Faith in Action: Serving Others in a Community for Jesus
Faith in Action: Serving Others in a community for jesus explores the intersection of activism and faith. This approach to grassroots social change builds on institutions of faith and reshapes public policy.
Service includes both spiritual and physical support. Physical support may include helping someone run errands or cutting lawns for neighbors and seniors.
1. Share Your Faith
The best way to share your faith is by your actions. People who see you walk with Christ and serve others will be more inclined to ask you questions about your faith. But it’s important to remember that your first call to service is salvation. Jesus set you free from sin and death by His ultimate act of humility and servanthood.
You may also need to take the next step of becoming a disciple and sharing your story. This means learning how to talk about your Christian faith and practice with those who have different beliefs, like non-Christians or new Christians. One resource for conversational evangelism is the CoJourners approach, which uses an icebreaker card deck and a series of conversations to help people share their worldview and discover the common ground they have with God.
Another way to share your faith is through a ministry or project that supports those in need, like Faith in Action. This organization offers resources and training to help people put their faith into action in their community and beyond. They work with local residents to develop projects that will benefit their neighbors, and promote policies that make everyone a priority.
This work is a model for communities worldwide. For example, a pastor from Rwanda named John Rutsindintwarane visited Oakland in California to learn organizing from Faith in Action. He then brought the same principles back to his country, where he has helped people organize for schools, health clinics, and economic cooperatives. He is a leader in bottom up social change and has inspired others in other countries to do the same. He and other community organizers are using Faith in Action's organizing techniques as a way to move from relief to rebuilding.
2. Serve Your Neighbors
God calls us to love our neighbors, but it isn’t just about the people who live in our houses or apartments. It also includes the Syrian refugees across the world and the busy young family next door, to name just two of many examples. God is at work in all the places we see, so we need to open our eyes to that fact and get creative about how to serve our neighbors.
For example, use upcoming holidays or big events as an opportunity to invite your neighbors to share food and conversation together. This is a simple way to build relationships and opens the door for further engagement. You can also create a neighborhood group where you meet regularly and learn about the hopes, needs and concerns of your neighbors. Listening for what is important to your neighbors can help you identify clusters of issues that need to be addressed.
Other ways to serve your neighbors are more practical. Offer free yard work or car washes to your neighbors, for instance. A small act of service may be the catalyst to a meaningful conversation about Jesus. You can even start a garden and share the produce with your neighbor, which could also be an opportunity to share your faith.
Whatever you do, seek to serve your neighbors consistently over the long haul. This means setting fairly modest hospitality goals so that you don’t overextend yourself. It is better to do a little bit over a long time than try to do a lot in one month.
3. Be Involved With Your Church Family
Historically, church members have met in homes to hear God’s word and spread it together (Acts 2:42-43). This family-based model is still important to many people. Families often bear responsibility for the care of their aging parents, children and other relatives, or have financial obligations that make it difficult to live out their faith. It is important to help these families and individuals in their time of need.
Many churches focus on outreach with the goal of getting more people to come to their service and events. While this is a good thing to do, it is important to keep in mind that church community is not just a group of people who attend Sunday services; it’s also a group of people who support each other spiritually and serve the Lord through their everyday lives.
Encourage members of your church to engage with the community by offering opportunities for them to volunteer. This can be as simple as having a choir sing at a local nursing home or trustees organizing a clean-up of the neighborhood. It can also be as involved as inviting members to campaign for a city council member or a state senator.
Organizing is a process that empowers ordinary people to move from relief and recovery to rebuilding their communities. It is a powerful tool that is used by people of all faiths, from all walks of life. Through community organizing, people most impacted by injustice are able to bring about change in their communities, including improving the schools their children attend, access to health care and affordable housing, reduced violence, better jobs with decent benefits, and more. Faith in Action has been a leader in this movement, building and connecting a national network of church-based organizers that is working to achieve the vision that every person in our nation has access to healthy food, safe water, quality education, decent jobs with good wages, adequate health care, and a say over the decisions that affect their lives.
4. Go the Extra Mile
Go the extra mile is an idiom that means to do more than what is expected of you. It is a common phrase that many people use in their daily lives to show others that they care about them and want them to be happy.
When we think of Jesus, we know that he went the extra mile for everyone. He loved and served the reckless, the unruly, the poor, and the wretched. He went the extra mile to help the broken, even when it meant that he would be hurt himself. He knew that it was better to give than receive, and so should we.
In order to go the extra mile, we need to start by seeing people as Jesus did. He saw them as valuable because they were created in the image of God, regardless of their choices or current circumstances. He understood that meeting physical needs is an important part of showing love for others, as demonstrated by James when he says that pure religion is visiting widows and orphans in their distress (1:27).
There are many ways to go the extra mile in your community. For example, you could serve your neighbors by running errands for them or helping them clean the house. You could also mow a neighbor’s or elder’s lawn or weed their garden if they are unable to do it themselves. You could even write an encouraging note to a family member who is going through a difficult time or plan a surprise event to lift their spirits.
At Century Park, we are committed to going the extra mile to help our residents live their best life possible. For example, we have a volunteer program that provides in-home companionship to homebound adults so that their family caregivers can get short term respite from the responsibilities of caring for an elderly parent or loved one. Our volunteers meet with their assigned older adult for two hours per week, which is a huge relief for the family members who are already caring for them!
5. Work Together
Ultimately, the most effective way to help others in your community is to work together as a church. Teamwork is key to achieving your goals as well as making the process easier and less stressful. It allows you to utilize the strengths and abilities of each member of your team, which makes it possible to accomplish more than if you were working alone.
Teamwork can also make your church a place of fellowship and love. This is important because it helps you connect with people who share your faith and who can support you during hard times. It can also help you become more effective in your ministry, allowing you to reach a larger audience.
Jesus spent a lot of time connecting with people and organizing them for action. He did this by speaking to people’s hearts, calling them, equipping them and modeling the holistic life they yearn for. By doing these things, he was able to develop a deep commitment among his followers.
Through this method of organizing, Jesus was able to make real change happen. Likewise, the modern-day church can benefit from Jesus’ teachings on deepening commitment.
Today, people of different faiths and beliefs are taking on local issues to make their communities better. They use organizing tools to improve schools, increase access to health care and housing and reduce violence and incarceration. They are doing this through a network of office teams, volunteers and interfaith congregations. Faith in Action (formerly PICO National Network) is one of the largest grassroots faith-based social change networks in the United States. It provides people with the resources and training they need to organize their neighbors.