We seem to want strong, steady churches in Canada, but I wonder what God thinks of it all from His panoramic perspective. Have we become that beautiful bride He hoped we would become? Are we getting it right; does God love what He sees? To answer that question it is good to go back to Jesus’ original mission statement for a little auditing.

In Luke 4:18 and 19, Jesus quotes the words of Isaiah in his temple reading. Jesus read the Isaiah 61:1 passage that says: “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captive and release from darkness for the prisoners.” Then, in the next verses He says, “I am that man.” He declares this to be His mission.

As we read the rest of that gospel we watch Jesus make good on the promise to keep the poor at the centre of His mission. He fully identified with the poor; it wasn’t that He just happened to associate with the broken, He sought them out. He aligned himself with the broken and powerless, and built the most beautiful movement in history with that group of underdogs.

Today, for the most part, churches run from the poor and not to them, with one exception. It has, of late, become in vogue to parachute into inner-city experiences and take part in a sort of boot camp for suburban believers. This titillating volunteer experience, where the “haves” connect with the “have nots,” often feels more like voluntourism than volunteerism. In my 18 years in inner-city ministry I have heard our children, many of whom face poverty every day, articulate the feeling. One teen’s journal after a suburban group visited us said, “What are they looking at; haven’t they seen an inner-city kid before?”

I have often seen the agendas of these trips, and it seems a little like an inner-city safari, where the group hopes to see darkness and human suffering bracketed by an air-conditioned van ride and a stop at Disneyland on the way home.

Let me be very clear—God does use these island experiences, but how do we connect them to the rest of our faith life? How do we build a bridge between the poor and the church—a bridge that the poor will risk crossing?

When Christ said, “the poor you will always have with you,” could it be that He was saying that this was to be the church’s distinctive—the poor would always be welcomed and fit in? I don’t think that Christ intended churches to be made up of the “beautiful people.”

I believe that in advancing the mission of the church, we have impoverished ourselves by forgetting to see the poor as beautiful and central to the advancement of Christ’s mission. Are they among us and fitting in? Do we look for them on the street when we talk about viable church growth strategies? Likely not, because the poor make us wrestle. We don’t like how they smell and we don’t like how they make us feel, especially when they are right there in front of us.

Wrestling is good. Jesus made people squirm. He told unsettling parables like the one of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25 that identified the measure against which people would be tested. The person in his parable asks, “When did I see you hungry and not feed you, when did I see you naked and not clothe you, or in prison and not visit you?” He was saying was that if we don’t care for the poor we have neglected Christ Himself. It doesn’t sound like a possible add-on once all the Sunday school teachers have been found. He names it as a central role of the church.

Is it possible that the poor will enrich us? Isaiah reminds us of a deep and noble call to the poor. He says that caring for the most vulnerable is really important to God. The more exciting half of Isaiah 58 gives us a promise that when we are faithful in this matter, a lot of things will fall into place. Isaiah 58:8-9 and 11 promise us that when we do care “then your light will break forth like the dawn.”

The world will see that, won’t they? “Your healing will quickly appear…and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard…Then you will call and the Lord will answer…You will be a well watered garden like a spring whose waters never fail.” Isaiah promises us that as we open our doors and become the hands and feet of Christ to the poor and oppressed, we will find our own healing.

How the most vulnerable peopleare treated provides the measure of any society. I believe our society is very interested in what we as a church are doing to address poverty and oppression in our country. How will we measure up? The answer to that question holds a lot in the balance. If caring for the poor is truly to be a distinctive of the church, then, as Soren Kierkegaard said, “by God’s strength may we become ourselves.”

Kent Dueck is the executive director of Inner City Youth Alive. ICYA runs a ministry that reaches youth and families in Winnipeg’s North End.