Since this is primarily a blog to support and encourage pastors and other ministry leaders, I like to be real about some of the issues we face. This post addresses one such issue.
A Dangerous Practice
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| Photo: Creative Commons |
One of the dangers faced by those of us in
ministry leadership is having a “stop and frisk” mentality. I am referring to
the well-known practice employed by Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City
Police (and many other agencies) in an approach to reducing their horrific violent
crime and murder rates. They did so by stopping, questioning, and frisking
people on the street to confiscate illegal weapons. While the policy arguably
did reduce murder rates, it led to significantly unjust racial profiling and
harmed the already tenuous relationship of communities of color with the
police.
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| Israeli tank Photo: Greg K. Dueker |
In this post, I am using “stop and frisk” as a
metaphor to describe what happens when a shepherd’s heart is either lifted up
in prideful self-righteousness or wounded by the pain, suffering, and trauma others
have inflicted upon those they love. I have been one of those shepherds. As
leaders, we don’t want to see the people we care for hurt so we can easily go
into “protect mode” failing to remember that we have been called to love our
enemies too. Our attitude can quickly become bounded by “us/them” feelings, thoughts,
and words that lead to unwelcoming actions. We can become more about circling the
wagons into a safe defensive perimeter that we fail to reach out in love and
understanding (even in disagreement) to our neighbors. Jesus reminds us repeatedly that safety is not the highest value in the kingdom. When you read the previous statement, what verses come to your mind? I have my working list, but I prefer to let you develop your own.
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| Photo by Paul M on Unsplash |
I remember a season, early in my marriage and
my ministry, when while I was not actually stopping and frisking people on the street,
I was ready to do so. I had become hyper-vigilant in a misguided effort to reduce
the human damage caused by lawbreaking. I viewed strangers as suspects until
they could prove otherwise. Though I was not deployed in any military conflict,
I became quite good at real-time threat assessment in order to protect those I
loved and to meet the challenge of the spiritual conflict that swirled around
us.
The problem with this approach is that it loves
people very selectively if at all. It does not love “others” as Jesus taught us
to love. A probing question we should answer is, have we received the love of
God so that we are content to keep it to ourselves, sharing only when seekers
come and ask? Or, has the love of God so transformed our hearts and lives that
we cannot help but share that steadfast love freely with others?
Wrestling Matches or Missional Welcome
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| Photo by Henry Hustava on Unsplash |
While there is a very real spiritual battle surrounding
us, we must remember that our weapons are not of this world and we are
not to use the world’s methods when contrary to the scriptures (e.g., 2 Cor.
10:3-4). It seems to me that we are prone to compartmentalize this concept,
limiting its declaration as applying only to literal weapons such as assault
rifles, tanks, dirty bombs, and drone strikes.
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| Photo: Randy Fath on Unsplash |
As Christian leaders who take the Bible
seriously, we know that the kingdom of God is not established by the coercive force
of human weapons but through sacrificial love (John 18:36; Rev. 12:11). We
would certainly not want to commit again the sins of the Spanish Conquistadors
and the accompanying Inquisition. However, do we engage those outside the
church, or those from other churches, using the thinking processes of the world
as a weapon? Paul writes in this passage that “we do not wrestle against
flesh and blood” (Eph. 6:12) so while we don’t physically throw all the
seekers, skeptics, and schemers against the wall and frisk them for weapons, we
may do something even worse. We can desecrate the holy encounters God gives us with
people when we treat them more like confrontations than conversations, more
like wrestling matches against wrong thinking than really hearing and entering
into a human story, and then topping it off by justifying our confrontational
approach as “striving against sin.” Sometimes we need to be reminded that “the
anger of man does not accomplish the righteousness of God” (James 1:20;
Prov. 29:22).
People want to be seen, heard, understood, and
valued. Any ministerial stop-and-frisk ideology will hinder the type of outwardly
focused love that best represents the way the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit share their goodness
with all creation. Stop-and-frisk processes remove the merciful welcome of
hospitality. A mortal sin in the ancient world. These suspicious and
confrontational approaches can make evangelism and gospel ministry more like a
mugging than relational ministry. I would even suggest that we see conversion, and
the larger discipleship process, as less transactional and more about the Spirit-led
journey towards full faith in Jesus Christ.
Seeing Past the Edge of the Earth
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| Photo by Florian Rieder on Unsplash |
It is normal for us to draw lines and make
judgments. We engage and do life together with those people who are enough like
us to dwell inside our circumscribed borders of us/them, the flat earth of our
own making. We need Jesus’ to open our eyes to see beyond the edge of the earth
with which we are comfortable. We need eyes to see and ears to hear as he does
because his love is not constrained by our limitations.
What do we see when we look at others? How do
we spiritually profile them? There was a time when Saul of Tarsus and others
considered Jesus just a carpenter’s son. They could not see his true identity.
We do the same thing when we fail to recognize that each person we meet,
is an image-bearer (whether they know it or not) and is precious in the sight
of God. Saul/Paul later testified that their own attitude had been adjusted by Christ
so that now, “we regard no one according to the flesh.” (2 Cor. 5:16)
We need to discern Christ in the least likely of
those we meet, humbly being ready to learn from their stories, struggles, and
even their strange experiences as human parables. Will we have an ear to hear
and a heart to respond? Does our perception end at the edge of our little earth?
Or can we see beyond that, with eyes of faith, love, and hope what Christ
intends for each person to become?
Even as many police agencies move away from
stop-and-frisk tactics and embrace community policing through building positive
and mutually helpful relationships, may we as evangelicals get a clue. Jeremiah
29:7 admonished the Jewish exiles to settle down and get busy, “But seek the
welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on
its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
We may not be in
exile, but our mission cannot be any less engaged in seeking the common good. As
ambassadors of the kingdom of heaven, the love of Christ compels us to do so!
