I don't have anything against Lexington, KY, but I don't live there. I live in Wilmore. This seems
straightforward to me, but apparently some people have a hard time with this concept, and it bugs me. There have been a number of times where people on campus have encouraged us to get involved in Lexington, because that's our city. Well, it might be the closest thing to what most consider a city, but as far as communities where ministry is needed, Wilmore has needs, as does Nicholasville (which most people drive through on their way to Lexington). Lexington may have a greater amount of needs, I don't deny that. But if the point is to be working in our community, why call Lexington our community when not all of us (maybe even most of us) don't live there? Just seems like it encourages draining this community: if we live in Wilmore, but serve elsewhere, we're basically just a sleeper community for ministry, draining Wilmore of housing resources but not adding anything back. That sounds bad to me.
So the latest in this series of frustrations occured in church last Sunday. The guest speaker was speaking on missions, and was explaining that according to one commentary (Rick Warren), the Great Commission could be interpreted as the following:
- Jerusalem means your community that you live in.
- Judea means your state or country as a whole.
- Samaria means your country, but a culture other than your own.
- And the ends of the earth means, well, everywhere else.
Sounds good to me. No problem. Until he said "well I guess in a town like Wilmore your Jerusalem would be Lexington." What??? Ok, so Jerusalem is a city, a relatively big one. Is that what he means, that it has to be a city? Then the definition should be modified from "your community" to "the biggest city near you." But that seems a bit odd, since that could very well be Judea or Samaria depending on where you live. I mean for areas of Appalachia (which is where the mission this guy was representing is located) Jerusalem then could be hours away, and certainly in a different culture. But if that's what Jesus meant, why bother with the distinctions? Or, if people insist on finding different meanings and interpretations for each place in the list, why give them one that could mean nothing?
I was annoyed. I don't live in Lexington, I live in Wilmore. Please, it's not hard to tell the difference.
3 comments:
And indeed, if one is ministering away from one's residence, we're not under such great scrutiny once home, are we? I think we need to be salt (or compost) as close to home as possible because it's an uncomfortable encouragement to be like Jesus in every aspect of life, "as you go", instead of going out to do Great Commission stuff and then coming home to be normal.
People often lament the size of Wilmore while forgetting that Wilmore would be the biggest city within an hours drive in many sections of the country. That said, since I worked in Lexington, I considered that my community as well. I had essentially 3 communities (live-Wilmore, shop-Nicholasville, work-Lexington). Of course, originally being from the Detroit suburbs where you couldn't tell where city began and the other ended, they were all just one community in my mind.
I agree that for many the communities blend together, especially because Lexington is very accessible to us. However, when the people I've heard tell us we should be doing ministry in Lexington, they totally ignore Wilmore. If they had their way, Wilmore would become even more of a sleeper community, where all we did was park our carcasses and pay taxes, but have absolutely no interaction or positive impact on the rest of the community... That's more what I am frustrated by. If the communities meld into one, I'm fine with that, so long as the people in each area get fair attention.
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