Blessing people

Our regular admin meeting was coming to an end and the conversation drifted from dates and publicity to people.We began to chat about some of the people we knew and the seemingly impossible situations they face. The single mum with a child with special needs who gets no respite care ,the parent getting beaten up by their own child, the man deeply grieving the loss of a wife and left to bring up children on his own.In one short conversation we identified so much pain in people we had met just in the previous 24 hours
Later that day I came across this video put together by Christian Associates

Every Life Has a Story from Christian Associates on Vimeo.

The conversation and the video are a powerful reminder that many people have very tough lives indeed. God loves these people every bit as much as He loves us and I long for our church to be a blessing to the communities which we are called to serve
Reggie McNeal in his book Missional Renaissance says

The missional church is an expression of God’s heart. God is a sending God. His mission began with Israel, which was to be a blessing to the nations. It reached its climax in Jesus, who came to die for the world. The Spirit is sent to empower the Church to be God’s witness to the world....The Bible is narrative, a guide for living and a call to action. People of God are charged with the responsibility to bless everyone

The church is of huge importance to God but looking back over many years of ministry I sometimes think I have spent too much time doing church and not enough encouraging the church to bless the world and show Jesus love to hurting people like the ones we chatted about this morning. In the words of an old song I sung in youth groups long ago ,which itself quotes Mathews gospel. Freely freely you have recieved freely freely give