An example?

Thinking over Jesus' miracles, I notice that, although He shows Himself perfectly capable of healing at a distance, He didn't do much of it. A crowd comes wanting healing for themselves or loved ones, and for some reason He doesn't just say "Be healed" to the lot of them as He did with the lepers. The healing is, as far as is recorded, requested one on one, and dealt with one on one. The feeding of the multitudes didn't involve bread landing in everyone's lap, but was handed out one on one via the proxy hands of the disciples and possibly others.

From one point of view it is important that people come to Jesus, and so being healed in bulk at a distance is the wrong parable. But if we are to be Jesus' body in the world and do His work, does Jesus' one on one approach constitute an example for us? Feeding the crowds was a corporate endeavor, but ... on the whole our primary focus should not be the charitable organizations but what we can do one on one.

Which gets complicated with beggars on State Street. Do you give cash to someone who will promptly spend it on drugs, or drop it in the Salvation Army kettle for better controlled charity? Or give out McDonalds coupons? Or (and I've only done this once, I fear), take the guy to lunch together?

Homeless shelters are going to concentrate folks with problems in one place for efficient service, but at the cost of losing one on one contact, and at the cost of increasing the fraction of people with mental or moral problems. That doesn't make a good environment for learning to do better for those very people with mental problems, and makes it fairly toxic for the merely out of luck. So, what would work better?