Ministry in "the Gutter"
By Billy
Jesus commands us many times in Scripture, to go and preach the Word to all people. Mark 16:15 says, “Go into ALL the world and preach the good news to ALL people.” I think sometimes as Christians we lose sight of the fact that God wants all people to be saved and he sent Jesus to die for everyone. We don’t knowingly think this way, but we do. We fall into the worldly attitude of judging and casting out people who maybe aren’t on the same social or economic level, or maybe people who are involved in things that we see as unacceptable or wrong. These people, who are so often outcast into the gutter of this world, are the people who are hurting the most and who are searching for someone to give them hope. It is our job as people who have been blessed with the peace of sins forgiven and eternal life through Jesus to lower ourselves into the gutters of this world and be a light to those who need someone to be there.
The concept of ministry to the gutter really hit home for me when I heard a speaker named Craig talking about it. He talked about how everyone has a gutter that they can minister to. His personal gutter is helping people who are involved in and addicted to pornography. He has a Web site to help people break the addiction and he sets up his own booth at porn conventions where he talks to people in a very non-condemning way and tries to identify with them as any other person who is sinful - just like you and me. It is in this way that he plants the seeds of God’s peace and forgiveness in people that are obviously lost in their sinful ways.
I truly believe every one of us has a gutter that we can minister to. Not everybody has strong enough faith to minister to people in a gutter like pornography. However, there are numerous other opportunities for us to humble ourselves and go beyond simply witnessing Christ’s love in our everyday lives. We need to make an effort to spread Christ’s love with the people the world views as the outcasts and the "sinners." Jesus was the perfect example of this. He associated with "sinners" all the time during his time on earth. Jesus said in Matthew 9:12, “It is not the healthy that need a doctor, but the sick.” Sometimes we feel we shouldn’t associate with kids who do drugs or even those who are below us on the social totem pole in high school, because they aren’t like us and don’t have the same values. While we need to make sure our own faith is strong before we get into situations that might test us, I firmly believe it is our job to talk with these people and build a relationship with them, so that we might better share the life-changing eternal message of Christ.
Sometimes people are turned off to Christianity because of how judgmental Christians come off to be at times. An important step to connecting with people in the gutter is to put yourself on their level and try to connect with what they are going through. Hopefully, people who are down in the gutter of life will see the strong, beaming light of Christ’s love in your life, and it will help them turn their life around.