ChristianWeek

Write about and for the Christian community long enough, and it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that “ministry” is what big organizations with big budgets and big mission statements do.

But I’ve recently been reminded by three different Canadian Christian leaders that in fact, ministry often naturally occurs in much smaller gestures—when Jesus is allowed to love and move and work through those He inhabits. And in such circumstances, ministry is almost always a two-way street.

Sketch (www.sketch.ca) is a community that calls “home” the second floor of an old building in the heart of downtown Toronto. It’s a place where street-involved and homeless youth ages 15 to 29 can engage in the arts. More than 650 youth crossed Sketch’s threshold last year. Whether they were painting, woodworking, making music or making meals, what they found there was a place of acceptance and belonging, and the needed space for self-expression and self-empowerment.

A long-time follower of Jesus, founder and creative director, Phyllis Novak, doesn’t call Sketch “a ministry.” But ministry is exactly what happens there. She tells of one young, crack-addicted woman who cuts herself regularly, who one day lay quietly with her head in Novak’s lap as Novak worked. “I stroked her hair, praying as I did that peace would seep into that troubled mind and soul with every stroke,” says Novak.

At one point, the young woman sighed, “You love me. You really love me,” and left that day, “calmer and seemingly more able to be ‘in her shoes,’” Novak remembers.

But Novak insists she receives as much as she gives in such situations. “An exchange of some sort took place,” she says. “I say ‘exchange’ because each time I consider spiritual growth in others, I feel it only necessary to speak from a true place of spiritual growth within myself—as in when the Spirit moves me, soothes me and compels me somehow.”

“That is the crux of it. Sketch is a mutually beneficial environment.”

In the midst of this country’s poorest postal code—Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside—is another mutually beneficial environment; a Christian faith-based community called Jacob’s Well, (www.jacobswell.ca). Those who work there are striving to build relationship with people in the neighbourhood, “and really share life together like a family,” explains executive director Joyce Heron.

“Part of what we believe,” she says, “is that if we live the normal Christian life—which has actually become not that normal—people will want to follow Jesus.” Heron speaks from experience when she says that as we “engage in the lament,” with the broken and hurting in our world, “It will change us and it will transform others.”

Caregivers and volunteers from diverse cultures and backgrounds are being transformed daily in nearly 200 small homes and day settings across Canada, as they share deeply committed relationships with people with developmental disabilities. Their communities are called L’Arche.

Founded in the early ’60s, Jean Vanier began L’Arche to help people with intellectual disabilities, but, says executive director Nathan Ball, Vanier quickly discovered “he was being helped. He learned about life, love, relationship, celebration and forgiveness.”

Vanier started referring to L’Arche as “a school of love where people with intellectual disabilities have the mission to teach others.”

Three communities. Three places where believers are ministering to others and discovering in the process that they’re being ministered to as well.