I have been reading a lot lately about new initiatives to help the poor and those in need. New organizations and new ways people can band together and offer resources and assistance in an efficient way.

This is a good thing. How can anyone argue that it is not? Can I? I am starting to wonder if maybe they are not as good as they seem on the surface.

Umbrella organizations have been a mainstay of social and faith-based assistance for decades, possibly even centuries. They have been the source of countless people being helped. Food and clothing has been distributed, shelters opened for the homeless and more. Heck in Acts the apostles appoint seven Godly men to the task of feeding widows…was this an umbrella organization?

Don’t get me wrong, I know first hand the value of these things. Growing up with a single mother on welfare and living in government housing I came to understand the value of these programs. When she was beaten we would go to a women’s shelter – the only safe place to be. When the food ran out Christmas hampers and vouchers became available. When it came time for university, grants were made available because of how little income we had. These were all good things but one thing they were not was personal. They were not human…they were administrative.

There is one thing better than an umbrella organization – genuine, loving, relentless human relationship. Umbrellas are designed to protect certainly but as organizations they do another thing – they shelter the people in these organizations from the people they help. They create a bubble of distance between the ones offering healing and the ones being healed allowing us to feel good about healing the sick without having to actually touch them or talk to them. Umbrellas make it difficult for others to come near…they get in the way.

Food delivered to the door or in the form of a voucher feeds a family and this is good. It also ensures we do not have to invite them in to eat with us. Clothes in a hamper at Christmas warm the child, they also ensure we do not have to put the blanket on the ones who are cold.

Some would protest that there are too many needs for any one person to meet. Too many mouths to feed, too many sick to heal, too many poor to give money too, too many prisoners to visit…and I would agree…there are. Some would say that umbrella organizations mean that the most help can be given with the most efficiency.Yes, I agree.

But I would caution people that the kingdom of God does not look like an umbrella organization, it does not look like a dinner for three hundred people in the church gymnasium and it does not look like a women’s shelter or a food voucher. It looks like the hand of Christ, a hand of flesh connected to a human being, extended in genuine desire to lift another up. It looks like one family inviting another to a meal because they absolutely deeply want to feed them and know them as fellows in creation; know them as deeply as they know the members of their small group or the friends they have had since they were 5. It looks like relentless honest constant and loving hounding of the ones who make it hard to connect with for no other reason than because your heart will burst if you stop.

The most intimate word in the entire Bible is the Hebrew word Yada which means ‘know’ or ‘to know’. God ‘knows’ us…and this implies deep intimacy with us. Adam ‘knew’ Even and they begat Cain and Abel. This level of ‘knowing’ is everywhere. We desire to be known. We are wired to be known. Umbrellas prevent us from knowing one-another. Umbrellas prevent us from knowing those in need. We need to know our unknown neighbour, especially when they are struggling.

It sounds idealistic, it sounds unfair, but it is what being human was meant to be and it was modeled by the only genuine human to ever walk this earth.

We do not need umbrella organizations because there are too many hungry for one person to feed. We do not need umbrella organizations to love by-proxy because there are too many homeless to shelter. We need umbrella organizations because there are too many people who are afraid to open their homes, too many people afraid to invite the lepers into their midst and to do so because they sincerely love them with all their heart.

There are enough homes in Winnipeg to end the homeless problem…if their doors opened. There are enough family dinners being cooked that if a couple of extra seats were put around tables it would end the problem of hunger in any community. There are enough Words of God on the hearts of the communities of Christ to share one-on-one with every person in the world dozens of times over without ever expecting them to walk into a building to get it from one guy in a pulpit…but it requires more investment than a knock on a door…it requires real friendship. The purpose of church is not to create a neighbour out of an unknown…church is the natural gathering of the known to one place as an overflow of a week’s worth of worship.

I remember the hampers, the food vouchers, the shelters, the grants of my childhood…I also remember being very alone. I remember a mother who was very alone. I don’t remember a lot of people…I don’t remember community.