Lausanne World Pulse – Urban Articles – Gathering Manna in the City: Ministry in Lima, Peru

By Brian Langley
October 2008

Eating Donuts in the Casona: Finding Our Way Together
I saw a small red dot bouncing around on my chest and thought for a second that some clandestine sniper was actually targeting me. It was getting late in the afternoon, and standing precariously on top of the main wall of this aptly named abandoned building, “the big, old house,” was frightening enough. Then there were the odd stares of passersby whose faces were unable to fathom why a group of decently dressed, seemingly normal people would be climbing into this building known to shelter drug addicts who walk around asking for food and steal hats or watches every now and again.

Earlier that morning, we had spent considerable time preparing homemade donuts from a family recipe. Between the mixing, dipping into hot oil, and then coating with powdered sugar, we all had done about a half day’s work to produce the fifty or so donuts that we carried in plastic bags. Over top of trash and excrement piles we carried this simple breakfast as a small gesture of love. In addition to the vivid smells and images that I have carried with me to this day from those visits to the casona, what is of more value is that the young people remember when the donuts were brought to them during a period of great struggle and suffering in their life. If we were to simply calculate the human hours and economic cost of bringing donuts to the casona, it would be hard to justify this activity as effective ministry.

Further, many of those young people are either still struggling with their addiction or in jail. A scant few have left the streets altogether. Yet if anyone were to ask them personally what it meant to them to have donuts brought to the casona, all would say that they experienced the love of God as we sat together and got our faces messy with powdered sugar.

Our fundamental ministry strategy cannot be reduced to helping youth get off the street, nor is it to merely lift people out of poverty. Rather, we organize activities and implement strategies as a fruit of our devotion to the call of being living testimonies of God’s love for humankind among the marginalized.

This does not exclude strategy and evaluation; we no longer bring donuts to the casona because that population is no longer together. But we go visit them in jail, and work with the families of those who have gone home. God has also led us to different abandoned buildings where we are doing much the same thing. The manna that was given to the Hebrew people could not be preserved from one day to the next, save for the Sabbath provision. In the same way, the Body of Christ in the world must be continually gathering the portion that God gives, trusting that it will nourish. Since the rendering of the temple curtain at the death of Jesus, the Holy Spirit of God is released in a new way. The spirit of adoption spoken about in Romans 8 is inciting the Body of Christ to recognize God’s presence among the poor, thus extending the borders of God’s family. If the Church does not choose to see God in the poorest and most unsightly in our societies, our testimony will not only fail to bear fruit, but will wither and die.

This is our message to the Body of Christ: that we might together in Christian community kneel down in joyful submission and daily gather the true bread of God’s presence among us. In history, there will never be a lack of this bread, for there will always be “poor among us” (John 12:8). Let us pray that we would gather the manna God has given, and give thanks.

Endnote

1. 1991. The Peaceable Kingdom. South Bend, Indiana, USA: University of Notre Dame Press, 161.

Brian Langley has lived with his wife and two daughters in Lima, Peru, since 2000, working among street populations.