Towards a New Perspective and Practice of Benevolence Ministries, Part I

Note: This is what I hope will be the beginning of several pieces on developing a more Biblical and effective paradigm on benevolence ministry in a welfare state.

Somewhere between indifference (seen in those who blithely quote, “Give a man a fish...” but never teach anyone to fish) and enabling (seen in those who give handout to the panhandlers), there must be true social justice. I will post these in hopes of learning from your perspective, dear reader, especially if you have worked with the poor.

This very brief entry will deal with the different types of people asking for help.


In my experience as a pastor of nine years who has handled numerous benevolence requests, I have found that there are three primary types of people needing benevolence. I believe each of them has a Biblical precedence:

1) Those who have a history of being self-supporting, but have fallen on hard-times – these are like the believers in Jerusalem for whom Paul was raising funds (Romans 15:26, et al).

2) Those who have a history of needing assistance – these are like the sluggards and fools throughout Proverbs and the idle in 2 Thessalonians 3:10.

3) Those who have significant, documentable mental or physical condition that prevents them from being self-supporting – this follows the example of giving to the truly poor in the Bible, as well as the command to help the orphans and widows in James 1:27.


I believe each of these groups must be treated very differently, but you will have to wait until "Part II" to hear more about that!

Stupid irony

I recently realized the irony of using Zoolander in my description of this blog. Zoolander’s entire identity is based on being a male model who is "incredibly good looking." And for me, so much of my identity has been (and continues to be) my intelligence.

So what do I do on this blog? Display my intelligence.

Hmmmm. I guess that makes this blog a friggin' runway.

sorting the prophets from the nut jobs

Working at a church, I have talked to a lot of nut jobs claiming to be prophets, that is spokesmen (and women) for God. Perhaps I sound unkind, I do not mean it. They are people dearly loved by Jesus and should be treated with the compassion and dignity of children of God. Nonetheless, they are “unbalanced,” to say the least.

Like this one guy – I asked him his name, and he said, “Well, it was ‘Sky,’ but as you get to the higher levels, you know...” Frankly, I don’t know. “Josh” has always worked for me (though I used to introduce myself as “Joshua” because “Josh” didn’t sound important enough).

But one thing has frequently bothered me: Reading about the prophets in the Bible, many of them seemed like nut jobs. So how can we tell the difference between the prophets and the mentally unstable?

Talking to one of the other pastors here, I had something of a realization that helped me on this. First, you have to start with this premise:

God wants us to hear and obey him more than we want to hear and obey him.

Stated differently, God is not out to fool us. Sounds simple, but the sheer agony some believers go through to “find God’s will,” demonstrates that they believe else wise. So this is a very important, presuppositional understanding of God that has multiple ramifications.

Next, we need to understanding that when we can look back at the prophets in Bible, we see that God validated their message through other means, such as accurate predictions of the future. (Note: the most important role of the prophet was not foretelling the future, but speaking on behalf of God and calling his people to obedience.)

I wonder if there was a relationship between the lengths God would go to validate the messenger and the extent to which the message was new revelation, beyond the already accepted Scripture.

No where is this more evident than in Jesus’ ministry. The message he spoke plainly contradicted his audience’s understanding of the Bible, so if all Jesus had was his message, the Pharisees would have had ever right to reject it. But God validated the message so clearly through miracles that they had no excuse.

To ignore these miracles or attribute them to someone other than the Holy Spirit (such as the devil) was such an act of defiant unbelief that it could be called “blaspheming the Holy Spirit,” and would indeed be unforgivable simply because there was nothing else that could be done to validate Jesus as the Christ (see Matthew 12:1-45).

Now to sum it up: When ever a person claims to speak for God and their message isn't simply illuminating Scripture, we should expect that God would validate it through unmistakable means, because God wants us to obey him and he is not out to trick us.