At least not just ANY relationship. We can develop relationships all day long but if as Christians we are not modeling our relationship building after Christ then we ARE going to FAIL!
We see in Matt 9, Mark 2, Luke 5 and 19 the types of relationships Jesus invested in, relationships with people who were hurting, broken and condemned by society. We spend WAY too much time developing the wrong relationships with the wrong people for the wrong motives. Here are some examples.
1. Developing a relationship to gain financial support
2. Developing a relationship to gain power and control
3. Developing a relationship for personal glory and praise
4. Developing a relationship simply for personal friendship
While these types of relationships are not “evil” they are not what we are given by Christ as a model.
This is essential to pastors and ministers to understand and even more essential for the laity to understand and support their pastors in through allowing them to exercise their calling but also in rolling up their sleeves and joining in reaching out to those broken people Adam Mclane posted on His blog today that he was “not satisfied with reaching 5-10% of the population” and I agree. For far to long we have allowed churches to be community/family clubhouses and have forgotten the world outside.
Tomorrow I will talk about the types of relationships I am building in Youth Ministry and how I believe they are foundational in any youth ministry trying to reach hurting teens in their community.
passionburnswithin.com 