Sept 2009: Matt Adams

Matt AdamsMatt Adams, outreach minister and youth pastor at St Paul’s, Bloor St. in Toronto, talks about urban, suburban and rural outreach with Alex Newman.

Define outreach for us.

In general, I would define outreach as God’s heart for the world.  As Christians, we are to respond to God’s grace in a way that reflects God’s primary grace and character.  If God is “for the world in Christ” then we as his people are “for the world in Christ.”  In technical ministry terms, outreach is the actions portion of our response, e.g. feeding the hungry, while evangelism may be the words aspect, although they’re the flip side of the same coin with the same intended goal. 

The definition needs context.  “Welcoming children such as these” could mean many different things: a co-worker on the brink of a breakdown, the elderly neighbour who has suffered a recent fall, the widow across the street taking care of her three sons and her mother. 

At St. Paul’s our outreach definition reflects our whole mission “to transform the world through the grace and power of Jesus Christ.”  We’ve asked ourselves how this will look, and answered: “providing practical service opportunities for our members to engage our local neighbourhood and global communities in a transformative, meaningful and life-giving way.”

What is the most important aspect of outreach?

Relationship.  Gone are the days of cheque writing only.  People need food and shelter and money provides that.  But giving away money isn’t enough, and doesn’t necessarily impact us as individuals, nor does it mean lives will be changed. Sometimes what people long for is relationship – to be known, loved and cared for.

But “real” outreach ministry happens when people are connected.  God transforms us when we have a relationship with Him.  The same is true for outreach.  When we have a genuine, authentic and mutual relationship with those in need, ministry can happen.  Otherwise it can be an endeavour of power, insecurity, guilt and manipulation.  The Church has learned what damage can be done without a mutual partnership between the caregiver and care receiver. 

Money alone will not eradicate poverty, but I believe relationship will. A good example is an entrepreneur who tackled poverty in Bangladesh.  For years foreign nations poured money into the country but poverty remained rampant.  The entrepreneur researched why poverty persisted and he concluded it was because people were not connected. So he provided affordable cell phones to people in rural communities so that people could be connected and have relationships (in business, health care and personal matters).  The positive impact has been amazing.  Another point is not doing for someone what they can do for themselves -- outreach should be about empowering people to find peace in life. This takes relationship.

How does a church plan its outreach program? Is it site specific, congregation specific? Do outreach approaches depend on where the hearts of the congregation are?

All of the above.  I would say that how a church plans its outreach program is similar to how we discern when we’re “called” to something by God.  Usually God has a better idea of what a church can do, so our job as a church is to listen to God’s will.  This is much harder than it sounds.  To me, God calling us to something isn’t a fluffy feeling or my personal opinion of what our church should do for outreach.  Discerning God’s call on our lives, and particularly with outreach, involves multiple factors.  When figuring out what to do for outreach as a church we need to ask a number of questions:  Who is in our neighbourhood?  What is the demographic?  Whom do we have a relationship with already?  How can we build a new relationship and with whom?  What are the needs in our community?  What resources do we have?  What have we done historically and is it time to say goodbye to a particular ministry because it’s had its day or do we revitalize it? Do we start something completely new?

Discerning God’s call isn’t always an easy process.  Whether it’s finding the right person to marry or the right vocation in life, it takes time. At St. Paul’s, recently, our discernment for a “new” local outreach has taken over two years and we’re still not done yet.  Our outreach committee has also spent the past year discerning the way forward and although we’ve made lots of progress we will still need to be flexible and continually discern God’s will.

Why’s it taking so long?

It takes longer for a larger parish like St. Paul’s to move through the proper channels, making decisions as a committee, and considering the wider Church, then bringing the idea to the executive council.

For example, a few years ago, we were doing Out of the Cold ministry, and we decided to see what had changed in the neighbourhood. We discovered a lot of people doing the same kind of ministry. So we asked the agencies and organizations, via round table discussion, what the main need was. We were told people on the street can go and find a meal, but what they really need are people who are invested in them, who will develop a relationship with them. We then thought maybe a drop-in centre, and met with Greg Paul, founder of Sanctuary, who told us that in order to do outreach in the neighbourhood we needed to get out of the church and meet on their turf. So that’s what we did, walking the neighbourhood on nights and weekends, and we saw that relationships are hard to build, and we did not have the resources – people mostly – to start this ministry.

We opted instead to increase our partnership with Toronto City Mission, which works with youth in St. James town, because we already had a ministry started and our way forward on that was to strengthen that ministry.

We also need to remember, as Greg Paul said, that asking people to come to your space creates a power dynamic that’s not comfortable for some groups. Instead, you must go where they are. The way Sanctuary started was with Greg walking around the city and meeting people on the street, getting to know them, offering them food, a service, or just space. It’s the same way you develop your relationships at work or with friends.

How has St Paul’s decided to focus its energies?

I believe the outreach ministry at St. Paul’s has been in flux for some time, which probably started with major renovations some years ago.  We are only just starting to dig deeper to gather our Church body together to discern the way forward.  Currently, we support and are connected relationally to three global outreaches: a hostel for Christian and Muslim youth in Nigeria called Jacaranda Farm; a centre in Uganda called the Mamma Ketty Center which supports families, children and youth impacted by the HIV/Aids pandemic; and the First People's Hospital of Shang Qiu City, Henan Province in China. 

Locally we have a partnership with Toronto City Mission in St. James Town and are looking to strengthen and expand this relationship.  We also do a number of short-term outreach projects such as Habitat for Humanity builds, an annual Christmas dinner for those in need on Christmas day, Operation Christmas Child in November, a food bank and Opportunities International. 

This might seem like a lot for one church, but we have the people resources to support such ministries.  That said, we are intentional about maintaining good relationships with these ministries and our own people, making sure we are in fact doing “life-giving” ministry for all involved.  Although our outreach committee still meets and works together, this past year we have subdivided the committee into global, local and short-term ministries – this small group set-up makes it more efficient to plan and make decisions.

How has outreach changed over the past few decades?

Gone are the days when you do something “for” or “to” someone, because that approach doesn’t empower communities. The theological, philosophical and cultural shift -- from modernism to postmodernism -- marks out similar changes and one aspect of postmodernism is the desire for narrative and for connection.  This operates even in the secular realm of ethics – e.g. people wanting to be connected to where their food comes from.  While not outreach per se, it serves as a reflection of where society’s heart is, which I believe can be good, godly and biblical. We need to engage our local communities as Church or build genuine relationships with global ones.  Writing cheques or making decisions in a church office or hall is not outreach, although it could be a part of it.

Who is well equipped to do outreach, and can others be trained?

If you have a heartbeat and can breathe you cannot only do outreach, but are called to outreach.  It is a part of our DNA -- not just as Christians but also as humans -- to give back to people and in turn to God in very practical ways.  For many years I was the director of a special needs program at a summer camp.  The campers with special needs to whom we “ministered” had in fact the bigger outreach ministry.  Just through their presence and heart they reached out to people with the love of Christ. 

Outreach, in a way, isn’t even about “doing” something; it is about the heart and attitude we have in response to the life and work of Jesus Christ.  Either our heart is broken with Christ’s and we respond in love and action or we live for ourselves, building our own kingdom that the Bible says will perish, and our hearts will become hard.

Have you any experience with the differences between urban, rural and suburban outreach?

While I’ve worked in an urban church the past year, I grew up in Fergus, Ontario, and did a seminary internship at Emmanuel Richvale in Richmond Hill.  So I have seen “outreach” in action in different settings.  Although the context changes I would say a lot of the heart stuff and theological stuff does not.  People are people wherever you go.  There will always be someone in need or someone who can use the presence of the Body of Christ.  The challenge is discerning who those people are and how you can help them.   Although I believe the Church as a body needs to do outreach as a community, outreach is also something we do with every aspect of our life every day of the week, by God’s grace.