RELATIONSHIPS MATTER

I know I am stating the obvious here, but let me say it anyway:  inreach and outreach is all about the Word and personal relationships.  I guess I’ve always known that, but being back in a mission congregation again for the past two years has shuffled that awareness to the top of the deck again.  God’s Word does all the work as it touches human hearts and the Holy Spirit works his will.  It often works so quietly and in such an “unflashy” way that it might seem that nothing is happening at all.  But it is.  God promised it would.  The conduits through which that Word usually flows from person to person are the personal relationships we have with people:  the neighbor I chat with or have over for something on the grill, the family whose children play with my grandson, the homebound and shut-in whom I visit, the troubled member of the church family who is struggling with some problem and needs some time with the pastor, the relationship that develops over the course of a Bible Information Class, the warm welcome extended to a member who hasn’t been in worship for a long time, a card dropped in the mail on some happy occasion or at the time some encouragement is needed – the examples are myriad.  Every one of those personal relationships becomes a way in which the Word can flow to those who need to hear it, both inside and outside the church.  And it isn’t just my relationship with those folks that matters – it is also (especially?) the relationships like this that develop between members of the congregation and between them and the folks in their circle of acquaintances and in their families who just don’t know Jesus or who don’t know him very well.  Paul had lots to say about this kind of thing.  I am reminded constantly why.  It is extremely important – in his day and in mine, in his ministry and in mine.

And beyond that, there are the needs and challenges of the church as it interacts with the secular world in doing its work.  Those relationships are important, too – with the men and women who serve in local government with whom I must interface to get things done, with local law enforcement, with the teller at my bank, with the check-out people at the grocery store, over lunch with the realtor who represented the seller in our purchase of a church, with that nice person in the township clerk’s office who helped me navigate some township paperwork, etc..  The more I get to know them and they me, the more connected I am to the community I serve and the more they view me and the church I serve as part of the community. 

I remind myself every time I walk out the door that developing those personal relationships is still as important as when my Boss cultivated them with a woman at a well, with a synagogue ruler, with a tax collector, with a local military/law enforcement officer, with a woman who’d lost her son, with a woman with a critically ill child .... well. you get the idea.  And far from being some “utilitarian” task I must accomplish for my “job,” cultivating these kinds of relationships brings people into my life who are a joy and blessing to me.  And who knows, but that even those relationships can become a viaduct for the Water of Life to flow to a parched and thirsting soul?  Yes, ministry – especially in a mission congregation – is all about the Word at work.  But it’s also about relationships.  And at least for this preacher, that makes this work all the more fun to do and amazing to watch as God works through his Word.