We went to Port Sulfur, Plaquamines Parish, Louisiana to work on building houses in the post-Katrina world down there. So this blog will be some reflections on . . . mission trips? being missional? how about what happens when you give of yourself for others.
We Americans have very short term memories. While Hurricane Katrina has become an icon for terrible disaster, most of us have moved on, other disasters have taken the media space, and thoughts of what it's like living in the area of the hurricane have faded from our view. The hurricane was 5 1/2 years ago.
The rebuilding mission in Biloxi that focused on help for the poor, aged, and disabled has drawn to a close. But out of that hurricane and the Biloxi experience a Fuller Center for Disaster Building was born. These Fuller Centers were spawned from Habitat for Humanity by Millard Fuller, Habitat founder. But it was, alas, out of a split in philosophy between Mr Fuller and the other Habitat leadership. Such things happen.
Fuller Centers' missions are to help rebuild or build anew with those whose homes have been destroyed in disasters. It is a different mission than Habitat and has different requirements than Habitat.
The Fuller Center we worked with came out of post-Katrina, Biloxi, MS. Since that time it has worked in two other hurricane disaster areas in Texas. We reconnected with them when the operation moved to Southern Louisiana to continue working on post-Katrina rebuilds.
If you ever have the chance to directly, hands-on help people whose lives have been up-ended by disaster, do it.
I am not able to explain nor describe what it does for you when you give of yourself in this way. You have to experience it, and then it won't need explanation, you will know it in your heart.
I will put it in this Biblical perspective. St James says in Chapter 2:
14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.
. . . 26 As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead.(NIV)
Martin Luther had major problems with the theology in the Epistle of James. Luther was reacting against a church that required demonstration of works and obedience as a proof of salvation. He was quite adamant that what we do doesn't same us, only believing in the work of God in Christ can do that.
But this is not the issue for James. He is dealing with people who seem to believe that "faith" is holding to a set of beliefs, a set of doctrines about God that can be held outside of a living relationship with God that leads to a changed relationship with ourselves and the world (people) around us.
It's as though the people with whom James is dealing are saying, "I believe (have faith) that Jesus saved me. That's all I need. I can go on as before because now I have it." Having right doctrine does not save us. Right doctrine merely describes what a living faith has discovered and lives out. Does that make sense?
My friend and fellow Pastor, Joe Medley, says, "Doctrine limits, Faith frees." Doctrine describes how believers experienced God coming to them and changing them.
The Pentecost power of the Holy Spirit on the believers in the upper room and the conversion of 3,000 people who listened to their testimony that day is a faith experience. Describing how the Holy Spirit worked on that day or what the nature of a Pentecostal experience is -- that's doctrine.
I could probably put disaster relief work into doctrinal terms. But it is describing a live experience of the Holy Spirit in dead words.
To take the love that God pours out on you and give it away -- disaster relief work is one way to do that -- is a living and breathing experience of the Holy Spirit that transcends all the Sunday School lessons about God, all the moving experiences of a well preached sermon about living out faith.
Actually being on the ground and attaching plywood sheathing under someone's house is only one way of being part of this sort of faith experience.
On this trip three churches gave about $2,200 of support money for the trip. Individuals give small to large gifts that added to that amount. This, too, is a sharing of the gospel.
This got word-ier than I intended. Faith-works is the perfect marriage of belief in God's work and actions that come out of that belief that may not have occurred otherwise.
Seeing, hearing of another human being in suffering about which you can do something, and to do it is what St James says is the fullness of the Jesus experience -- Christian faith.
That's still the experience 5 1/2 years after Katrina. That's still the experience on my 5th or 6th trip to swing a hammer of those who were devastated.
I recommend it.
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