In my last post I wrote about how 3 Christian men in a very small church can have a huge impact on the lives of 161 hypothetical people by “guaranteeing their well-being.” I arrived at the figure of 161 people by making very conservative estimates of the sizes of their families, their extended families, the number of their widowed and single parents in their church, and the number of families on their block. The actual number any 3 given men are responsible for will vary, but that number will almost always be large.
The reason I focused on these groups of people is because the Bible says Christian men should focus on these groups of people, and specifically on the pressing needs of people in these groups. I cited scripture that explicitly tells us this.
So now I want to ask what it means to “guarantee the well-being” of these people and how do we go about doing this?
I’ve chosen my words carefully when I say we should “guarantee the well-being” of someone. I’m not talking about palliative care in the sense that we do kind gestures to make someone feel better but don’t actually resolve the problem. Rather, what I mean by guaranteeing someone’s well-being is that we take personal responsibility to make sure any serious need is met.
There are several Biblical examples of people taking personal responsibility to meet the pressing needs of people around them. The Good Samaritan is the classic one. After taking the waylaid Jew to the inn and caring for him, he pays the inn keeper to care for him after he leaves and then says, “When I return I will repay you.” At that exact moment he is guaranteeing the well-being of the waylaid Jew by making sure he is cared for even after he leaves.
Some other biblical examples of people taking responsibility for the well-being of someone are John promising to care for Jesus’ mother, Mary, Ruth committing to Naomi, and Judah offering himself up for his brother Benjamin. All of these examples are the answer godly people give to godless Cain’s cruel and sarcastic rhetorical question, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Our answer: “Yes, we are our brother’s keeper…and our fellow believer’s keeper, and even our neighbor’s keeper too!”
Now the question is, how do we train these 3 Christian men to take on this kind of responsibility? Here’s what I suggest.
Train your 3 Christian men to care for the pressing needs of a fellow believer in their church whom they are not related to.
In other words, take your men out of the context of their families, teach them what the love of Christ looks like in practice and then show them how to apply it in the life of someone in their church who is in need. Normally this person will be a widow, widower or single parent.
Why focus the attention of your 3 Christian men on someone not in their families? Because that is what Jesus did. He took his disciples away from their families, taught them who he was, showed them how to serve people in need, and trained them to love each other. Then he sent them back to their families.
As a result of this exercise, your 3 Christian men will learn the following:
- What it means to identify with, commit to, and sacrifice for someone with a pressing need.
- How to use a team to achieve long term, consistent care for years.
- How to advocate for someone when the need exceeds their ability to meet it.
- The value of relational ministry instead of just project ministry.
- The pure joy of guaranteeing someone’s well-being.
With that experience under their belt, they can apply what they have learned about meeting the pressing needs of that one person to the pressing needs of relatives in their extended family and to the pressing needs of neighbors on their block. (I’m going to talk more about these two groups in my next post.)
Oh, and by growing in their knowledge of the love of Christ, they will become better husbands and fathers as well.
This post first appeared in NewCommandment.org
Learn how 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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