By Jennifer Holste

The goal of poverty alleviation is to restore broken relationships that people have with God, each other, and the systems in their lives. To restore someone back to the image of what God created them to be takes time. It requires a relationship. In more simpler terms, hanging out.

Is that what missionaries are really doing with their time? Just hanging out? Is that really the best use of their resources? What about the buildings and programs that need to be established? If there is no immediate fruit to the labors of a missionary, is he/she really doing their job?

Consider New Song Urban Ministries, situated in Sandtown – a 72 block area in Baltimore Maryland. On the outside, Sandtown is a typical North American inner city ghetto with high rates of violence, drug abuse, pregnancies out of wedlock, and unemployment. Yet on the inside, there is New Song, staffed by more than 80 people with a multi-million dollar annual budget. It runs programs for housing, job placement, healthcare, education, and arts. What is their secret to success? Mark Gornik (co founder) explains:

“Instead of imposing our own agendas, we sought to place our lives in service to the community….For over two years we weren’t working to renovate houses, we were out and around in the community, ‘hanging out.’…During this time the foundational relationships of the church were formed….Everything revolved around building community together.”

It took New Song 4 years to build their first home. 4 years for one home? That hardly seems like a productive ministry. Again, Mark explains:

“Is such a housing process too slow? Why not let professional developers do it? New song and Sandtown Habitat were building people, leaders, community, an economic base, and capacity, not a product for profit.”

Ministry is about process, not product.

Consider farming as another example. Think about all the things that need to happen before a crop is harvested. “First, someone has to go and prepare the land. This is backbreaking work that involves felling trees, pulling massive stumps out of the ground, extracting rocks and boulders from the field, and moving them aside. But there’s no harvest yet. Next the soil has to be broken up. The earth needs to be plowed, fertilizer churned in with the soil, and orderly rows tilled to prepare for the seed. Then the seeds must be carefully planted and covered. But still no harvest. Perhaps a fence needs to be built to protect the plants from animals that might devour them. And always, the seedlings must be carefully watered, nurtured, and fed over the long growing season.

“There are sometimes setbacks – bad weather, blights, floods, and insects – that can jeopardize the harvest. But if all of the hard work is done faithfully and with perseverance, and if God provides good seed and favorable weather, finally a glorious harvest is the result” (The Hole in Our Gospel, Stearns).

Jesus invested countless hours of time and teaching in a small group of 12 men. Three years to be exact. While He performed miracles, signs, and wonders, things really started to take off after the Great Teacher had left. Those who had been taught were now going out, spreading, multiplying, and taking their knowledge with them. They had been called out, nurtured, empowered, enlightened, and released. All of this occurred within a relationship that revolved around simply hanging out.

We need to move beyond our Americanized tendencies to evaluate the worth of a project based on its output. Product does not automatically determine merit or value. Let us be more process-focused, fixing our eyes on sharing the joys and sorrows of life with someone. Let us live beside them, demonstrating our genuine love, care and concern for them. May we laugh with them, cry with them, hold them and hug them. With this perspective, we are showing Christ’s love to the world instead of simply talking about it (Stearns).