisdom, Christian influence and lead by example, in other words be salt and light," he said.
And so churches "have to be very intentional and deliberate in equipping [members] to do the work of the ministry outside of the four walls" of the church, he pointed out. Churches need to equip their members to be ministers in their respective vocations.
The Old Testament demonstrates how King Solomon helped the Queen of Sheba resolve her deepest questions. Just like that, influential Christians are able to use their wisdom to help solve community problems. Delph himself has been promoting Christian values, and beneficiaries have found that adopting such values leads to success. This has further increased his influence, he noted.
But in case anybody should misunderstand, he clarified that this role is one of positive contribution.
"We're not talking conquest, we're talking contribution," he said. "We're not talking domination, we're talking liberation, we're setting people free."
In order for Christians to make a positive impact in society, they need to gain favor not just with God but with people as well.
"Jesus used wisdom which created influence or stature and favor with God, favor with man," he said. And so it is important for Christians to ensure that they are leading by influence, example and actions rather than words, he emphasized.
The church in action
Highlighting some examples of how he has seen churches contribute to their communities, he mentioned his former church in Phoenix, Ariz.
For a couple of years consecutively, church members reached out to residents shivering in winter desert temperatures in long queues outside stores on Black Friday, the biggest sales day of the year in America. So the church members prepared coffee and hot chocolate and gave each person a cup to keep them warm. Where the opportunity arose, church members would share their faith.
In another place, a suburb in the same state, 10 churches came together to raise funds to rent an office and hire a clinical psychologist to help the many people there with counseling problems. Seeing what was being done, the police helped bring more people to the clinic. Other churches have offered alternatives on Halloween.
Dr. Delph suggested a few ways that churches could get involved in their communities. They could clean up garbage in the street or a park. Churches that organise evangelistic events could also prepare free meals for the poor. The possibilities in getting Christians "out of the seat, on the street" are limited only by creativity, he expressed.
"Don't find fault, find a remedy," he said. "Find a need, meet it, and especially in the community."
Asked how churches could become more involved in their communities, he pointed out the importance of awareness and revelation from God. It is not an issue of knowledge.
"We have to make people aware of those needs out there and aware enough to where they are willing to do something about it," he said.
How can churches avoid the extremes of social activism and of becoming holy huddles? He highlighted consistent Bible reading and getting hold of good resources on the topic. Churches also need Christian leaders who can challenge them to be involved in the community. Naturally they would need an evangelist on their board to keep them aimed outward.
But most importantly, elders and pastors need to cultivate a heart for the community.
"If they get a heart then everybody in the church will get a heart," he said. Even if a layperson gets the vision, the church leadership may not agree with it. There is even the possibility of misunderstanding, he explained.
Growing a grown-up church
During the interview, Delph told the story of how he became involved in his ministry of challenging churches for greater community involvement.
One of the reasons was that the rapidly growing church he pioneered had stopped growing after reaching 1,000 attendees in a few years. Then the growth stagnated.
The church leaders did a study and asked church members why they stopped bringing their friends. They replied that they had already brought all the Christians they know. What about their non-Christian neighbours, the leaders asked. To that the members replied that their non-Christian neighbours would never be able to know what was going on in the church.
"We had tongues, we had prophecy, we had an hour's worth of worship, an hour's worth of message, an hour's worth of ministry," said Delph. "That's when it really started to affect me."
He started praying and heard God tell him to return the church to the community. "You stole it from the community," he remembered hearing God say. "It's always there for the community but you stole it and used it for your own means."
It seemed to him that God wanted him to create space for the community. He was to create space for non-Christians by "giving time, giving relationship, and giving atmosphere." This entailed speaking the "right" language that non-Christians can understand.
"If I go up to somebody's who's unsaved down here, some businessman and say, 'Okay, you've got to eat Jesus' flesh and drink His blood' and if you say, 'Have you been washed in the blood?' probably you're going to shut him down," he said. "He doesn't get it yet, it's not a concept to him, it's literal to him."
Another reason was that the church leadership was beginning to feel a sense of frustration. He felt that God wanted the church to grow up, to get married, have kids and change diapers. Instead of getting "transfer growth" from other churches, God wanted the church to experience "new conversion growth." God did not want the church to remain a "mousetrap" for Christians, he expressed. He wanted the church to be Christ-centred rather than Christian-centred.
His international speaking engagements alongside Ed Silvoso further convinced Dr. Delph that he needed to focus not just on his church but on the church. With that Dr. Delph resigned from his role as pastor in 1996 and went on to start Church@Community.
The role of preaching
Where does preaching fit into the picture of a community-oriented church? Delph emphasised that his model simply rearranges the order of evangelism and community involvement.
The conventional model is to prioritise the preaching of the Gospel. His model involves community involvement and in the midst of that finding opportunities to proclaim the Gospel. This was used by the Celtic church in the earlier centuries of Christianity.
He is aware of concerns about promoting a form of outreach devoid of the preaching of the Gospel. His model is not just a matter of doing social services, he explained. It involves taking the 'next step' in outreach. Influence opens the way for Christians to share the Gospel with others.
"It's love in action," he said. "It's presenting Christ in both word and deed, not just word [or] deed [alone]."
Most people today need to see deeds, he highlighted. "They need to see it, they need to feel it, they need to see Christ expressed in love, they need to know" this, he pointed out.
Most "people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care," he expressed. The conventional evangelistic approach, telling people to turn or burn, get right or get left, get saved is all directive, one-way and demand with no influence, he observed.
"We need to have influence," he said. "So in today's world … you have to do it with love first and that opens up a door, acts of kindness open minds which open hearts which open doors into people."
In short, Christians "have to be involved in and identifiable to the community," he summed up.
