For a longer, more detailed and updated version of our Christian Worldview in PDF format, click here.
It is the vision of Good Works to create a loving COMMUNITY OF HOPE
where the homeless and poor of SE Ohio can sense God's love and presence through
us. It is the intention of Good Works to improve the quality of life through
meeting felt needs, building and promoting trust, strengthening human dignity,
providing and promoting education, providing employment opportunities and encouraging
feelings of self-worth. We seek to nurture those we serve in an atmosphere of
love (both tough and tender), compassion and responsibility. We seek to help
each person work through the sequence of problem identification, problem ownership
and problem solution. In addition to this, the staff seek to advocate for the
homeless and poor in our community.
As a Christian ministry,
we are compelled by the biblical injunction that "...the stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native
among you, and you shall love him as yourself." (Leviticus 19:34)
Thus, we seek to live according to the way of Christ's love, and create an
atmosphere in which all people are treated with dignity and respect. It is
the policy of Good Works not to hold any mandatory religious meetings.
Most people who come to Good
Works Timothy House, our shelter for the rural homeless, stay a few weeks but
many stay a month or longer. It is the philosophy of Good Works that emergency
shelter is only a "band-aid" to addressing many of the deeper root
problems which bring people into homelessness.
In an effort to address these
issues, Good Works Inc. began another housing program in 1989 which provides
transitional (minimum 3 months) housing. The program, called LIFE IN TRANSITION
and located at Hannah House, is directed to help those people who truly want
to identify, own and work on the interpersonal issues which have caused them
to become homeless.
INTRODUCTION
Good Works Inc. shines
as a testimony to the goodness, love and mercy of Jesus Christ our Lord. The
biblical foundation of our ministry comes from Ephesians 2:8-10 where the Bible
teaches us that as Christians, we are brought into a relationship with God,
not because of what we have done but because of what HE has done for us. We
are then told that as believers and followers of Christ, God is working in us
to produce good deeds and these acts of loving kindness are the fruit and result
of his amazing power to change us. Good Works Inc. is the outward expression
of the inward changes Christ Jesus brought into our lives after we came to him
because of His amazing love.
MINISTRY
UNTO THE LORD--BEING TRUE WORSHIPPERS 
Scripture commands us in Matthew
6:33 to "seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things
will be added unto you." It is our conviction that ministry only takes the right
priorities and the proper perspective when it is rooted in the foundation of
this verse. Secondly, since Jesus declares that the greatest command God gives
us is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with our
entire mind and with all our strength, we believe that the ministry of loving
our Lord and being a worshipping community should be the first priority of our
lives. Our fruitfulness emerges from our faithfulness to first be worshippers
ourselves. We cannot even see our neighbor properly unless we see him through
the lens of worship. Our goal is to "do always those things that please the
Father." (John 8:29) and "walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to please Him
in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge
of God." (Col 1:9). As a result, our ministry is led by the core values
of commitment, character and spiritual gifts and not program driven. The ministry
is only as strong as the people are in their private and corporate lives in
Christ.
Jesus himself explains to
us in John 4:21-24 that the Father is seeking worshippers who will worship Him
in Spirit and in Truth. We want to be those worshippers. We want our program
to be our integrity. We want our lives to reflect kingdom values so that what
we are speaks louder than what we say. Therefore, in the end, whether someone
is grateful or ungrateful is irrelevant. Our work and service is not for them,
it is for HIM. In the end, what we have done "for the very least of these,"
we have done for HIM.
Our work has become the service
of worship. In order to see the multitudes with compassion, we must be lifted
up above our human point of view (James 1:26) and through worship see ourselves
and our neighbors from God's perspective. It is here that we can become "one
beggar telling other beggar where to find bread."
MINISTRY
WITH THE WIDOW, THE ORPHAN, AND THE STRANGER
Scripture commands
in Isaiah 1:17 to "learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed,
defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the cause of the widow." As our ministry
has grown since our early days, we are now much more aware that God has expanded
us beyond serving the homeless and blessed us as we care for those whom God
has consistently identified as vulnerable, alone and in great need: the
widow, the orphan and the stranger!
God has called us to bring
good news to the poor and to bind up the broken hearted. When Jesus announced
what the ministry of the Messiah would look like when it arrived (Luke 4:18-19),
he quoted from Isaiah 58 & 61 and talked about being healing agents to those
who were wounded by sin and by a sin-sick society. He described the ministry
as proclaiming the reality of true freedom to those who were in caught in the
cycle of sin's consequences and informing people about the love of God!
We have discovered that poverty
and homelessness result from a collision course of personal choices which people
make and things that happen to them which are beyond their control. One need
not look any further than the story of the prodigal son (Luke 15:11) to see
that the problems of this young man's life resulted both from the awful personal
choices he made combined with something he had no control over, a famine. What
we often find is that bad personal choices touch 'systemic' issues and explode
causing poverty, homeless and a host of other life-controlling problems.
The people God is teaching
us to love often come to us broken, despised, rejected, vulnerable and in pain.
Many arrive at our door wounded from the battle of life. Some are 'walking time-bombs'
waiting to explode the inner pain, anger and hopelessness in their lives. Ministry
to them must have a balance of law and grace, compassion and motivation, tender
love and tough love. Our love must endure the antagonism and anger that is often
their first response to our intervention, which attempts to address the cycle
or 'bondage' they are in. Like Jesus whose love endured the hostility and aggression
from the woman at the well in John 4, we must learn how to understand the mind-set
of those whom we are trying to love and direct them to the ONE who alone can
satisfy their innermost thirst. We must ask God for wisdom to recognize that
when people are suffering, (Exodus 6:9) their pain shouts so lout that it drowns
out our words of advice or counsel. Sometimes the emotional, spiritual and physical
pain they are in resulting from their oppression is so intense that they are
unable to hear the message of hope hidden inside our concern. We are guided
by the principle Phillip illustrated in Acts 8:26-39 when he stayed with the
Ethiopian eunuch and waited to be invited into the chariot to explain
God's word. Our philosophy of evangelism is "earn the right to speak, earn the
right to be heard." Therefore, we prayerfully wait until we are invited by people
with the mind-set to build trust so that we can speak into their lives. We must
first answer the questions they are already asking. We strongly value the ministry
of presence and recognize that a great deal of impact we will have in ministry
results from people trusting us. To walk in the Spirit is to walk in the timing
of God. In our obedience to the great commandment and the great commission,
we want to keep in step and simply do "our part" as we discern what God is already
doing in the lives of those whom He has sent to us. Until then, we seek to win
them to the love of God without words. We embrace the motto of St. Francis of
Assisi who once said "Preach the Gospel all the time, sometimes use words."
Much of our ministry is helping
people to embrace a healthy outward structure in their lives so that they can
begin the process of developing healthy inward disciplines. We work to help
"rebuild the ancient ruins" (Isaiah 58:12) in people's lives. Our hurting
neighbors need us to have a flexible response with them so we rely upon God's
wisdom every day in the ministry he has trusted us with. Some need love dispensed
only as kindness, some need us to display 'accountable love', some need us to
be unwavering and firm with our love and some need us to suffer with them as
they suffer dispensing mercy. Many of those we are learning to love need us
to be a 'father' or 'mother' to them, others need us to advocate or speak for
them (Proverbs 31:8-9) while others need us to walk together with them as they
take on the systems which have abused or oppressed them (Job 29:1-17) In short,
we need the wisdom from above which is pure, peace-loving, unwavering and full
of mercy. It is this wisdom that leads us to develop discerning love. Discerning
love is fueled by grace resulting from a person yielded to the Holy Spirit!
While the people who come
to Good Works have many issues in common, they are often very different from
each other. Most of those who are homeless are residents of southeast Ohio,
although we do serve travelers (or transients) as well. Some have recently lost
their homes due to job loss, relocation and/or domestic disputes. Some are emotionally
disturbed; some are struggling with various kinds of mental illness. Some are
veterans, some have been recently released from prison, some are struggling
single parents, and some are students. Many are consumed by the problems of
addiction --of alcohol, drugs, food, sex, and unhealthy dependency. Some are
victims of violence in the family; others have been stuck in a lifestyle of
poverty for some time. A few have legal troubles and all struggle with the lack
of affordable housing. Some are young people in their early 20s, many are middle-aged
and some are elderly.
It is our intention to help
those whom the Lord sends to us to discover and define the root issues in their
lives, to assist them (both prayerfully and practically) in understanding what
they can do about the situation they are in and point them to the hope
found in receiving and experiencing the love of God (I Thessalonians 2:8). We
believe that movement in one area of their lives will produce momentum in other
areas, much like throwing a pebble into a pond will create ripples that affect
the whole pond. Therefore, we teach that each person is responsible for his
or her choices and each of us must take responsibility to address the life-situation
we are in. Our role as staff and volunteers is to help each person with a starting
place by helping them identify their ability to respond to the situation they
are in and to discover the resources they have within themselves to cause change
to occur. We then come along beside them with love as accountability to motivate,
support and empower them not just to start but also to finish what they have
said they would do to help themselves.
Finally, we believe it is
the breakdown of the family and its many supports in our culture that accounts
for one of the major causes of what we now call the poverty of homelessness.
Therefore, it is the re-creation of a family which will provide the infrastructure
for the poor and homeless to take responsibility and gain a new hope and new
vision for their own lives. We, the body of Christ, strive to be such a family!
If, as scripture teaches in Matthew 25:31-46, helping these people is a form
of ministry directly to our Lord, we want to do it to them because He has done
it to us. We love because He first loved us. We, as people in process, want
to draw others to the source of health and forgiveness that we have found in
Jesus, both by what we say and how we live. Therefore, rather than have required
worship meetings which can border on manipulation that ultimately undermines
the heart of the gospel, we rely upon two strategies to draw people both to
a relationship with God and into the body life of the Church:
We are often asked about
how much success we are having with the people we are trying to help. The best
answer to this question is to explain the 'continuum of success.' One end of
the continuum is marked by the words "God has not called me to be successful,
he has called me to be faithful." At this end, we realize that our success
is attached to our faithfulness (obedience) to do what we already know we should
be doing. As we are faithful to walk in what we know and practice what God has
already shown us, we please God and achieve complete success. Then, God 'glues
together' our acts of faithfulness and gives them back to us in the form of
faith. As a result, we are able to trust HIM for more and more. Our faithfulness
to Him increases our faith in Him.
As we move along the continuum
of success toward the other end, we discover it is not enough to provide another
human being with food, shelter, jobs, housing, friendship, counseling or help.
It is not enough that we invite them into our Christian community and they come.
It is not enough that they become a Christian themselves. We have not achieved
success until they become a participating and functioning member in a local
Christian Community. When this happens, we have achieved success. The most interesting
part of this ultimate goal is that it is totally unattainable apart from the
willingness of Pastors and local churches to become involved in the lives of
the poor and others who cannot repay them. In the end, the total success of
our ministry is connected to the free will support offered to Good Works by
average Christians in our community.
MINISTRY OF DISCIPLESHIP:
BEING AND MAKING
Jesus commands us in Matthew
29:19 to go and make disciples. All disciples are Christians but are all Christians
disciples? We are compelled by the command of scripture to entrust to others
who are faithful what we have learned and seen (II Timothy 2:2). Therefore,
it is our priority to see our ministry with the strangers, the orphans and the
widows in part as a teaching laboratory of growth through which the body of
Christ can have their senses trained to discern good and evil (Hebrews 5:14).
The solid food God wants to nourish us with has something to do with 'using'
or 'walking in' what we already know. It is in these places that the Holy Spirit
teaches us, strengthens us and builds us up into maturity. Our ministry of Discipleship
is three fold: among the staff, to our interns and volunteers and to be a prophetic
voice to the Church.
In addition, because we
see the problem of alienation as the root cause of homelessness and reconciliation
as the root solution, it is our intention to demonstrate a lifestyle of daily
reconciliation and communication both with one another and in our private
lives with Jesus. Because of our commitment of being reconciled with one another,
we have a basis to speak to others about the gospel. It is our belief that
if we cannot practice and model reconciliation to one another, then the impact
of our ministry will be weak at best. All of us at Good Works believe that
as much as the poor need our help, equally so, we, the Church, NEED to help
them. In essence, we are saying that there is a need in the body of Christ,
which, if met, will cause growth and maturity and possibly even revival. If
we are to grow up in Christ, we must learn to embrace suffering and oppressed
people; even to the point of suffering with them. When Jesus calls us to be
his disciples, he includes laying down our social lives. We must find ways
to include the poor into our social networks both for their sake and ours.
Therefore, through our ministry of discipleship, we seek to structure both
entry level as well as advanced level 'hands on' opportunities for those believers
who desire to let God grow in them by serving their neighbors in need. Our
goal is to teach our staff to assess and adapt; so that as far as it depends
upon us, we can truly become all things to all men and women that by all means
we my win them to the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. MINISTRY IN THE
NEIGHBORHOOD: Loving our neighbor begins in our neighborhood.
We are compelled by the
teaching of scripture in Acts 1:8 to first be witnesses in our immediate neighborhood
and then to the remotest parts of the earth. Therefore, we possess a strong
commitment to model Christian behavior in our immediate neighborhood surrounding
our ministry. As a result, all residents seeking shelter at Timothy House must
come by telephone interview first. Since the day we opened our emergency shelter
program in 1981, we have never made the shelter's address public or accepted
persons coming to the door who did not first contact us by phone. In addition,
the Timothy House home rules explain that our commitment to the safety and security
of our neighborhood is strong and we will not tolerate behavior from our residents
that might threaten or inappropriately disturb our neighbors. It is our intention
to balance ministry with our homeless neighbors and our residential neighbors.
One practical and loving
aspect of serving our neighborhood has to do with the internal culture of Good
Works. Everyone who stays in our houses knows that they can volunteer to serve
in the neighborhood. For some time, the residents of Timothy House and Hannah
House have worked together with area volunteers to provide a hot, public sit-down
meal each week to an estimated 120+ people. We call this 'soup-kitchen in reverse'
our Friday Night Supper. We also provide assistance
to seniors (primarily widows) of the community in the form of yard care and
labor intensive service. All of this, including our 'work night' and daily chores
by our residents provide a wide range of opportunities for the homeless to return
back to the community a portion of the goodness they have received. We believe
that work is therapy and that voluntary work produces a sense of dignity.
MINISTRY IN THE
COMMUNITY
In Matthew 5:16, Jesus
urges his followers to "...let your light so shine before men that they may
see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven." We believe that
God has called us and provided us with a strategic place through which we can
witness to the hearts of our contemporaries in the helping professions, business
community, law enforcement and to all the citizens of our community. Through
both short term and long term relationships, God has empowered us to both speak
to and learn from many in our community. Because God makes the sun to shine
on the just and the unjust, it is our conviction that there are many who, although
they are not-yet-Christians, are nevertheless working for justice in a genuine
effort to help the oppressed. Because of our belief that it is the truth about
God and the truth about ourselves that ultimately brings lasting change, to
the degree that our contemporaries in community seek to help people to know
the truth, it is our desire to join hands with them and work together. In addition,
because we believe that all truth is God's truth we feel privileged to be taught
of God both by our Christian and non-Christian friends in the secular field
of the helping professionals. We are committed to maintaining the posture of
being a teachable people.
Finally, we recognize
that "showing" and "telling" the gospel occurs on many different levels. Some
will come to experience the love of Christ through serving the poor. Others
will experience His grace by being served. Some need only a simple seed while
others need the seed that was once planted to be watered. I take the view that
we are called to prepare others to be receptive to Jesus (like John the Baptist
who gave his whole life for that purpose alone) by giving value to the ministry
of plowing: getting the rocks out of the soil of the heart so that seeds can
be planted there. And God is concerned with our hearts, with truth in our innermost
being (Psalm 51).
MINISTRY OF HOSPITALITY
The work of our ministry is really the work of Christian hospitality. Our ministry
of hospitality operates on several levels:
