Conversation, February 17th, 2011.

me: you know when J**** was talking about doing things to alleviate the pain of people in our neighborhood and potentially getting the opportunity to share Jesus with them? i wanted to ask at the very end if we would be disappointed with our work if we didn't have that opportunity. cause if we were, then i think we would be missing the point. one of the things i liked from the book said:
"all of this is to say that when we talk about Jesus, we must make it clear that he is not just interested in our well being in the after life..."
and this is something that i thought he really had right. if we can do something that just makes the world a better place now, how can that not be worth it? isn't that, in itself, part of God's mission? the only problem i really know about with the social gospel was the idea that Jesus will come back when the world is a good enough place, but i think its still really important to do what we can to make the world better.
him: Good point. I noticed that. It was a lot of, 'you don't have to witness directly if you just serve... but you would anyway.' A lil double talkish. That perspective could bias a person to where they're still pushing to witness even though they claim they're just going to serve.
It's kind of like the expectations placed on short term mission trips. Your youth pastor tells you you're going there to serve and change people's lives, when in reality the purpose for you to go, to an already established outreach, is so you can be changed. And this perspective that isn't holistic could leave you thinking, as we discussed, that that is missions; spending money to travel somewhere far far away and sleeping on the floor, etc., for one week, and thus limiting and biasing your expectations for missions and in turn how you practice missions.