Jan

27

Valuing the Unlovely

January 27, 2010 | Leave a Comment

Unlovely personDo you have challenging people in your small group? People who don’t fit in anywhere? I love this quote from S.D. Gaede in Belonging: Our need for Community in Church and Family (Zondervan: 1985).

“More than anything else, community in the modern world depends on our willingness to emulate the Samaritan’s choice—on our willingness to choose to include, to embrace. To include the lovely as well as the loveless. To embrace those who are blessed with modernity’s values as well as those perceived to be valueless. In short, to accept those whom God has placed along our way—not as hindrances to be avoided or helps to be exploited—but as responsibilities to be assumed and as opportunities for community.”

So how does your group, your church, deal with the unlovely? Who reaches out to them? Who invites them to dinner? Who mentors them to fill in that which is missing?

Photo credit: iStockphoto.com

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