Teaching: John Bennetch

Teaching: John Bennetch

Excerpt:
When helping a needy family, adjust your expectations by determining whether they are “broke” or poor. Identify all problems and dependencies and outline a ministry plan which addresses them. Let only mercy limit mercy. (Keller, p. 225)

Teaching: David Schmidt

Excerpt:
“We must integrate evangelism with mercy ministries and provide follow-up strategies that will incorporate new believes from our mercy ministries into the church” (Keller, p. 207)

Teaching: John Bennetch

Excerpt”
“ To maintain and build a mercy ministry, we must learn to plan and coordinate.” (Keller, p. 194)

Teaching: John Bennetch

Excerpt:
“One of the main reasons that many churches do not develop effective mercy ministries is
American individualism. We must see the social dimensions of the gospel and develop
ministries of relief, social transformation, and justice.” (Keller, p. 174)

Once the church has planted mercy ministry, the church needs to be “watered” so that the seeds
do not produce midget fruit and plants.

Teaching: John Bennetch

Excerpt:
“ We can actually plant mercy ministries through church-wide projects, the organizing of grass-roots mission groups, and careful program planning.” (Keller, p. 154)

This can be achieved in two modes:
Top Down: leadership develops and establishes a program; leaders get congregation involved and recruit, train, and supervise volunteers Grass Roots: An individual or a group of laypeople approach leadership with an idea for a ministry. They establish the details, recruit and train workers, etc. under the general guidance of the leadership.

Teaching: John Bennetch

Excerpt:
“ ‘Fertilize’ the church for mercy by motivating the whole church. Then do the ‘spade work’ of meeting some basic needs within the church and of surveying the community for felt needs.” (Keller, p. 133)

The Church as a garden…
“If you are a Christian convinced of the importance of mercy ministry, you may be quite unhappy with your own congregation! Very few evangelical churches do much in the way of deed ministry outside of the annual donation of food at Christmas or Thanksgiving” (Keller, p. 133)

Instead of rushing the local church into beginning programs for the needy, Keller’s suggestion is that we (like the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 3) look at the church as a garden. The soil needs to be prepared, fertilized, seeds and plants selected, etc.

Teaching: John Bennetch

Excerpt:
“Every Christian family must develop its own ministry of mercy by looking at the needs closest to it and meeting them through loving deeds and a spirit of encouragement.”
( Keller, p. 123)

Teaching: John Bennetch

Excerpt:
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” (Luke 10:36-37)

“The ministry of mercy is not just a means to the end of evangelism. Word and deed are equally necessary, mutually interdependent and inseperable ministries, each carried out with the single purpose of the spread of the kingdom of God.” ( Keller, p. 106)

Excerpt:
When he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds (Luke 10:33-35)

“God’s mercy comes to us without conditions, but does not proceed without our cooperation. So too our aid must begin freely, regardless of the recipient’s merits. But our mercy must increasingly demand change or it is not really love.” ( Keller, p. 93)

Teaching: John Bennetch