Our church, Trinity Presbyterian, runs a community center in Blue Ridge Commons, a low-income housing complex of a few hundred African-American families. Several months ago, the new property managers were looking for suggestions on how to improve security, and so some residents and I hashed out our ideas around our neighbor's dining room table. Since this neighborhood is the main drug trafficking center in our city-Charlottesville, Virginia-our conversation naturally centered on ways to get the pushers out. I liked the property management's recommendation for increasing lighting in the parking lots.
That suggestion, however, was quickly quashed by the neighbors. One, a single mother in her midtwenties, whose daughter is enrolled in our tutoring program, patiently explained that more lights would mean more pushers. "They're like bugs, you know, attracted to the lights," she shrugged. Late at night, aimless men assemble in the lighted parking areas, drinking and shooting dice. Typically, these guys don't mean any real harm. They're just a bunch of rowdy pains who leave cigarette butts and beer cans on our front lawns. The real problem is that the crack dealers drive into the complex when these
guys are feeling high on a few drinks and some lucky throws. The pushers then offer the men an even better high, and find a ready market for their crack sales. If everyone would just keep their lights off, my neighbor insisted, then the guys wouldn't be able to see to shoot dice. And with no gatherings of potential buyers, the pushers would stay away.
An entirely reasonable argument, of course, but a completely new line of thinking for me. Needless to say, we're not keeping our outside lights on anymore at the Abundant Life Family Center!
This urban ministry venture is new for our 1200-member, mostly white, middle-class Presbyterian church, and we're learning much. Some lessons have emerged from our "front lines" work in Blue Ridge Commons. Others have grown out of conversations we've had with other ministry leaders including some I met at the Wingspread conference reported on in this issue of CONGREGATIONS. As the politicians look to churches to increase outreach to poor families in this era of welfare reform, we Christians need to learn from the examples of effective, spiritually dynamic, church-based urban ministries. And we may need to readjust our thinking about mercy, in order that it become more biblically faithful and strategic. Four kinds of rethinking are especially important.
The first concerns the way we as congregations address socio-economic woes. The uncomfortable reality is that the Church needs to reform its welfare system for many of the same reasons the government had to change its system. Like the government, the Church has too often provided short-term Band-Aids (soup kitchens, used clothes, free groceries, and emergency cash) to families who need long-term, development-oriented assistance. Moreover, we have sometimes been bureaucratic and impersonal, preferring sterile or "clinical" outreach to humble, hands-on, face-to-face caring. Relief-oriented, "commodity-based" aid has its place, for example when a family loses its home to a fire or has a financial emergency due to unanticipated medical bills. What families struggling in persistent poverty most need, however, is our friendship, spiritual counsel, time, and love. Our outreach is sometimes a mile wide but only an inch deep. We do a multitude of good things-like distributing Thanksgiving food baskets or buying toys for needy kids at Christmas-but we fail to bring about permanent change.
Government is not well equipped to provide time-intensive, personalized assistance, but churches can-and should. In Mississippi, Virginia, and Maryland, churches are supporting welfare recipients attempting the transition from welfare to work. Here in Charlottesville, our ministry offers life-skills training and computer classes to adults seeking to strengthen their job skills. Participants are matched with a Friendship Circle of three to six volunteers who help them write a resume, prepare for job interviews, locate affordable day care, and identify potential job opportunities. By targeting our aid to a manageable number of families-rather than scattering our money city-wide-we are able to provide a more comprehensive range of support that makes a noticeable impact.
Churches that have made the transition from conventional mercy ministry to relational, holistic ministry find that they themselves, not only their beneficiaries, are transformed by the friendships that develop. Christ United Methodist Church in Jackson, Mississippi, for example, used to offer emergency aid to families throughout the city, but had little follow-up. According to outreach director Martha Walton, the church was not enabling families truly to change, congregants had no opportunity to get to know the recipients, and no spiritual ministry took place.
Consequently, several years ago the church decided to target its benevolence activities in North Midtown, a crime-ridden inner-city neighborhood. The congregation rented an apartment there, hired an African-American pastor to oversee the new urban ministry, and launched children's tutoring and Bible club programs as well as parenting classes for adults. Volunteers from the church have joined with local residents to revitalize the neighborhood. They have resurrected the neighborhood association; formed an active beautification committee; launched a boys mentoring program; designed a new community playground; and assisted Habitat for Humanity in converting ramshackle crack houses into bright, new three-bedroom homes.
Neighborhood residents say they appreciate the way members of Christ Methodist have gotten "eyeball to eyeball" with them and seen their needs. Church volunteers report that their faith has been strengthened by the Christians they've befriended in North Midtown, and that they are learning to put into practice the Gospel's demand for racial reconciliation.
A second area for rethinking concerns the scope of our benevolence activities. We need to broaden our definition of mercy. Typically, we limit the label "mercy" to non-profit activities. Far less often do we see for-profit ventures as examples of selfless benevolence. Some church folks are simply a bit uncomfortable with the idea of "business as ministry." But creative for-profit entrepreneurial ventures can empower poor people in profound ways. As long-term community development activist and preacher John Perkins notes, we not only have to move from giving the poor man a fish to teaching him how to fish; we've also got to think about who owns the pond. In many innovative church-based urban ministries, that concern has stimulated efforts to help poor people start their own small businesses. In Chicago, the Lawndale Community Church is successfully reaching those whom many write off as lost for good: African-American men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five. The congregation's program works by teaching these young men (many of whom are former drug dealers) to channel their
entrepreneurial abilities into legitimate micro-business endeavors.
In Phoenix, Denny Hustead, a retired engineer, has designed a business venture that has two major benefits. First, it allows three young Hispanic men he's mentored for years to learn to operate their own company. It also generates ongoing income to underwrite the not-for-profit educational and spiritual programs of Neighborhood Ministries, the group with whom Hustead volunteers. Many effective non-profit ministries struggle year after year to raise adequate funds from often fickle individual donors and private philanthropies. If such ministries can launch successful for-profit business ventures as part of their community outreach efforts, they can position themselves for long-range financial stability.
In Charlottesville, we are dreaming of starting a van pool business. Public transportation in our city is woefully inadequate. Some participants in our job-training program do not own cars and are forced to limit their job searches to businesses located on the bus line. With affordable transportation, these individuals could pursue better-paying jobs at firms inaccessible by bus. If we purchased a reliable van, we could offer reasonably priced transportation to these individuals and others in similar positions. Such a venture could create one new job (that of the van driver) and, over time, perhaps generate a modest income that could be used to help underwrite our job training program. This idea is still in the dream stage and may not even prove financially viable. But this is the kind of dreaming more churches could be doing, and must do, if we are to create benevolence ministries sustainable over time in the face of uncertain philanthropic support.
A third area for rethinking is related. As we broaden our understanding of outreach ministry, we must also teach Christians the multiple ways they can live out the command to love their neighbors. Certainly we need to do a good job of encouraging congregants to "get out of their comfort zones" and participate in hands-on, face-to-face service in impoverished neighborhoods with which they may be unfamiliar. It is a good thing for a well-off banker to give up his lunch hour once a week, drive to the projects, and tutor an inner-city child.
But there is much he can do for the Kingdom of God right in his downtown office. He must begin to see that his "being merciful" is not limited to that hour of tutoring. He could become more informed about the bank's lending practices and challenge any red-lining activities he discovers. He may be able to use his influence to encourage the company to hire individuals seeking to get off of welfare. He could try to start a micro-lending program that would provide credit to inner-city entrepreneurs. In short, he can assess his personal circle of influence and think creatively about how to use that influence in ways that "do justice and love mercy." All such activity is as valid,an exercise of benevolence as is his weekly volunteering at the tutoring center.
The final necessary rethinking concerns the relationship between the Church and the government. The new welfare reform law includes provisions that protect the religious expression and character of faith-based organizations that accept governmental funding to underwrite their outreach programs. These so-called "Charitable Choice" provisions may help relieve the secularizing pressures faith-based groups formerly experienced from governmental officials when they received state monies. The more hospitable climate created by Charitable Choice may facilitate greater service by the faith community. This may be accomplished by making available additional funding without forcing the religious outreach programs to compromise their holistic mission.
Collaboration with government may still pose important challenges to faith-based ministries, and each opportunity for partnering should be carefully assessed. But the rules guiding such partnerships have changed for the better, and churches may want to investigate potential opportunities for expanding outreach efforts with the help of public dollars.
Whether or not we agree with all the rethinking behind welfare reform, the challenge for the Church is clear. Either we can continue to do business as usual, or we can respond creatively to the increased needs of the poor for caring support. We must not be afraid to start pouring our love from new wineskins.
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