I have been meditating on the ideas of “standing with” people and what that means, and about who the “Underserved” are. You can see those thoughts HERE. and HERE.

As I meditate on this whole statement on the underserved (posted in the picture above), I see it relates directly to the Third Pathway.

God has had our church practicing a piece of The Third Pathway for the last five years. The Third Pathway has a lot to do with Doing Life Together. As a church, we are called to do life together.

In our culture, it has become too easy to think of our work as mostly fund raising or giving to an agency that does the work of doing life together for us. We often think if we have given money then we have done our job. But giving is not doing life with people. In fact, when giving is agency directed it can become a blockade to doing life together, especially when we say something like “I give money to the church so I don’t have to go to church. I have done my job.”

Philanthropy can become an opiate to assuage guilt, when it keeps us from being in relationship with people. As I am thinking through this I am beginning to see that many of the ills of our society today stem from a black and white thinking that comes from assumptions about “those people”. That style of thinking is best addressed by being in connection in community with “those people”. It is the third pathway.

We must give of our time talent and treasure, but never confuse giving with relationship.