On Sunday, I had the opportunity to preach our Outreach Sunday and invite people to step into the long stream of women and men who owned a living faith, put their faith to work, and showed their faith by their deeds—serving the poor, the sick, orphans, widows, refugees, immigrants, etc.

I always want to say more about a given topic, but there are time constraints and a limit to how much people can endure my voice. This week, one caution I was planning to sound (but cut at the moment) was against Christian hubris in serving.

What I am referring to is the notion, prevalent in some evangelical sectors, that if a job needs to be done, if a need must be met, an evangelical organization must do it.

There are wonderful Christian organizations doing important work in virtually every sector. I do not want to minimize the work they are doing. Instead, I want to elevate the good work non-Christian organizations are doing. If there is an identified need for the distribution of winter coats to kids and a non-Christian organization committed to meeting that need, we do not need to start an explicitly Christian group to do the same work. That is simply arrogance. We need Christians to recognize they have a common cause with the non-Christian neighbor and come alongside, serving the common good, tapping into their common humanity (and common grace), and meeting needs in the most effective, efficient way possible.

Not every good work needs to be stamped “Christian.”