Churches once performed the tasks of the parachurch ministries they spawned.  For roughly 1900 years, churches fed the hungry, sheltered the homeless, took in the orphans, cared for the sick, and defended the abused.  As the Social Gospel movement faltered and the U.S. government’s role in compassion expanded in the early 20^th century, churches began forming parachurches to tackle those social issues.

Studies, articles, and books have addressed the challenges that followed: gradual distancing of churches from the non-profits they founded, dollars diverted from tithes to external organizations, and secular funding sources tempting charities to abandon their Christ-centered roots.  However, few question the decision churches made to outsource to parachurches in the first place.  Today we ask, was that a good idea?

The Church – Parachurch Divide

Parachurch implies “alongside” yet most ministries struggle to (re)connect with churches.  Churches worry about theological differences with potential ministry partners.  Charities complain that churches “check the box” by engaging seasonally rather than participating year-round in their mission.  Churches (sometimes rightfully) believe ministries seek a relationship solely for their donations and volunteers.  Hopes for collaboration (on both sides) are often replaced with concerns about coexistence.

Among the body of Christ, unity and cooperation toward the shared goal of alleviating a community’s (material and spiritual) poverty should bridge those relational gaps.  Instead, the body divides and fragments due in part to differing levels of interest in the causes championed by parachurch organizations.  Churches shouldn’t have allowed their interest in compassion and justice to wane.  They should have remained the glue that held society and cities together – the spiritual, social, and charitable “center of town”.  Jesus modeled prayer, care, then share – yet few churches today participate year-round in initiatives that demonstrate God’s love to open ears to hear the Gospel message.  Because churches don’t offer much help, most Americans don’t look to them for hope either.  They’ve been conditioned by decades of asking churches for assistance, only to be turned away at the door, referred to a local parachurch, or told that the church would reconsider if they started attending.

Pastors may respond that the early church in Acts 6 segmented evangelism from compassion in appointing Stephen to handle food distribution to widows, but:

• That ministry was a division of labor, not a separation from the church
• They were so concerned about widows, they assembled the entire church
• Nowhere in the New Testament did outreach operate apart from the Church
• That church dedicated its best and brightest to serve the destitute
• Stephen became the first martyr because combining care and share made him most impactful to the Kingdom and most threatening to the establishment

Having worked with thousands of churches and ministries across the country, I’ve learned that most non-profits exist to fill a void created by churches.  When churches aren’t active in fostering children, agencies form to recruit foster families.  Because few congregations disciple well, discipleship ministries launch.  When churches don’t utilize their vast square footage to conduct job training classes, local leaders start career planning and placement ministries.  If churches were wrapping circles of support around local families struggling to make ends meet, Link2Hope and The Open Table wouldn’t be necessary.  Because most churches only serve the materially poor sporadically and transactionally, parachurch leaders create ministries like The Chalmers Center and True Charity to teach the principles of effective charity.

Advantages of Churches Leading Compassion

If churches performed their biblical, intended role in serving the “least of these”, most non-profits wouldn’t be necessary.  Jesus’ mission statement, parables, and example gave clear marching orders to His Church to care for the poor.  Outsourcing that function to parachurches seemed innocuous at first because of their close association, but the Church’s gradual separation from those organizations largely abdicated that responsibility.  Moreover, Jesus knew His Church was the ideal conduit for compassion.  Only churches can attend to the whole person (mind, body, spirit) and all four key relationships (with God, others, self, and the rest of creation) on a long-term basis by welcoming them into a church family.  Only churches can provide the support needed by the spiritually, materially, and emotionally impoverished to overcome their isolation and loneliness.  Leaving those tasks to (often secular) non-profits has ramifications for families and churches:

• Fewer deep relationships with Christ-followers to grow their faith
• Transactional assistance traps families in cycles of generational poverty
• Missing opportunities to build support networks within a church community
• Arms-length handouts fail to grasp the family’s situation and true needs
• Looking to government as “savior” in difficult times rather than Jesus as Savior
• Churches are considered less integral to and integrated into society
• Declining reputation of Christians, seen as more judgmental than caring
• Ministries compromise to receive government funding, whereas churches presumably would never agree not to share the Gospel in exchange for funds
• Church closures by missing the chance to attract funding for compassion work
• Smaller churches because unity and charity would have attracted attendees
• Fewer believers and Gospel presentations in our communities

The argument could be made that work on complex social issues like homelessness, hunger, and child neglect is best left to parachurches specializing in developing and implementing solutions.  They may contend that no one church can house the expertise, resources, and manpower to confront those causes.  However:

• Every church has specialists with God-given abilities and careers that could be utilized to assist struggling families, yet most of those capabilities go largely untapped.  All churches have lay leaders with a heart for particular causes, but aren’t provided avenues to serve as advocates to mobilize the rest of the congregation into those battles.
• Much of the biblical call for unity among churches is for the purpose of fostering collaboration.  Together, consortiums of churches could pool knowledge, skills, assets, and funds to transform a community.  Each church is a different “body” part with its distinct role to play, but may not find out which part or role until it joins with other churches to work for the good of the city and growth of the Kingdom.  Rallying churches across a city around critical causes would have fostered the unity Jesus seeks for His Church.
• Engaging continually in needle-moving community ministry would have compelled churches to equip members for works of service, discipleship, and evangelism.  Contemporary churches see less need to prepare churchgoers for the Great Commandment and Great Commission because there are now fewer opportunities to apply that training once they outsourced compassion to parachurch organizations.

There is a reason why loving your neighbor and making disciples are mandates for all Christ-followers, not just pastors and church staff.  Leverage and multiplication are the biblical model – the Lord’s math.  Decentralization and proximity are the most effective means to serve struggling families, share about Jesus, and lead people closer to Him.  Just like the federal government is inefficient and transactional in delivering assistance, when churches pay a denominational parachurch relief organization to handle their charitable outreach, centralization stifles both leverage and multiplication.

The fact is few would be materially poor in the first place if churches were still on the front lines of compassion.  More families would be in church surrounded by others willing to help.  Everyone in the community would know they could turn to a local church during hard times.  The principle of subsidiarity holds that poverty “ought to be handled by the smallest, lowest, or least centralized competent authority”.  Proximity and relationships matter.  Local churches and their members are closer to those who are struggling than parachurch or secular charities.  Bigger (and further removed) is not better when it comes to poverty alleviation.

Is It Too Late to Repent and Reclaim?

Is it too late to undo the damage from the worst decision made in the history of the Church in America – separating compassion from evangelism?  Has that ship sailed?  Could a church reclaim responsibilities handed off a century ago to parachurch ministries, government, and secular charities?  Wouldn’t that drive away members accustomed to occasionally spending a few hours volunteering at the holidays?  Regardless of the consequences, relational compassion in the context of community is biblical – and feasible:

1. Confess, repent, and pray for renewed conviction to follow Jesus’ model
2. Understand the key societal issues in the city
3. Meet with other churches to develop a joint gameplan to address a cause
4. Determine the role of your church
5. Assess the skills within the church
6. Convince members they ARE “church” – Kingdom “employees”, not consumers
7. Teach that the lost and poor in the community are the biblical “customer”
8. Provide intensive discipleship and evangelism training
9. Determine how to fully utilize all skills and assets (e.g. church building)
10. Track, measure, and report on the dent made in that social issue

The division we see in our culture and our churches make this scenario seem unlikely to succeed.  However, poverty alleviation united Peter and Paul (“All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.”)  So if handing off compassion to parachurches contributed to the Church’s division – reclaiming responsibility could help (re)unite it.

It’s Your Turn…

Do you agree that most non-profits wouldn’t be necessary if churches were doing their jobs?  Are the perils of government funding, disunity among parachurch ministries, and mistrust between churches and ministries all disfunctions arising from the Church’s abdication of its intended, historical role as the primary source of help and hope?  Are churches and parachurches together doing less good than churches alone could if they were actively doing everything?