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Should ministry to the poor be more prominent?

by: Rebecca Barnes, editor

Americans are generous. According to an annual report released today by the Giving USA Foundation at Indiana University's Center on Philanthropy, Americans gave nearly $300 billion to charitable causes last year. This great outpouring set a new record, even surpassing 2005's total. That year had been boosted by a surge in aid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma and the Asian tsunami, according to the Associated Press.

Why are Americans generous? Is there a faith correlation? Is there a tie-in to church involvement?

A new national survey by The Barna Group regarding people's perspectives on poverty shows that Americans in general are quite concerned about what they perceive to be a significant and growing challenge facing the nation. However, the religious faith of adults appears to have a limited influence on how people perceive poverty and respond to the situation.

In fact, Barna found that evangelical Christians placed poverty much lower on the scale of social ills than other Americans. He reports that while nearly three out of four adults (72 percent) consider poverty to be one of the most serious social problems facing the United States today, only 11 percent of evangelicals rated it as such. 

Barna expressed surprise that devout Christians were not more engaged with the issue. "Given the extensive comments in the Bible regarding the importance of taking care of the poor, we expected to see a larger distinction between the responses of Christians and non-Christians," he said. "As churches seek social causes through which to engage people and their faith, facilitating hands-on responses to poverty would probably activate a lot of latent faith and resources."

This is not glamorous ministry. In fact, it is seldom a core part of most churches. Here’s one example of how a church in South Carolina is helping people by providing low-cost food. Here’s another example of a church in South Los Angeles initiating a large housing project to provide shelter for those in need.

Should churches do more? Bradley Nassif writes an interesting commentary on Christianity Today.com about the link John Chrysostom—the name identified with the liturgy celebrated nearly every Sunday in the Eastern Orthodox Church—made between Christian service to the poor and Christian worship. Chrysostom saw the poor as people emulating the humiliation of Christ’s incarnation.

Chrysostom’s social theory flowed from this emphasis on the Incarnation, Nassif writes. "Indifference to the poor, therefore, reveals poor worship. ‘You honor the altar at church,’ John says, ‘because the body of Christ rests upon it. But those who are themselves the very body of Christ you treat with contempt and you remain indifferent when you see them perishing.’ No person can grow in godliness unless he serves his brethren. It is not enough to worship at the altars of the church. The true altars are the physical bodies of real men and women."

If ministry to the poor were elevated to the importance of Sunday worship and the Eucharist, would churches come closer to following the Bible’s command to care for the least of these?