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Following Jesus
Earthly Cross
His Name Is
Apostles Creed
Dealing with Feelings
Jonah
Get Real
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Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

Email:
Pastor Scott Carson

Secretary Patti Hall

PASTOR'S PENS 2003

Grace Church of Burlington November 23, 2003 You’ll be a turkey if you miss Tuesday’s Thanksgiving Service!!             Our Thanksgiving Service is one of my favorite of the year. Though I love our Christmas and Easter services, there is just something extra special and spiritual about Thanksgiving. The very term Thanksgiving acknowledges that there is Someone to thank. This year’s though is a Special, Special Thanksgiving Service. Pastor Jim Carrington, an African-American pastor from an urban Milwaukee church, will be with us. I had the privilege of hearing this dear brother a number of years ago. God has richly blessed his work and ministry in Milwaukee.             But that’s not the only reason that I’m so excited. For several years it has weighed heavy on my heart that though we send missionaries to the far reaches of the globe, the American Church is neglecting the mission field in our own backyard. When we were living in Detroit many years ago it would break my heart to drive down the main thoroughfare, Woodward Avenue, and see all the closed up churches. White evangelicals had fled to the suburbs and too often had abandoned the inner city. While we are frequently concerned about the underprivileged in third world countries, our hearts are often hard, insensitive and even prejudiced against human beings in the inner city. It’s no wonder that a ghetto is a ghetto if believers have fled to the suburbs. And the solution is not just more money or better housing or better education or more programs. There is a place for those but that is not the solution.                Over a century ago, Leo Tolstoy tried coming up with a plan to rid Moscow of the poor and homeless. The famed novelist and wealthy aristocrat first went to the worst hovels in town and gave money to beggars. He realized, however, that he had been “cheated by men who said they only needed money to buy a railway ticket home” when he spotted them still in town days later. Next, Tolstoy spent several months helping take the Moscow census, searching for the “truly” needy. But Tolstoy saw the homeless could not be helped merely by “feeding and clothing a thousand people as one feeds and drives under shelter a thousand sheep.” At last, he sadly concluded: “Of all the people I noted down, I really helped none... I did not find any unfortunates who could be made fortunate by a mere gift of money.”             The solution for the inner city is what faithful heroes like Jim Carrington and others are doing, sharing Jesus Christ. Jesus is the only answer. We do need to meet the physical needs of the underprivileged, but it is not enough. We must also share the Bread of life, which will truly set them free.             Personally, I believe that our inner cities are ripe for the Gospel.  An article in Christianity Today pointed out that unlike wealthy suburbanites...             1) The poor know they are in urgent need of redemption. 2) The poor know not only their dependence on God and on powerful people but also their interdependence with one another. 3) The poor rest their security not on things but on people. 4) The poor have no exaggerated sense of their own importance, and no exaggerated need of privacy. 5) The poor expect little from competition and much from cooperation. 6) The poor can distinguish between necessities and luxuries. 7) The poor can wait, because they have acquired a kind of dogged patience born of acknowledged dependence.  8) The fears of the poor are more realistic and less exaggerated, because they already know that one can survive great suffering and want. 9) When the poor have the Gospel preached to them, it sounds like good news and not like a threat or a scolding. 10) The poor can respond to the call of the Gospel with a certain abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so little to lose and are ready for anything.             Though the underprivileged may urgently wish otherwise, they find themselves in a posture that befits the grace of God. In their state of neediness, dependence, and dissatisfaction with life, they are often more open to God’s grace and free gift of salvation. It is no accident that our Lord primarily ministered among the poor. They knew that they needed Him. American Christians have too often become middle class and forgotten the opportunities and potential in our urban backyards.             Please join us Tuesday night at 7:00 p.m. for this wonderful opportunity to hear from someone who is ministering in the needy fields of the inner city.