DAY 287 - The Art of Care-Fronting

I Corinthians 4:14-21 (NASB) ¹⁴ I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. ¹⁵ For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. ¹⁶ Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. ¹⁷ For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church. ¹⁸ Now some have become arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. ¹⁹ But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I shall find out, not the words of those who are arrogant but their power. ²⁰ For the kingdom of God does not consist in words but in power. ²¹ What do you desire? Shall I come to you with a rod, or with love and a spirit of gentleness?

When we look at the life of the early church we see people who were often confused about what obedience meant. It is no accident that more than half of Paul’s letters were written to correct this confusion. Paul writes that he does not write to make them ashamed, but to admonish them as beloved children. The word Paul uses is noutheteo, to place in the mind, and translators hunt for the right English word. It can mean to warn, to train, to counsel, or to care-front. Care-front is the way we confront one another in a caring and loving way. Proverbs notes the confronting nature of love in 27:6, better are the wounds of a friend than the kisses of an enemy.

There is within many of us something that resists this kind of accountability to each other. But, some questions are just too close to our own brokenness for us to see the right answer. Am I a people pleaser? Do I use people rather than build them up? Am I nursing a “justified” resentment? Am I being true to Christ in the way I am treating my spouse, my children, in the way I am doing my work? In the way I am managing my money and my care or lack of care of my health?

Answers come from the people who know us the best and love us still. This is the responsibility the Christian community has to one another. Care-fronting is a way of helping one another recognize the deceit of self-centeredness and to move in the direction of being more faithful to Christ.

The church needs to be a community where people hold themselves accountable to God and to one another. Today, there is agreement in principle, but often there is almost no agreement in practice. Care-fronting gives us the wisdom and the power to be faithful in daily living and to experience Christ’s faithfulness to us.

From a sermon preached by Henry Dobbs Pope February 13, 1994

© Rhonda Hinkle Mitchell