WACO—Community transformation requires Christians to "embrace Babylon"—to see a rough neighborhood or struggling city as a place to put down roots and love people, said Leroy Barber, president of Mission Year and minister at Community Life Church in Atlanta, Ga.
Leroy Barber
|
Barber cited the example of the Hebrews' exile in Babylon. In Jeremiah 29, the Old Testament prophet urged the people of God to build and settle in a hard place, he noted.
"Israel just wanted out of Babylon, but God saw it differently," Barber told the No Need Among You conference in Waco.
Barber noted his own experience. After growing up in inner-city Philadelphia, he found it hard to believe when God called him as an adult to return to that kind of setting—to live and work among the poor and devote his life to Christian community development.
"My Babylon was my neighborhood. It was the place I was trying to get out of. … God says, 'My ways are not your ways,'" he recalled.
Restoration and transformation demand total commitment, Barber said. If the salvation of a fallen world required God to become human and live in that world, Christians cannot expect to save their communities from a safe distance, he insisted.
"It's God with us—the Word made flesh. If he had to do it up close, what makes us think we can do it from afar?" Barber asked. "God came near."
We seek to connect God’s story and God’s people around the world. To learn more about God’s story, click here.
Send comments and feedback to Eric Black, our editor. For comments to be published, please specify “letter to the editor.” Maximum length for publication is 300 words.