Can you pray for me?
That single statement. That single question. It changed me. It opend me up to a whole new world.
I had just graduated from seminary with a Masters in Intercultural Ministries. I was ready to conquer the world and end poverty in Orlando, FL. Of course, as a white dude with his Masters degree and a bit of a chip on my shoulder, I thought I knew it all.
Donald Miller once jokingly said, “Be careful of a white guy with a masters degree because he thinks he knows it all.” In 2009 I had just graduated from seminary and we moved our young family to Orlando, Florida where I got connected to a ministry in the city and began to love people living on the margins of society. I enjoyed serving and thought I was making a difference. There was just one problem; people weren’t changing based on my agenda and my timeline.
I had spent three years studying and understanding why people were poor, understanding systemic racism and had come to some conclusions about what needed to be done about it. In hindsight I can now see that the main problem with my approach was that it was rooted in a deep sense of superiority, pride, arrogance and insecurity. As Miller said, I truly felt like I knew it all.
Then, I learned the new language of dignified interdependent relationships from Dignity Serves and dove deep into how Paul closes his letter in Philippians 4 through using the words, giving and receiving.
Something changed almost immediately. This new approach to loving our friends in marginalized places so deeply transformed me personally that I began to implement the principles into the way I was interacting with my neighbors that lived on the streets. No longer was I solely trying to convert them to Christ, but through dignified interdependent relationships I was discovering that many of my friends already knew Christ much better than I did because they had found a God that cared for them in their distress.
I remember one specific pivotal moment very clearly. It was April of 2010 and I had been serving at Compassion Corner in downtown Orlando for a couple of months. What happened that day left such an impact on me.
I had just finished facilitating a Bible study on Luke 15 with the community and we were hanging out drinking coffee. I looked at a new friend and said these words, “I was wondering if you could pray for me?”
He just looked at me with a blank stare. Why would I need prayer? Wasn’t I the one with the power having just got done leading the Bible study? Wasn’t I the pastor, the one with the seminary degree that had all of the answers. This is what comes from being conditioned by the majority culture, we believe we have all of the answers and have to retain the power and control.
The truth was that I had a lot of inner-turmoil going on in my life.
It was in that moment that I discovered that my approach to reaching a community for Jesus would have be radically different than it had been since I began to take evangelism seriously. No longer would I arrogantly march into a community to bring my genius and my pre-baked solutions. On the contrary, I began to discover that God was already present and at work among people and that my refined role was to recognize and affirm God’s image in and grace towards those on the margins, and to allow the Holy Spirit to do the work as Christ draws people to himself.
The reality is that the false self is always seeking to stay in control of others and relationships, trying to manipulate it for its own agenda. As Robert Mulholland describes one manifestation of the false self in The Deeper Journey as the, “manipulative self”. He describes it as, “Our false self is a master manipulator, always seeking to leverage its world and all those in it in ways most advantageous to our own security, prestige and, especially, agenda. Having lost the true ground of our identity in loving union with God, where our real purpose in life is found, our false self must generate its own purpose.”
Community Development expert Bob Lupton says, “When my motivation is to change people, I inadvertently communicate: Something is wrong with you, but (quite subtly) I am okay. If our relationship is defined as healer/patient, then I must remain well and they must remain sick in order for our interaction to continue. Since one does not go to the doctor when he is well, curing, then, cannot long serve as the basis for any relationship that is life-enhancing for both participants. Little wonder that we, who have come to the city to “save” the poor, find it difficult to enter into true community with those we deem need.”
Our model of course is Jesus and this posture of receiving is what Jesus does in John 4 in interacting with the Samaritan woman. Jesus chooses to go through Samaria, walks up to the well and sits down, “being wearied with his journey” (4:6). The Greek word for “weary” is kopiao (from kopos, in secular Greek, a beating or weariness caused by it). Jesus, being tired sees the Samaritan woman and then does something so brilliant; he asks her for help by saying, “Will you give me a drink?”
Even the woman’s reaction in 4.9 says it all, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews does not associate with Samaritans.) (or even use dishes that they use).
What’s so amazing in this story is that Jesus places himself in a posture of receiving by asking for help from the Samaritan woman. He fully immerses himself in her context in a non-threatening way. It is in this framework of honoring this woman’s dignity, value and worth that Jesus talks about the water that will never run out.
If the goal for our relationships are based on, “giving and receiving”, from Philippians 4, then we learn to not only give, but to receive as well. If we are God’s beloved children, we don’t have to be in control of others or circumstances and can now receive from those we believe we should be giving too.
The beautiful thing about living into this is that the biblical text we were studying was Luke 15 and the two lost sons. After my time there I then realized that God was working through my friends living on the streets to realize I was no longer the younger son looking for acceptance in the distant country and I wasn’t the older brother who stayed at home trying to perform and prove his value to the father, I was the beloved of God. God was working through people that were homeless to help heal what was homeless in me.
What was homeless in me is that I was incredibly depressed, not aware of the true self that Christ had placed in me, and was deeply insecure. When I came to Compassion Corner and began to serve weekly I realized that this was the first time in six years that I had consistently showed up to serve others. What had happened in Orlando was so deeply jarring that I was honestly scared to commit to any sort of Christian service.
The year I spent with my new friends that were unhoused in downtown Orlando changed my life. These friends prayed over me, listened to me, and taught me the Bible. When it was time to move from there to Atlanta I was a different person. I had discovered my voice and gifting again. To my friends, Calvin, Eugene, Larry, and Dawn, thank you for allowing Christ to serve me through you!