With or Among

Says Charles Wagner:
“Each person’s base of operations is the field of his immediate duty. Neglect this and all that you undertake at a distance is compromised. First, then, be of your own country, your own city, your own home, and work shop, and church,--
Then if you can set out from this go beyond, this is the plain and natural order.”
To save humanity one must live with it and feel for it at first hand.

Never elated when one man’s oppressed;
Never dejected while another’s blessed.

That reminds me of another quote in the same book, “Inspired words for the inspired life”, which says, “It is not in trying to be good to people so much as being good with or among them that this world is to be saved.”

I think these thoughts embody much of what I think is missing in some Christian understanding of evangelism or ministry in general. I am convinced that if ministry is not intensely personal that it lacks a dimension of power that is crucial for the same results. Of course that power is love and when we are personally involved by being “with or among” our words are received with a far more open heart. I wonder if much is done among Christ’s kingdom at all without these ingredients. I know it is not “Way of the Master” thinking, but it is my thinking, and apparently others as well.