Empowering destitute people towards transforming communities

5.2Conclusion

SHALOM, with all the richness of meaning captured in the concept, is the aim towards which we strive in empowering destitute people. Therefore, discovering SHALOM with the destitute implies that we should discover ways in which they can experience “wholeness, completeness and wellbeing”, and in this discovery we will also experience SHALOM, both on a personal, as well as a corporate societal level. It implies that (in finding their SHALOM) our own SHALOM, and the SHALOM of our world, will be enhanced, enriched, enlarged and enjoyed more fully.
To further this aim, a model functioning as a “continuum of empowering care” for the destitute is developed in chapter 5; every part of it is permeated with a drive towards SHALOM. In this sense SHALOM functions as the central aim, as well as the perpetual outcome, of missions with the destitute as captured in the model.
Discovering SHALOM also implies seeking ways in which liberation and blessing for the destitute can be brought about. In this sense it would include liberation from entrenched systems of injustice or society which are trapping people in poverty and destitution. In terms of the “inside-out” and “outside-in” model of approaches to destitution developed in chapter 2, liberation, in the context of SHALOM as its aim, will refer mostly to “outside-in” missions. This concept is developed further in chapter 7. Blessing, in the context of SHALOM as its aim, would refer mostly to “inside-out” missions, which includes discovering ways to personal wholeness, or to become part of a community of care, or to build relationships (Chapter 6).
It is clear that such SHALOM is relational: relational communities are called for, to flesh out SHALOM. The proposal is that the church is intended to be this community, but that it would require a different kind of church: a “public church” that engages the challenges of manifesting and discovering SHALOM together with the destitute. It implies that in doing missions with the destitute community must be emphasized. This is discussed in the final part of this chapter.
True SHALOM cannot be divorced from the person of Jesus since it is through entering into a relationship with Christ that a person is enabled to experience SHALOM, often in spite of negative circumstances. Therefore, inviting people to encounters with the living Christ should form part of missions with the destitute, since such encounters should bring about the discovery of SHALOM. In terms of the Missio Dei, this means that bringing about SHALOM requires an understanding of evangelism as “comprehensive salvation”, as this salvation was defined elsewhere in this chapter.
Even though SHALOM is a comprehensive eschatological concept, it also manifests itself in the micro-personal dimensions of human existence. In this sense SHALOM may be viewed as the integral experience of a person who is functioning as God intended, in consonant relationship with Him, with others and with her or his own self. SHALOM describes the experience of being harmoniously at peace, both within and without (Craig, Ellison and Smith, 1991:36). These authors add that, because of the Fall, human beings are unable to fully experience SHALOM, but to the extent that they are living consonantly with His design for human functions they experience higher degrees of it (1991:36). Simply put, this means that people live a life with a purpose.
Swinton (2000:60) contends that the concept of SHALOM is therefore seen to be both a goal and an holistic process which is initiated and sustained by God as He seeks to deal with the relational alienation of creation through His ongoing movement within history, towards that goal. The model developed in chapter 5 proposes that SHALOM as the goal/ aim, as well as a holistic process with specific outcomes in mind, should be purposefully striven towards by means of missions with the destitute. These missions (as actions of participating in the Missio Dei), can be guided loosely by the framework of a model striving towards SHALOM, such as the “continuum of empowering care” model developed in chapter 5.
With regards to the churches’ role in discovering SHALOM with the destitute, it becomes clear that God’s redemptive, eschatological movement towards SHALOM furnishes the context, the motivation and the goal for the church’s mission with the destitute: as the church participates in God’s continued redemptive mission to the world.

6Missions with the destitute require a “Public Church”

Missions with the destitute pose challenges to the church. It would seem that the church needs to rethink its role and strategy as regards missions, especially such missions, since it would seem that the church has struggled, and often failed, in its task of liberating the destitute.
Viv Grigg (1992:112) criticizes the “failure” of the church in no uncertain terms when he asserts: "The church has given bread to the poor and has kept the bread of life for the middle class".
Robinson (1997:274) also paints a bleak picture of the state of the church today, writing that the processes of secularization and modernization have swept the Christian church away from its original place. The result is that it has become marginalized and irrelevant.
Pipert (1980:4) describes this church as "salt kept in the saltshaker.". The salt must get out of the saltshaker and the lamp must be put on the lamp-stand: "The church carefully locked in inside the confines of the peaceful atmosphere of its own walls will not be able to bring the message of God's liberating grace to the world" (Heyns, 1967:68).
In Herms’s (1994:135) words, it would seem that the church has been relegated to the sphere of the rationally unexplainable and to the border experiences and situations of people's lives. Religion, and thus the Christian faith, was deliberately privatised and pushed out of the public sphere.
Almost in answer to this situation, Bevans and Schroeder (2005:7) reaffirm that the church is “missionary by its very nature”, while for Guder (1998:8) the church is "God's instrument for God's mission". Likewise Webber (2002:112) observes that the image of the church as the “body” of Christ has resulted in a new awareness that the church is the continuation of the presence of Jesus in and to the world.  For Bosch (1995:372), the church is “essentially missionary”. That does not mean that the church has missionaries, or that the church has people who are essentially missionary; the church is missionary. If you like, the church, the whole global entity, is a missionary. It is the whole church that is sent into the world to "do mission" (Cozens, 2005:4).
From this it becomes clear that the church still occupies and should occupy a definite place in the mission of God, especially regarding missions with the destitute against the background of God’s preferential option for the poor. The church needs to rediscover this place.