Table of Contents

Structuring "Touch" — A Call to the Last Desert Generation

By C. David Gable

Kevin, pastor of our only Assemblies of God congregation in the U.S. among the Kmhmu people, has a hard assignment. His people, torn from their Asian home and thrust into a 1990s Orange County, California, struggle. Their ways and customs no longer fit in their new world. Supported by the government, they have lost the dignity of supporting themselves. Their children, adjusting more quickly to the American way of life, no longer follow the patterns that had worked for generations. The Kmhmu people don’t know what will become of them. They are hard to lead, venting their uneasiness on those who try. So Linda Gross, home missionary to Southeast Asians, brought Kevin by for encouragement.

My only word of hope for him was to compare his assignment to that of Moses, who was trying to lead a people who were not what they had been, and who could not see what God had in mind for them to become. They couldn’t find the faith to make the jump, in one generation, from slaves in Egypt to possessors of the land in Canaan. They were contentious, resistive, and difficult to lead.

Sometimes all you can do is confirm that a task is tough and can’t be hurried. My meeting with Kevin was one of those times.

After Kevin and Linda left, I began to think about our organizational trek in the Assemblies of God from have-not to have status. Drawn from the disenfranchised, rejected from fellowship by evangelicals and fundamentalists, we began in humble storefronts on the wrong side of the tracks. We were have-nots. We defined ourselves as "peculiar people" and "the Lord’s despised few."

Times have changed; we are not what we were. We now have beautiful churches. We are among the leaders in growth, here and globally. We have become one of the largest organized blocs in the Protestant world. We are welcomed among evangelicals. Our ministers hold key interdenominational leadership assignments. In real and significant ways, we have "entered the land."

On the other hand, paradoxically, we dare not fully think of ourselves in those terms or let ourselves act like it. After 85 years and several generations, we haven’t fully changed our self-definition. God has indeed made us significant among His people, but we are just beginning to think of appropriate ways of acting or restructuring to take responsibility for the stewardship of what we have become. We live in the land, but act like we are still in the desert.

We all have our own ways of discovering the significance that God has given us. For me, it came in an interview in the mid-70s with a representative from the American Bible Society. He asked whether I, college youth representative for the Assemblies of God, was interested in a certain Bible distribution project. I told him it didn’t fit, and asked where he would go next for help. He replied, "Don’t you realize who you guys are? If I have a national project, I go to the Southern Baptists. If they don’t pick up on it, I come to you; and if you don’t either, I quit. No one else has the people or spiritual energy to pull off anything major." I had no idea we were thought of in such exclusive company.

God has allowed the ugly duckling to become a swan; yet, we should not think of ourselves as anything more than, at most, a big bird.

With this in mind, I began to reread Deuteronomy. Moses wrote this at the end of the desert time, just before the Israelites crossed the Jordan River. It is a repackaging of the instructions of Exodus through Numbers—a directive to have-nots who are about to become haves. Deuteronomy, the Old Testament equivalent of the Sermon on the Mount, told the Israelites how to live. It took into account what happens to people when they are blessed with success. It embodied self-correcting principles that were to carry the people into the coming generations and keep the blessing of God flowing. It spoke to spiritual, economic, political, religious, and relational matters. But what does it say to us in reassurance, direction, or warning at this time in our journey?

GOD’S PLAN FOR ISRAEL

It was God’s plan that they possess the Promised Land.

This concept occurs in almost every chapter in Deuteronomy. God brought them out to take them in. He intended for them to enter the Promised Land and to live there successfully. It wasn’t just a human or cultural hope; it came from God.

An allegorical study such as this must tread carefully at this point. The New Testament has no direct promised earthly equivalent of the Promised Land. Yet, it is a characteristic of God to bless His people. Our deep desire to bless our kids finds its origin in God’s tendency to give His children "all things."

As a Movement, seeking to do well and build for God’s glory, we submitted our plans and purposes to Him. And we have experienced His blessings in numerical growth and an increase in our resources. We should feel neither guilty, denying this; nor arrogant, crediting ourselves. We should feel joyful, celebrating what we have been given, and listen closely to a generous God, seeking how we can best use this newfound status and stuff He’s given us.

The God of the desert is also the God of the Promised Land.

The Israelites experienced daily the miraculous manna and quail in the desert. But they were about to eat in the Promised Land. Accustomed to a miracle of provision, would not the normal form of provision signal a lessening of their anointing?

While on the move they had a cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. Not needing guidance the same way in Canaan as in the desert, how will they experience a guiding God?

When we know God was with us as have-nots in the desert, we sometimes identify those have-not components as necessary elements in our walk with God. Since we’ve never been haves, we are naturally suspicious. We reasonably conclude: "Those haves don’t see God move like we have-nots do."

Nomad and slave, they knew, but what about land-holder? Most assuredly, once they were in the Promised Land, someone pointed out the virtues of the good old days in the desert when God directly supplied their needs. These prognosticators bewailed the present "falling away" and gloomily predicted dire consequences. After all, "We’ve never done it this way before."

It was going to be vastly different in Canaan. None of them had done anything like it. No wonder they cried, "If You go not up with us, carry us not up hence." And God understood. Over and over at this critical juncture He reassured them: "I will be with you." He fully intended to remain in relationship with them. The God of the desert is also the God of the Land.

The critical factor is not "land or desert," "have or have-not," but "with God or not with God."

Possessions and status simply aren’t the point. They are secondary; nice, but not what it’s all about. At any given time, for any of His people, God may allow possessions or status, but they are not primary. If we have an abundance of possessions, we are to use them; if not, we are to serve God joyfully with what we do have. Abound or abased, it is more important to hold to God’s hand than to the pennies in it.

While we may have possessions, they are not without hazard. God saw the spiritual danger in acquiring possessions (Deuteronomy 8:14). But God knows what He wants—our hearts. The goodies He gives us can get in the way of that. The more we have of status and stuff, the greater our tendency for self-reliance and pride. This calls for some discipline of our hearts and habits.

On the verge of giving them the Land, making them "haves," God made provision for the care of the "have-nots."

The direction is clear. Just in case the generations to come forgot the way it was or having never known what it felt like to be a have-not, this first generation in the Land was to build a model for caring for have-nots into their way of life, for the rest to follow.

The needy come in three categories: the alien, the widow, and the fatherless. God said to care for them passively and actively—passively, in their being guaranteed the same justice as those who have more power to get it for themselves (Deuteronomy 24:17; 27:19); in the landowners’ generous awareness that others might have a greater need to glean their fields (Deuteronomy 24:19–21). Then actively, in the great annual celebrations—the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) and the Feast of Tabernacles (Deuteronomy 16:11,14).

Besides this hospitality spaced throughout the year, an even larger involvement was required (Deuteronomy 26:12,13). A significant part of the 10th of their annual gross national product was to be made available to the powerless, as well as the priests.

God takes people’s needs seriously with this built-in, ongoing provision. Even with the national forgiveness of debts every 7 years, and the return of mortgaged land to original households in the jubilee years, God made some allowance for the poor, knowing that bad things will happen. People will need help, even in God’s ideal economy. How does this speak to us?

In these days of New Testament and grace-instead-of-law, might we, when our needs are met, forget the needy and hurting? To the extent that God allows us to become haves, we need to build in a pattern of care for the have-nots.

How are we doing in our care for the have-nots? We are not very far along. We have grown more in becoming haves than we have in structuring care for the have-nots. We do much better at "tell" ministries (evangelism) than "touch" ones (feeding, clothing, and visiting). Our evangelical and holiness forefathers led the way in these categories in the 1800s; but in our century, after the liberal vs. evangelical wars in the first half, the "touch" ministries were so preempted by the modernists that we are scared of them. We so equate social concern with theological liberalism that we cannot organize to help people without deep uneasiness that we are headed down some primrose path to perdition.

We might assess our Movement as finally countenance situational touching, glimpse at the possibility of systematic touching, and mostly not yet even dream of systemic touching.

For instance, Assemblies of God churches would probably offer a graceful welcome to one of its sons who comes home to die with AIDS (situational). But I do not know a single Assemblies of God church that has begun an intentional ministry to AIDS victims and their families (systematic).

We show similar tendencies in the other needs. In feeding the hungry, we have gotten into Convoys of Hope (situational), and some avant-garde churches have food pantries. But far rarer is the Assemblies of God church that asks why so many families in their community are hungry, and helps people organize their city for changes that promote jobs and address the system.

Even with a clear case of human need and a strong biblical imperative in this area of feeding the hungry, we feel a need to reassure ourselves that it’s OK to risk this. We hasten to remind one another that the food is just "the hook, to bring them to the Book." We are uneasy with "touch" unless there is a direct connection to immediate "tell" with a call to decision. It is not enough for us to simply do these things because Jesus said to.

Will we change? We are shaped by our past, but not trapped by it. I see these forces encouraging change.

FORCES THAT ENCOURAGE CHANGE

Successful models overseas.

Our missionaries planted national churches that now minister in all kinds of practical "touch" ways. They not only retain their spiritual fervor, they out-strip us in it.

Latin America ChildCare teaches us we can provide education. The Buntain hospital in Calcutta, and countless HealthCare outreaches, demonstrate the power of providing medical care. Our national sister churches see a need and organize politically and economically to meet it. We are told that in Latin America to be Pentecostal is to be socially active.

It is time to go to them, not as teachers, but as learners: to learn from LACC how to educate, yet help dump-dwellers keep dignity; from African leaders, how to help economically and still hold people accountable; from Caribbean pastors, how to turn a handout into a lift up.

Welfare reform is changing the playing field.

Welfare reform—to get people from welfare to work—is due to kick in. When it does, needs will increase. Some, for various reasons, won’t get jobs; and some won’t get jobs that will adequately support them.

On the other end, provision for meeting the needs of welfare recipients is being passed down from national to state to local agencies. But local churches are still the most effective and responsible distributors of assistance. Let a local assembly show initiative, integrity, and interest in helping, and it will discover a new willingness from the government at all levels to work with and through it to alleviate human need. Bethel Assembly, in Fontana, California, headed a coalition of churches, police, and social agencies to deal with the homeless, and became so effective that the state of California granted them $185,000 to operate for 2 years. May this be the harbinger of good things to come.

The failure of liberal churches is leaving a vacuum.

Mainline is now old-line. Made-in-Europe denominations are in serious decline. In the last 30 years, the Presbyterian church has lost a thousand churches and a million members.

Theological liberalism lacks energy and has failed on every front. Thousands of local churches totter, attended only by the elderly. It will get worse. They are less prepared than we to step up to the challenge of the postmodern world.

Touching churches grow.

Above all else, we are pragmatic. Show our Assemblies of God pastors a way to grow a church, and we become interested. The new way of growing churches will demand a new kind of hearing for "touch" to be combined with "tell" in church life.

In the late 80s, the churches in my city, Fresno, California, collaborated on a citywide evangelistic endeavor. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars, involved hundreds of people over weeks of time, and imported a world-renowned speaker for the week-long crusade. I have yet to hear of a single pastor reporting the addition of a single new Christian to his or her church as a result of that crusade.

In contrast, one of our Southern California churches led a 19-church Convoy of Hope 1-day food give-out. It cost less than $10,000 and featured only local pastors and people. Of the 6,000 people fed, over 1,000 signed decision cards, and over 95 percent of them gave genuine addresses. All the sponsoring churches reported growth, some significant.

The Los Angeles International Church’s Adopt-a-Block outreach puts Christians on the street each week, cleaning, painting, visiting, feeding, clothing, and befriending. As a result, a steady stream of the church’s new friends come to worship with the people who helped them, meet the God who sent these workers, and become part of the church.

For months I have been asking: Is there a church among us that is experiencing significant growth, that is not heavily involved in touching ministry? None are reported yet. Growing churches tell and touch. Touch has quietly become an essential part of church growth. The significance of touch is underreported and underanalyzed, since other factors preach better in our tradition. And we have too many old fears concerning touch to let ourselves properly weigh it.

Why has touch grown in importance as an essential to church growth? In the postmodern world in which we live, it is not so important to win witnessing arguments concerning what is true, as it is to first demonstrate to our neighbors what is real by visible acts of love. You don’t need to know much about postmodernism just as you don’t have to have a degree in electrical engineering to flip a light switch. You don’t have to be able to explain postmodernism to show you love people by helping them. Combine touch with tell and see what happens in your church.

Ongoing revelation of the Word.

I don’t remember ever hearing an entire sermon preached on Matthew 25:31–40. We often preach from its two preceding stories—the Parable of the Ten Virgins and the Parable of the Talents. But Christ’s teaching in verses 31–40 hits us in an uncomfortable spot. Putting all else aside: our organizational development, changed circumstances, and new relevance to postmoderns, this Word stands, and obedience is imperative. May that day find us among the righteous at His right hand.

C. David Gable, assistant superintendent of the Southern California District of the Assemblies of God, lives in Irvine, California.