Have the Christian churches lost their way?

A personal experience of trying to minister to the poor and needy.

I would like to share a recent experience I had trying to find a path to helping the poor and needy and some thoughts about the result.

I got a bee in my bonnet about serving in a soup kitchen and set out to find out if anything like that was taking place in my area. A long web search only turned up a large national charity dealing with the homeless but, while I am sure that they do good work, I am not looking to join a large organization. Besides, they didn't appear to do soup kitchens.

I live in a small town on the North Coast of Northern Ireland, where church-going is commonplace, where there are several churches and I discovered that one of them had a website. Examination of their website showed no obvious signs of ministering to the poor and needy, there was nothing headed outreach or similar. There were pages for ministering to the young and to adults, but this seemed to involve taking church members on walks, bowling etc., not what I was seeking at all.

Accordingly, I used the search facility on the church's website to search for such terms as soup kitchen, charity, poor, needy etc. but each search came up 'No matching items found'.

Undeterred, I used the contact details on their site to email them asking if they did anything like that, not necessarily a soup kitchen but anything where volunteers helped those in need, and if not, did they know of anyone who did?

They replied the next day informing me that they did not have anything suitable, that they did not know of anything suitable in my town but that they had heard of an organisation in a town 11 miles away that might suit, but that they knew nothing about it. This organization turned out to be a group of teenagers who volunteer to litter-pick and paint fences in a council housing estate - laudable, but not what I am seeking.

I am a non-denominational Christian and, while I am not claiming to be an expert in the Christian mission,  I am reasonably confident that helping the poor and needy would be an important part of it. I must confess that I was disappointed that local Christian churches appear to be places where folk can park their Mercedes and BMWs, confident that their next bowls evening is being arranged for them, while only having to pay a small cash donation towards the church roof and put up with some 'God stuff'. I presume that if you sit, stand, and kneel as directed, and sing the songs as directed that you have somehow fulfilled Christ's mission for you on Earth.

I sincerely hope that I am wrong and that the Christian churches have not lost their way and that my experience is due to some personal shortcoming or a local aberration.

#Church #Christianity #ChristianMission #ChristianMinistry #Compassion #Charity