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I saw this article, from Hemant Mehta on the Friendly Atheist blog, An Alabama church secretly sent kids to evangelize in a homeless encampment, and I want to talk about it.
Basically what happened is, there was a kids' church camp run by an Alabama church, which at one point took the kids into a homeless encampment to evangelize there- even though the homeless encampment was very much NOT part of the trip that these kids had signed up for. These church leaders just kinda sent the kids to talk to people, without much adult supervision or awareness of safety concerns.
Afterward, one of the leaders, Mike Webb, had this to say:
… When we went to Tent City, I'm not gonna lie, when we first pulled up, we went to the food bank. When we left, I knew that we needed to go serve the homeless, not just in the food bank where it was safe. We needed to get out of our comfort zone and go… As we were leaving, I Googled "Where can I find the homeless population in Houston?" First thing pops up? Tent City. So that's where we're going.
We drive over there in the vans. We pull in.
Ain't no way I'm getting these kids out of this van. I will be fired. Mamas will be beatin’ down my door. We're not getting out.
We pulled to the end. We circled the cul-de-sac. We're pulling back out.
Guys…?
I even… I even tried to justify it.
Guys, I just want you to see what's here. I want you to see how people live. I need you to understand how fortunate you are. This is what it is, guys. All right, let's head back to the ranch…
…
[After decided to return]
But let me just tell you: We get out, we walk through, and we didn't have anything, because we didn't know what we were doing. That was another piece of it: I didn't want to walk in there with 75 people, into a homeless village, and we ain't got anything to give. Like, we're just invading your space, you know what I mean?
But we had that older couple that walked with us, and we began talking, and I said, "Guys, we're coming back tomorrow. We're going to put together some food. We're going to put together some sandwiches. We're going to come back. We're going to feed, and we're going to open doors."
And everybody was, you know, hearing this message, and we started promoting it amongst the people. We started telling them that was kind of our… our initial welcome.
Hey, we're going to be back here tomorrow…
Oh... this is so real. I know this way of thinking.
This is so common, for Christians to talk this way, to think this way. As if "faith" means God is telling you to do something wild and ill-advised, and you know a lot of people are going to tell you it's a bad idea, but the right thing to do is jump right in, trust God, say yes to the amazing terrifying adventure that God is calling you on.
I feel like the way Webb tells the story is a little hard to follow if you're not familiar with this ideology- he's describing the conflict within himself as he tries to decide whether to take the kids into the homeless camp or not. He feels like God wants him to, but he also knows a whole lot of reasons why it's a bad idea. ("I even tried to justify it" means "I felt like God wanted us to let the kids get out of the van there, but I didn't want to do that, so I tried to tell myself that it was good enough to just drive through and let the kids look at it without letting them get out- but that wasn't full obedience to God.") He struggles and then eventually decides to do it.
He *knew* that the kids' parents wouldn't be happy. He *knew* that none of them really had any training about how to help homeless people. All of that just makes for a more exciting story. What an amazing Christian role model, having faith so big it overcame these concerns that a reasonable person would have had.
The way he tells the story, the point is that it's thrilling because God wanted him to take the kids there, even though it seemed like a bad idea, but you need to trust God and do it anyway, even when you're scared. That's what faith is. Supposedly. The more it seems like a bad idea, the more it shows just how committed you are to God. God wants you to get out of your comfort zone!
I don't believe in this anymore, this religion that glamorizes reckless, one-off gestures, where it's more important that you personally had a wild adventure with God, than that you helped people in the real world. The way to actually make a difference is to do the really boring stuff. Do the work of listening to people, learning, caring about people. If you show up with nothing- no resources, no experience, no idea what you're doing- with nothing but the belief that God is sending you there, well, that doesn't help. That doesn't make you a hero of faith.
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Related:
This is so normal. We just don't usually say it in front of other people.
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