“Why should we invite unrepentant and unmarried single moms and their illegitimate children into our church?”
That’s the elephant in the room when it comes to the question of the church ministering to single mom households.
Of course, the answer is, “Because they need Jesus and Jesus would welcome them in with open arms.”
We know this because Jesus said so. ““It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mark 2:17). Jesus said this after being criticized for eating in the homes of tax collectors and sinners.
Jesus didn’t wait until sinners repented before he loved them and associated with them. First he loved sinners, then he dealt with their sin.
Jesus had an amazing capacity to show love to sinners, sometimes in just a few seconds. He asked an ostracized and foreign woman at a well for water and he invited himself to Zacchaeus’ home for a meal. Taken in their contexts, both of these acts were extremely radical demonstrations of love.
But after Jesus showed his love to the woman at the well and to Zacchaeus in his home, he spoke truth to them and dealt with their sin — first love and then truth.
Our natural reaction, on the other hand, is to judge and condemn the sinner, like the Pharisees did with the woman caught in adultery in John 8:1-11. Unlike her hypocritical accusers, Jesus didn’t condemn her. But he did tell her to go and “sin no more.” Again, first love then truth.
There are in America millions and millions of single moms with their children who desperately need to first be loved with the love of Jesus. Not judged. Not condemned. Not rejected. Loved.
And when they are at first loved by the church the way Jesus loves them, then they will be ready to hear the truth.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org.
Since 2003 New Commandment Men’s Ministries has helped hundreds of churches throughout North American and around the world recruit teams of men who permanently adopt their widowed and single parents in their congregations for the purpose of donating two hours of service to them one Saturday morning each month. We accomplish this with a free training site called New Commandment Men’s Ministry
Learn how to mobilize your men’s ministry to meet every pressing need in your church here.
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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom
and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.
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