Experiment

One day a minister had an idea. Jesus once said “When you give a dinner, don’t invite your friends, your family, or your wealthy neighbors who might repay you. Invite the poor, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they can’t repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just.” As with many of Jesus’ teachings, the minister had read about it, professed agreement to it, preached it—but never actually tried to do it.

He and other members of the church had done various things to help individuals and families in need. Their occasional church suppers were always open to guests. The church even joined other local churches in periodically serving meals at the local food pantry. But they had never simply served a meal and invited everybody to come.

The minister made plans to ask the church’s deacons to appropriate the funds for such an event. Their recommendation would then go before the church for a vote. It occurred to him that going through these channels would take a week or more—and while he was optimistic that everybody would approve, he could not guarantee approval. He could expedite things by paying the expense out of his own pocket. So he decided to do that.

Still, he would need assistance. That Wednesday evening, at the church’s midweekly devotional meeting, he explained what he planned to do and why he planned to do it. He invited anybody who wished to join him in preparing and serving a meal that Saturday. After the service a number of those present approached him with offers of money and assistance. The response was so strong that the minister was able to make provision to produce half again as many lunches as originally planned.

That Friday evening several church members met at the church and spent much of the night preparing ten pork roasts. The following morning a team gathered to render the roasts into barbecued pulled-pork sandwiches. Others baked brownies and cookies for desserts. Another group fetched small bags of chips and packed the brown-bag lunches. Still others made signs.

At around 11:00 a.m. they began parading the signs around on the busy street nearby to advertise the free lunches. It was a beautiful spring day, and lots of people were out. Some began to head over to the church to investigate. Soon they were coming in crowds.

Naturally people had questions about the free lunches. Was this a promotional event? Were they soliciting donations? No, the questioners were told, the church members weren’t trying to promote any event or program. They weren’t looking for donations. They were doing this because they wanted to.

Some of the visitors took more than one meal back to members of their families. Some said that they knew of neighbors who were not able to come to get lunch. Volunteers were dispatched to carry lunches to them.

Some opened up and began talking about what was going on with their lives. They had lost loved ones, or were going through hard times, or had struggles of one kind or another. The servers took time out to listen to them, said prayers with those who wanted to, and asked them what they could do for them later.

About an hour and a half after they started serving, the members gave out the last lunch they had on hand. They had distributed 449 lunches in all.



The above account is not fiction. It happened recently at our church in a small town in Arkansas. I had other things to do that Saturday and was not there to witness the event. I’ve since spoken with several fellow members who were there. They were unanimous in saying that they had, as Jesus promised, been blessed by what they had been able to do.

Those who took part in the event are under no illusions that handing out free lunches to all comers one day fixed anybody’s lives. The poor in town are still poor; the sick remain sick; the bereaved are no less bereaved. The lunch didn’t aim to solve the town’s problems, or to create a bunch of warm, fuzzy feelings. What was it about?

The event was an attempt to do something approximating one of those things that Jesus said to do that aren’t often done. Every community is full of people in need. Some, to the world’s richest nation’s great disgrace, run short on basic material needs. Even more lack the many non-material essentials of a good human life. Things like secure ties of family and friendship. Reassurance and stability. Worthwhile goals and direction in life. The knowledge that life has meaning and that somebody cares.

To give out a meal, with nothing to publicize and no expectation of return, is to say “We care—because God cares. We want to give you something. If you’d like, we can offer something well beyond this. Something for now, and something that will last.”

So why haven’t we, and other churches, been doing this all along? I suppose, to be honest, that we just haven’t cared enough. We’re working on that now. What happened that Saturday was an experiment in doing what God says—for a change!—and seeing what God does in return. The preliminary results are most encouraging. We plan to undertake more such experiments in the future. Jesus told his followers to do a lot more things that we haven’t been doing very much. Yet.

I printed this to share with my pastor.

Share away! I can PM you some more details if you're interested.

Two things that our pastor has been sharing with us:

Don't Waste Your Life, by John Piper

Radical, by David Platt

He has what amounts to a book club going by passing out copies of these and other books for members to read and discuss with him. Both Piper and Platt have a lot to say about how most of what we do in church really doesn't have much to do with what the New Testament actually tells us to do. Here's the thing, though--he doesn't just want us to read the books. He's urging us to read them, go back and read the Bible in light of what they say, and then actually start doing something about it. The free lunch isn't just a one-off event. It's part of a growing change in what we understand our church's role in the community to be.