Social work

Praise the Lord for a new generation of missionaries that want to serve and love the world! They are so passionate! We need that. The college kids love to love. But there tends to be a disconnect sometimes between the compassion/social/humanitarian work and church planting. We do need to love all and give to the poor and serve the needy, but we also need to tell them about Jesus and being saved and being a disciple of Christ and meeting a body of believers, a community of faith that will help them grow. There is an end goal to Christ's example of compassion on the earth and that was to bring glory to the Father. God uses the church to bring Him glory.

I like how the Sojourn International Booklet puts it:
"Sojourn affirms that there are a number of good works being done around the world that bring help and healing to many. We rejoice in this and desire to see this continue, but we also recognize that the priority for the church must include ministry that flows from the Great Commission (Matthew 28:18-20). This is identified as ministry that focuses primarily on evangelism, discipleship and church planting. This does not mean we ignore "deed" based ministry. We seek to meet the needs of those around us as we proclaim the gospel, disciple believers and plant new churches. When Sojourn talks about doing international missions we see this as doing Great Commission ministry that is primarily in seeking to wholly fulfill the Great Commission through gospel proclamation, discipling believers and planting new churches. We recognize that Great Commission ministry will take on different forms in different contexts and encourage our people and partners to use the gifts they have to take the gospel forward."

I worked in a town with a mission hospital. The town is now 54% evangelical. I believe that is no coincidence that people became receptive to the gospel primarily because of social work. Nearly everyone knew someone whose life was saved because of the hospital and that made it impossible to ignore. God uses social work greatly, but without the church, that social work will have little long-term results.