What is Needed

I had a conversation with someone at one of our prayer nights last week...

She was talking about her job as a teacher at a place that works with teens who have mental and behavioral diagnoses. She explained something to me about the essential resources needed to accomplish a task of that nature.

What these kids need is not great facilities, or excellent books, or even high tech computers...

What is needed to help these kids approach some level of 'normal life' is an awareness of their own value; a deeper sense of life's purpose; the ability to discern, desire, and then choose good over evil; and an 'enculturation' process whereby they are not so much taught as initiated into healthy human functionality.

This doesn't come from hardware or facilities, but rather from other people!

The resource needed is people!

Here are Jesus' words on the subject.

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Nothing else is needed, because everything else will work itself out if the real resource is there, YOU!

However, not just anybody will do, but rather the people who are needed for this are people who have already been put together on the inside. People who are confident of their own worth, who's value and identity flows from God's affirmation of their humanity, who are not driven by the need to stockpile wealth, or to have the fear or praise of others, or who are driven by fear, anger, pain, or alienation...

People who are able to discern, desire and choose that which is good. People who are able to do so with such consistency that you could refer to their character as essentially 'good.'

People who have been put together by God in the image of Jesus. But these people (if they are put together by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus) will not simply be put back together for their own sake, but rather for the purposes of God on this earth, for the sake of the broken and needy of this world.

People who see the resources they have (including their very life) not as their gift to God, but rather as God's gift to the world!

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This is what the Church SHOULD be excellent at!

Helping to train individuals into people who are full of God's character and passion, and given to God's purposes on the earth...

This is the very mission and task that Jesus left with his disciples:

"Go and invite people from every ethnic group and social status to be life-long students of my way of life, immerse them in the trinitarian community, and teach them how to do everything I have taught you..."

Jesus imparted Himself to his disciples and they were charged with imparting that essence to their disciples. The Church is charged with making little christs...

How are we doing church?