In church, we “do ministry.”
At my current congregation this mostly looks like acts of service, and frequently to people we don’t know well—often the poor and the needy. We run a small food pantry, we donate materials and goods to local charities, we do fundraising drives for a Haitian charity we support. Our youth group builds and repairs homes. At another church I attended, the members devoted themselves to refurbishing and repairing medical equipment for those who needed it.
For congregants, service to each other primarily looks like food and presence and occasionally financial support. We show up for people having babies or getting married with meal trains and checks. We show up to hospitals with flowers and cards and prayer quilts.
All of this matters.
It also looks very little like the ministries of my home church and the area where I grew up.
When I was young, our church certainly had formal “giving ministries.” There were earmarked times and events where goods or money were required. And we also tended to needs like pregnancies, illnesses, new babies, and deaths. But mostly, the elders of the church “went visitin’.”
What I mean is that every now and then I’d bump into my grandma headed out the door, hair freshly curled, purse in hand. I’d ask her where she was going. “Visitin’,” she’d tell me. I knew she wouldn’t be back until evening.
“Visitin’” was simply that: visiting people. Visiting whom, and for what, was always up in the air: it depended on who was home and available and able to chat. Visitin’ wasn’t done with any particular purpose in mind: in fact, the general vibe was “we’re just dropping in to say hi.” Sometimes visits lasted five minutes when people were busy and sometimes they lasted five hours.
Visitin’ didn’t always have to happen at home. Sometimes people had visits at the grocery store when they ran into each other or at the hardware shop when someone ran out for nails. Visitin’ didn’t always even mean talking; a lot of men I knew would simply pile into a truck to go spend time with a buddy, sitting out in the yard together without saying any more than seven or eight words.
As a child, I could not understand the utility of this sort of thing.
It seemed impossibly boring. Everyone only ever talked. Nothing happened. It wasn’t until later that I understood this was community-building in its most elemental and intuitive form. People came together and they talked, and when they talked, truths emerged. You learned who was sick or coming down with something, whose kids had a big test coming up, that Tom was awfully worried about how drawn his wife seemed. You learned who was making do with less than a little and who needed a hand up, you got introductions to other people you didn’t know, you learned there was a birthday party. You talked about God and life and Scripture and miseries and blessings.
I miss those days.
Community is hard to come by, even in churches. And “doing ministry,” while valuable and necessary, is also not the same as “visitin’.” Doing ministry to me often connotes deliberate service: the transfer of something (goods, money, energy, resources) from those who have to those who do not. Doing ministry has a purpose and often a quantifiable end goal in mind. Doing ministry is a task, a duty, a privilege, an obligation, a grace.
Visitin’ is not. Visitin’ is more about who we are than what we do. It’s not about deliberate service, though service can be a part of it. It places people on equal relational footing. I’m not visitin’ to give you something or to help you; I’m visitin’ because you’re you and you’re my neighbor and we can talk. Visitin’ sometimes has no quantifiable purpose or end goal. Sometimes it’s just enjoyable, just spending time. The consequence or the outcome is almost always simply relational, with everything else being ancillary.
I find myself realizing of late that this kind of relational engagement is what I long for and so rarely find within churches. Strangely, I seem to find it more with Christians outside churches. We meet each other in some sort of forum, and then we start finding ways to connect. It isn’t about service, though service is sometimes a part of it. It’s about being present to and for each other in significant ways. Recognizing each other. “Walking through life together” in the ways that small groups like to perceive that they are, only often more naturally and without potato chips (though almost always with coffee).
I’m not sure what the modern church is going to become. But I try to keep at front of mind that “visitin’” ethos in my own life. When there isn’t a place for it in my current congregation, I try to establish it in my own—even virtually. I create touchpoints and times where the whole goal is just to be with people and chat with them (even, and especially, the people I would otherwise “serve”). I learn things. We laugh a lot. And I believe that, in these moments, Christ is as present as He is when we are gifting medical equipment, or sending funds where they are desperately needed, or running the soup kitchen.
Your presence is a gift. Don’t forget it, and don’t sacrifice it in the name of “doing ministry.”
Sometimes, being there is the work.
