Going About Doing Good

 Good morning.

 While I am well aware of the political events of this past Saturday and the ongoing events this week regarding political conventions, I have said my piece on these topics on social media, and have decided it’s time to go on to other things.  The only thing I would say now is to repeat what so many have already said:  Regardless of one’s political views, there is no place in this nation for the kind of tragic events such as the attempted assassination last Saturday.  I’ll let this go now and go on to other things.

Most of the time, our days at RiverWalk Church are rather routine.  We get the usual phone calls asking about one of our ministries, or someone wanting to sell us something…or maybe wanting some kind of benevolent help.  We get people at our office door sometimes as well.  Either they are part of a group that is meeting here and need inside the building, or they are some kind of delivery…UPS, Postal Service, and so on.  Maybe they are a member needing access, or perhaps someone who has some kind of other need.  Those encounters at the door don’t come often…maybe two or three times a day.  But most of the time, we as staff are usually free to do what we need to do to carry out our respective ministries.

Yesterday, shortly after lunch, the buzzer on the office door went off.  We have a phone buzzer system outside the door that someone can activate and visit with whoever answers on the inside.  Our office manager was ill that day, so I answered.

“I need an ambulance,” was the reply I received after answering the buzzer.  I couldn’t make out a lot of the rest of what he was saying, so I said I would be right there.  He sounded like he was in distress.

I asked Curtis, who was also in the office, to accompany me to the door, as I was unsure what I would find there.  I answered the door, and a disheveled, unkempt man of about 55 years old was bent over and could barely talk.  He had bad body odor, and appeared to not have been clean in many days or weeks.  He repeated that he needed an ambulance, and we let him in to sit in the cool office area.  He said he had been poisoned, and appeared to have severe abdominal pain.

I called 911 and requested an ambulance while Curtis watched him in the outer office area.  He seemed to be cognizant of where he was, and answered our questions as best he could.  The fire department squad and the ambulance came within a few minutes, and I ushered them inside to where the man was sitting.

They did their due diligence, and in their questioning appeared to elicit from him the fact that he ingested meth a couple days ago, and thought it had been adulterated with something that was making him sick.  They checked him further and loaded him to the ambulance to be taken to St Francis emergency room.

We don’t often get something like that at our door.  But neither is it unheard of.  I have contacted 911 for ambulance services several times during my time here.  We never hear the outcome of our intervention.  We just know that someone needed help and stopped here to try to access it.

I am glad we staff the building during the week, if for no other reason…than for this kind of thing.  I have to wonder sometimes where people would go for help if we were not here.  I recognize that many churches don’t have anyone at their building during the weekday, and some can’t afford to provide staff.  However, it seems to me that if a church is in the people business, what better way to interact with people than to have someone at the building at least some of the time during the week who is willing and able to answer the door.

And by far most of the time, those at our door are not members of our congregation.  Most probably have no church home.  And most are in some kind of need.  What better service could a church offer than to be a place where one could get some water in the heat, use the phone, access a restroom, have a place to cool off for a few minutes, ask directions to some place, or access the help of the ambulance or police?

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a rather rough world out there on the street.  And it can be equally rough even if one has a roof over their head.  A big part of Jesus’ ministry was “going about doing good,” as Peter’s sermon to Cornelius in Acts 10 states.  Although it shouldn’t be the sum total of our ministry, just as it wasn’t the sum total of Jesus’ ministry, we…the church…today…need to be more cognizant of the need to “go about doing good,” in our sphere of influence.  One way we can do that is to be more available to those on the outside…to remove the barriers between us and them…to open ourselves to the kinds of service that sometimes are not pleasant or require us to make a sacrifice.

May God encourage and empower His people to selfless acts of service, wherever and however those opportunities may present.

 

Blessings,