Do I want an M & M Messiah?

I often struggle to articulate my understanding of God’s desire for us, as Christians, to walk alongside the poor and oppressed of our world without sounding negative. I’m sure that it is partly due to my inability, but also partly because it is such a convicting issue in the North American church that few really want to grapple with it. I don’t think that we should ever serve out of guilt (which I don’t believe to be authentic service anyhow), but out of a Biblical understanding of God’s heart for the world and a passionate love for Jesus Christ. Thus, when I find quality explanations of the Church’s mission, I want to pass them along.

The book, Churches that Make a Difference (edited by Ron Sider, Philip Olson, & Heidi Rolland Unruh) quotes Rev. Tom Theriault, a missions pastor from a church involved in holistic ministry, from his writing about the healthy tension between “inreach” and “outreach:”

I’ve gotten a lot of mileage from my M & M soap box…” More and More for Me and Mine Syndrome,” the “What-can-you-do-for-me-today,-God Gospel.” As in the time of Jesus, many are looking for an M & M Messiah, a savior who will deliver us from all manner of oppressions (and depressions and repressions and dysfunctions). As with Jesus’ contemporaries, we are frustrated, if not infuriated (Luke 4:30f), by a savior who is for the world. When He turns the “M & M’s” right-side-up and into “W-W’s” ….a “We are for the World” gospel, we have trouble.

To be sure, ours is a delivering God. But he delivers for a purpose. He delivers us out of our dead-end obsession with self and into the mainstream of His life-giving water that is destined for the nations (Rev. 22:2). We want a “sit-and-soak Savior,” One who fills our little hot tubs up with all kinds of soothing blessings. What we really have is a “Get up and GO God,” One who soothes and saves so that He can launch us out (the root of the word for “mission” is the same as for “missile”) into His Kingdom purposes to soothe and save the world. Hot tubs are great, but if you spend too much time in one you shrivel up and get sick. Same is true for the bath of blessings that our wonderful Savior provides for us. The blessings are meant to be fuel in our little rockets, rockets that have a trajectory set by the Word of God (Luke 4). If we stop with merely basking in the blessings of salvation, we, our families, our churches, will shrivel up and get sick. A body needs exercise, and so does the Body of Christ. The mission of Christ is the exercise regimen prescribed by the Ultimate Personal Trainer.