The Intent

Why Compassion?

Compassion is born in the soul of mankind and is a God-mark inscribed upon the DNA of human history. Natural threads of Compassion can be found in spontaneous human reaction, from a baby’s cry… to the images of people suffering from the ravages of AIDS. The human inclination towards compassion can be nurtured or repressed, but never completely lost. It resurfaces in secret places, in shadows, in confessions, or at one’s deathbed. Both highly advanced and underdeveloped people groups are intuitively aware of the needs around them. The pastor preaches it, the parent embraces with it, the activist shouts it, the politician poses for it, the hurried miss it, the college student envisions it, the artist depicts it, the celebrity champions it, the sacrificial live it, the suffering long for it. Compassion usually finds itself alongside the actions of forgiveness, mercy, hope, tears, sweat, relief, or belonging; and it never stands alone without love. The irreducible minimum of Compassion includes the individual, others, and love.

Compassion reflects the nature of God through the supreme attribute of love, actively displayed towards someone in need. Compassion is the recurring theme through out the ancient scriptures.

But you, O Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers… let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

The same irreducible minimum (by individuals, to others, through love) is modeled as the ultimate act of Compassion in the gospel message… by God, to mankind, through love. Therefore, all acts of compassion, whether sacred or secular, are a rooted in and a reflection of the nature of God regardless of the initiators intention, awareness, or belief in God.

In fact through out much of early American history, compassion, benevolence, and charity are found in and around religious faith communities. However from colonialism to the 21st Century, compassion has all but lost its connection to the redemptive work of Jesus. New churches, established churches, healthy churches, struggling churches must become what Reggie McNeal calls Missional churches. He writes that

“the rise of the missional church is happening all over the world. Two primary shifts are occurring that give the missional church its unique characteristics:The shift from an internal focus to an external focus. Missional churches are churches that are turned inside-out. They are heavily involved in serving their communities."

These churches must embrace the DNA of compassion in this emerging culture if they want to have any chance of survival.

“The emerging community” another writer puts it, “can teach us again that love must be the first word on our lips and also the last, and that we must seek to incarnate that sacred word in the world.”

These are old hymn lyrics that illustrate the above point

God of compassion, in mercy befriend us;
Giver of grace for our needs all availing;
Wisdom and strength for each day do Thou send us,
Patience untiring and courage unfailing.

These are contemporary U2 lyrics that illustrate the above point

One love
One blood
One life
You got to do what you should
One life
With each other
Sisters
Brothers
One life
But we're not the same
We get to
Carry each other
Carry each other

In the gospels Jesus spoke to his disciples and walked them through what it meant to be a follower when He said,

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

In this command Jesus speaks of a qualifying validity that marks one for being a disciple, that is, the notion of “loving one another as Jesus loved.” Thus, the main indicator of discipleship lie in ones ability to love others. “For the only clear foundation laid down by Jesus” Peter Rollins writes, “was the law of love. This love demands that we use the scriptures not as an ethical textbook but rather as a text that extrapolates the Christlike way of being in the world.” From Christ to the early church to the emerging church today, the ‘supremacy of love’ and the spoken directive of Jesus to the ‘mission of love’ is the greatest form of validation the world could ever experience. Yet somewhere along the line the church moved away from relational and more towards institutional and love lost its appeal upon mankind. The world would question loves’ authenticity and sincerity. The followers of Jesus would lose their most influential means to communicate a transformational truth, and the post-modern world would witness the consequences of a “loveless marriage” between the community longing to be embraced and a church that lacks the know-how to embrace it. The church in the West is suffering from a “lovelessness” pandemic that signals to secular humanist the irrelevancy of our faith. In his book The End of Faith, Sam Harris acknowledges that the power of faith within a particular community is no doubt strong and that millions would die (or kill) for what they believe, but his response to the legitimacy of faith typifies the lovelessness in the church and Christ’ mission in his followers. He writes,

“But the fact that religious beliefs have a great influence on human life says nothing at all about their validity”

In the opening words of his book Present Future, Reggie McNeal says it this way,

“The current Church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money, and energy of the previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to congregations comes from people aged fifty-five and older) or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both.”

It is in love, through love, and about love that the church in the emerging culture must reclaim as its missional purpose and intended design. In this context we will look at the journey of the missional church from its intended design to its current state. Within the church we will narrow the focus to the early essence of Compassion DNA, to its loss within the consumer church, to its re-emerging outside the church in pop-culture. As the re-emergence of compassion coincides with the emerging culture we will work to refine Pietà toward its roots of transformation within the missional church through relationships, church unity, partnerships, and emerging models.

why Justice?

Throughout history justice has found itself at the pivotal points of culture. Justice concerns the proper ordering of things and persons within a society. It has been subject to philosophical, legal, and theological reflection and debate throughout time.

Justice finds itself in two specific fields… First is Distributive Justice, which is concerned with the proper distribution of good things - wealth, power, reward, respect - between different people. Second would be Retributive Justice, which is concerned with the intuitive response to wrongdoing. So, for instance, the lex talionis (law of retaliation) is a theory of retributive justice which says that the proper punishment is equal to the wrong suffered: "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."

Most kids, as they grow up, are taught the value of “restrained” retributive justice. We’re told “I know Billy hit you… but you need to use your words and talk to him.” While retributive justice intuitively makes sense to anyone who’s been cut off on the freeway, “restrained” retributive justice keeps the allows “due” justice take its course (court of law, fines, incarceration, etc.) and protects those affected by injustice from themselves. Restrained Justice can also be called “meekness” which is defined as strength under control. And while Jesus is described as meek, he also clearly displays an active form of Justice towards those who are marginalized and unfairly set apart in society.

Through out the ancient scriptures God stands on behalf of the marginalized and specifically the widow and orphan. The status of widows has been an important social issue, due primarily to injustice and exploitation. In families in which the husband was the sole provider, widowhood could plunge the family into poverty. Widows and orphans can become dependant and vulnerable and either left to themselves or taken advantage of, thus the rise of Social Justice.

Social justice refers to the concept of an unjust society that refers to more than just the administration of laws. It is based on the idea of a society which gives individuals and groups unfair treatment and an unjust share of the benefits of society. Different proponents of social justice have developed different interpretations of what constitutes unfair treatment and an unjust share. It can also mean distribution of advantages and disadvantages within a society or community.

The ancient call for social justice finds itself in both the new and old testaments…

"Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27

"Leave your orphans; I will protect their lives. Your widows too can trust in me." Jeremiah 49:11

The 21st century presents a new set of justice issues that common culture must address. In the past the church has been suspiciously silent and turned its back while the marginalized are taken advantage. Issues of human trafficking in the US, advocacy for the poor, fighting for resources for the homeless are just few of significant problems that poison the landscape of American Society. Recently in the encyclical Deus Caritas Est ("God is Love") of Pope Benedict XVI's, he taught that social justice is the central concern of politics, and not of the church. While he is correct in identifying charity as the central social concern for the church, social justice requires a moral compass that is too often skewed by partisan politics. For too long the church has sat passively by while other organizations and entities haggled and debated over what to do, or who should do it, or if it should be done at all. The church can brings the single most collaborative component into the overall equation of social justice. The church should not have to pick up where politics leave off… or where politics don’t show up at all. The church can play an active role to bring about awareness and change.

Why Collaboration?

Creative collaboration is one of the few remaining mass agents of change in exist in society. The art of drawing entities together to unify on a common goal is difficult but can be extremely fruitful. Churches and denominations tend to work within their own network structures or recreate structures without looking first to partner or collaborate on any issue. The result of this lack of collaboration is multiple sub-groups and non-profits that are doing the same work on a lesser scale. Collaboration for the sake of the cause allows all parties to realize its goals sooner, and exposes alternative agendas that foster disunity.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt says,

“When you say ‘collaboration,’ the average forty-five-year-old thinks they know what you’re talking about teams sitting down, having a nice conversation with nice objectives and a nice attitude. That’s what collaboration means to most people.”

We’re talking about something dramatically different. The new promise of collaboration is that with peer production we will harness human skill, ingenuity, and intelligence more efficiently and effectively than anything we have witnessed previously. Sounds like a tall order. But the collective knowledge, capability, and resources embodied within broad horizontal networks of participants can be mobilized to accomplish much more than one firm acting alone.

To revision leadership to respond to the needs of those in the margins requires churches to begin the process of collaboration with other churches, businesses, government, education, organization, media, entertainment, and health care to unleash compassion and justice into their local community in a new way, and in unparalleled levels.

No where else can you find a clearer example of mission than the life and ministry of Jesus. From his infancy and the prophetic words of Simeon “this child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel” to his resurrection and great commission “go and make disciples,” Jesus was on a mission that would bring a revolution. His earthly ministry was to bring compassion and justice through the kingdom, while his death and resurrection were to facilitate God’s grace and mercy on mankind. It seems as if every time Jesus spoke of mission or acted on it, people were taken aback.

Obery Hendricks, in his book The Politics of Jesus steps deep into the roots of Judaism to lay the historical back drop to the Messiah’s compassion and justice mission. He writes,

“To say that Jesus was a political revolutionary is to say that the message he proclaimed not only called for change in individual hearts but also demanded sweeping and comprehensive change in the political, social, and economic structures in his setting in life: colonized Israel."

He goes on to say that,

“an important goal of his ministry was to radically change the distribution of authority and power, goods and resources, so all people – particularly the little people, or the least of these, as Jesus called them – might have lives free of political repression, enforced hunger and poverty, and undue insecurity.”

The missional value of compassion and justice on the church in the emerging (post-Christian) culture is one of the only apologetics left in western society. Collaboration gives the mission of Christ a stronger advantage both regionally and nationally.