Controversies are everywhere. Questions around gender, race, sexuality, and politics abound. And many congregations, just gaining some momentum out of COVID, are now faced with yet another round of challenges as a new wave of infections hits. As leaders gather on Zoom calls and around conference tables, the breadth of these trials can feel absolutely overwhelming. How do we attend to these things? What are our next steps? How do we act faithfully?

Let me suggest a different frame. Now, this different approach doesn’t mean that the issues above don’t matter – they do. But the way that disciples of Jesus and communities of faith engage could maybe proceed down a different path. So here goes: What if we began with knowing and empathizing with people and nurturing meaningful human relationships?

Radical, right? Yet it seems consistent with Jesus’s approach to ministry. Recall the summary statement in Matthew’s Gospel: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). Jesus engaged with people; he empathized with people. Jesus desired to see people possess life! And Jesus – being a rather single-minded fellow – called on his community of followers to pray for persons, not for issues. Matthew’s account continues: “Then he said to his disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest’ ” (Matt. 9:37-38). What Jesus wants is for disciples to invest in prayer. Through prayer, asking God to raise up people, disciples are reoriented to God’s life and God’s action to draw women and men into the realm of God’s kingdom.

So here are two sets of questions to ask:

First, how much of our leadership practice is prayer – prayer for people who live in our neighborhoods and cities? How much of our meeting time is focused on the men and women who are living in poverty, who face discrimination and hardship, who are living lives in silent desperation?

Second, what of our decision-making? Does it emerge from long debate about various politically-driven issues, or out of the reality of the broken world and Jesus’s compassion for it and for its inhabitants?

When leaders lead with prayer for the sake of our cities and communities (Jesus’s plentiful harvest), then a different order begins to develop. Yes, hard issues will need to be addressed. Yet those issues are bound up in the reality of real human relationships. When Christian people practice Christian love, then the path through the negotiation of hard issues will emerge. Jesus always begins with relationships, and the church of today can do no less to be faithful.

And speaking of faithfulness (this really needs to be said!), faithfully practicing Jesus’s compassion and engaging in prayer for the sake of others will seldom draw accolades from the media. Nor will it be easy to earnestly reach out to share life with someone different than you. But being a disciple of Jesus Christ means that you and I signed up for some hard stuff. And some of the hardest things that we will encounter are our own timidity and the temptation to reduce Christian faith to a set of positions on a prescribed set of issues. For as Jesus modeled, Christianity is actually a path of self-relinquishment for the sake of God’s desire to see all people discover and embrace God’s kingdom.

So for us as leaders, we must begin by asking how we are doing with Jesus’s compassion and with Jesus’s call to prayer for the sake of our communities.