The day after the Chicago public schools opened, Pastor Carey Casey of the Lawndale Community Church in the Windy City's southwest ghetto walked into his office to find a seven-year-old boy and a six-year-old girl waiting for him. The children were dressed in shorts and stained tops. They'd wandered a few blocks, through the trashewn vacant lots and past the gap-toothed sneers of the jagged, broken win¬dows of North Lawndale's abandoned buildings, seeking their friend for some affection and breakfast. Mr. Casey gave them hugs and orange juice and called Pat Herrod, a church worker who ministers to "stray children" in the neighborhood, and asked her to find out why they weren't in school. Ms. Herrod walked the children (whom church workers will refer to only as "Tyrone" and "Natasha" in order to protect the troubled fami¬ly's confidentiality) over to the church gym, and learned that their mother had told them they didn't have proper clothes for school. While Tyrone and Natasha romped in the indoor gym, Ms. Herrod made arrangements with the school to permit the children to attend without their uniforms, and then tracked down their mother. In a situation not unfamiliar to Ms. Herrod, she found the single mom at home with a toddler, short of cash, on welfare, and struggling with drug addiction.
In North Lawndale, where a violent crime is committed every three hours, unemploy¬ment reaches 50 percent, and gangs recruit members as young as eight years old, it is not only children like Tyrone and Natasha who search for safety, love, belonging, and hope at the Lawndale Community Church. At the corner laundromat, I talked with Cody, a 25-year old black man who had grown up in the neighborhood. He and his friends had frequented the church's indoor gym often over the years. "People want to feel safe here," he explained, "and the Lawndale Christian Center provides that safe place."
Politicians searching for solutions to urban decay can learn much from inner-city evangelical church- based community develop¬ment initiatives like Lawndale's. This week church leaders nationwide will gather in Baltimore for the annual convention of the Christ¬ian Community Development Association to discuss combining faith and works to revital¬ize impoverished neighborhoods. The Christian community's growing interest in addressing the woes of the ghetto comes just as the Clinton administration will be forced by last week's GOP takeover of Congress to make good on its promise to "end welfare as we know it." Clearly, welfare reform has reached bipartisan critical mass, and bureaucratic social programs are quite possibly on the way out. Today, bumper stickers modestly encourage private citizens to "random acts of kindness" rather than to wars on poverty. Churches like Lawndale are practicing instead sustained acts of kindness in America's ghettos, because they are right in the thick of them.
The carefully polished, full-court indoor gym where children like Tyrone and Natasha and young men like Cody find safety is a nat¬ural fixture of the Lawndale Community Church given the fellowship's founder and the unique focus of his early years of ministry. White, small-town Iowa boy Wayne Gordon-or "Coach" as he is known locally-came to Lawndale in 1975 after grad¬uating from college: He hoped to improve the lives of the neighborhood youth. As a wrestling coach at a local public high school, Mr. Gordon reached out to athletes. He set up a weight-lifting machine in a local storefront and held Bible studies. That group of student athletes eventually gave birth to today's nondenominational evangelical congregation of about 300 parishioners (roughly 80 percent black and 20 percent white).
The scope of LCC's outreach in the com¬munity, considering its humble beginnings, is broad: A full-service medical clinic provides health care to over 4,000 individuals a month; a development corporation purchases and rehabilitates abandoned buildings, providing affordable apartments and even the opportunity for local families to purchase their own homes; and a computer-laden learning center offers after-school tutoring to children of all ages. The church is also active in economic development initiatives; for example, it has purchased an abandoned liquor store which it plans to convert into a pizzaria on the first floor and transitional housing apartments on the second. LCC employs 135 people in its various outreach ministries. But as impor¬tant as these programs are, no one doubts that the church's most significant influence has been its creation of community in the midst of a broken, fragmented, and despairing ghetto.
Today, members of the "second generation" reached by Coach, like William Little, a recent college grad¬uate who has returned to his home neighborhood to work with Lawndale's Development Corporation, remember the influence of Coach's "alternative role models." Mr. Little's uncle and cousins "hung out" with Coach, and these guys were his heroes. "It was cool to play ball, to be in the Bible studies, to be with Coach," Mr. Little says. "That was cool, and I wanted to be like those guys." Coach's bunch provided an alternative to the gangs then, and the church continues to offer a place for belonging and a different set of choices in this "option-scarce" neighborhood.
From the beginning, the idea of simply living out biblical Christianity in contrast to the broken, rough lifestyles typical of the ghetto has been critical. As Coach's wife Anne reflects, "In the early years with the high school kids, I felt that for them to be in our home and witness marriage, and [raising] kids, was really key. So many came from homes where they'd never seen that."
Mr. Gordon's comments point to what ails the inner-city: what sociologist William Julius Wilson calls the "radical isolation" of the ghetto. Not only are poor urban children rarely able to visit the world outside a few familiar concrete city blocks, they are also decisively separated from much of what traditionally has been associated with stable family life. Theologian Richard John Neuhaus summarized the problem in his book America Against Its elf: "Millions of children don’t know, and will never know, what it means to have a father. More poignantly, they do not know what a father is. They do not know anyone who has a father or is a father."
Of all the changes the Lawndale church has set in motion in the neighborhood, probably none is more important than its strengthening of the idea and reality of "the family." Mrs. Gordon says that in the early years of LCC, one could count the black married couples "easily on one hand." Now, if the count from the church membership directory is correct, there are about 70.
Mr. Casey, an athletic black man in his late 30s whom Coach invited to Lawndale three years ago to be the "Shepherding Pastor," realized quickly upon moving into the neighbor¬hood that "the greatest testimony" he has in North Lawndale is being a husband and father. "We came out of the house one day a couple years ago," Mr. Casey recalls, "and were talking to some little children. They asked my wife, 'What's this ring on your finger?' And my wife said, 'That's my wedding ring, I'm mar¬ried to Pastor Casey.' And they said, 'You're his married? He's your husband?' It was as though we'd told them we'd come from the moon. And that really shocked us; it was a wake-up call concerning who we are and why we're here." Mr. Casey says his ministry in Lawndale "is not just about sermons, it's lifestyle."
Anne Gordon notes that even things she takes for granted are powerful witnesses: "One woman who's about our age. . . who grew up in the neighborhood, came to our house one night at dinner time. She knocked on the door and we were all sitting around the dinner table eating and she said, 'Do you all do this every night?' and it was just such a weird thing. It seemed to her like a big event, whereas to us it was just part of family life and very normal."
Talk of college is also more "normal" in North Lawndale now. Linda Jones, wife of the founding doctor of the church's health clinic and a "charter member" of LCC, recalls befriending Donna Lynn, a young high school girl, and her boyfriend, Rob Holt. Ms. Lynn lived in a rundown house in the neighborhood and Mr. Holt was from the nearby projects. "We were able to help lead them along in the things they needed to do to get ready to find a college, apply, and go," Mrs. Jones relates. "Some of us were able to act as their parents, even just talking to them about college." Rob and Donna have since graduated, married, and are enjoying successful careers.
This experience led church members to establish a College Opportunity Program. Through it, eighth graders commit them¬selves to a five-year program of twice-weekly study/mentoring sessions at LCC's learning center and to maintaining a 2.5 grade point average. After graduation, they can receive a $3,000 a year, four-year scholarship to a col¬lege participating in the program. Even gram¬mar school kids think about going to college, Mrs. Gordon says, "because they see the older high school kids thinking and talking about going." At any given time, about 40 Lawndale youth are enrolled in college-this, in a neighborhood where the high school dropout rate reaches 50 percent.
Youth in the neighborhood are also setting higher vocational aspirations because of their exposure to professional men and women in the congregation. As Mrs. Jones notes, it is helpful that the youth "have doctors for friends. An LCC youth can say, 'Oh, yeah, I know a doctor'-or a nurse or technician or attorney-'I sat next to one in church Sun¬day.’”
Similarly, subtle encouragement to exit the welfare system is evident at LCC. Pastor Casey wants to help people achieve independence from public assistance: "The welfare system is a bandaid that covers a wound requiring surgery," he argues. "It is not God's best intention. We believe in the work ethic stated in scripture." In one sermon, Mr. Casey referred to Ephesians 4:28 ("He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need") and exhorted his congregation to do volunteer work if they could not find paid employment.
Mrs. Gordon tells of women previously on welfare who volunteered at the church, received training, and now hold jobs on staff. "Because there are people who were on assistance and now aren't anymore…This encourages other people that they can too." Moreover, church ministries help to "prevent a lot of people from ever getting on welfare that probably would have been headed that way." According to Mrs. Gordon, congregational support has enabled pregnant teens to finish high school and work toward a career rather than "just falling into being on assistance for¬ever."
William Brown, a long-time supervisor at the neighborhood branch of the Illinois Department of Public Aid, thinks that Lawndale's teaching and moral example may encourage some residents to take advantage of the bureaucracy's new "Earnfare" program. (By not decreasing welfare recipients' aid ben¬efits when they begin receiving paychecks, this initiative encourages recipients to find employment.) Mr. Brown also commented that LCC's job training program had helped clients find employment, and though this may "not have gotten off assistance completely, has reduced the need for such assistance and the services of this agency."
Thomas Worthy runs the church's lmani job training program (lmani means "faith" in Swahili), in which he stresses character and spiritual development as much as skills train¬ing. "Obedience [to God's word] is the number one thing we push at lmani," Mr. Worthy says. "Foundationally. what I'm trying to do is build leadership character in individuals, to where they become Christian heroes in their households. The job is the easy part," Mr. Worthy asserts, "it's what happens after they get the job that I'm concerned about."
According to Mr. Worthy, success means improved parenting as much as employment: "If a guy comes to my class and we have a reading component and he is reading his Bible assignment, and he tells his child to turn off the TV and reads together with his son, then that's lmani."
Mr. Worthy, who in previous managerial positions at Fleet Bank and Westinghouse Corporation hired well over 100 people, tries ¬to instill in his students personal discipline and punctuality, character traits employers ¬are looking for. "I give the students parameters for a dress code. I want them to get used to wearing certain clothes, and not wearing athletic gear so much. I tell them to bring a coffee cup and a notepad in with them." Of the 200-some students who have come to the program, about 100 have completed it "We battle with tough, real life issues and some people can't take it and hit the streets," Worthy reports. Since lmani began in 1993, about 50 individuals have found jobs through the program.
Of course, LCC had a "job training" program of sorts long before Mr. Worthy came on staff, in the sense that its members made "work," like "fatherhood," a more common, normal concept in the community. Anne Gordon expressed this well: "Now all these family units are spread out throughout the neighborhood, and the neighborhood kids are watching them. They see people come and go from work-and you know on some blocks there just aren't that many working people-so even to see a man or woman get up in the morning, get dressed, go out to the car or go catch the bus or the [subway] and go off to work. . . is a role model."
She leaned forward and looked intently at me. "So much of what we do isn't just the program stuff," she emphasized. "It's just living our lives, being neighbors. That's where the relocation thing [is crucial]. Without that, none of this would really happen. The neighborhood kid wouldn't see the daddy next door ¬get up and go in to work everyday. They would miss that whole thing."
The task of "just being neighbors" seems to have influenced the physical appearance of the community as well. William Brown says he's noticed that Lawndale church homeowners have improved upkeep of the area and that "this has had a great influence on people living in the immediate vicinity." Church families themselves are less generous in their assessments of this, and garbage-filled lots are visible among the tidy lawns and stoops. The LCC families have been more successful in injecting energy into neighborhood block clubs. Through street marches and crime watches, these groups discourage night-time rowdiness and push back the drug dealers.
LCC's work with the poor flows out of its solid biblical teaching. Christians here speak often of God's love, human dignity, self¬-esteem, and meeting needs. But they are also sober about human sinfulness and willing to say "no" to some requests for help. One Wednesday evening, Pastor Casey's Bible study message (on Psalm 51) was titled "When You Feel Like a Total Failure Because You Are." That night, Mr. Casey acknowledged in prayer: "We know it's a fact that our hearts are wicked apart from your grace." Chaplain Leo Barbee, who runs the church's substance abuse counseling program, is realistic about some of the addicts he works with: "They're just sorry, they're not ready to repent. They're sorry about last night, but they're really not ready to give up." But Mr. Barbee is there for them when they are ready, and as a former crack addict himself, he can empathize, love, and challenge them with wisdom.
Longtime LCC member Linda Jones reports that the church has had to practice tough love with some individuals seeking its help: "We had a panhandler at our health clinic who was a drug abuser. . . . We actually had to go around and tell the 100 people who work there that we [couldn't] give him anything else anymore because he was so manipulative with the different people." Leaning back in her chair, she sighed, "So many people were trying to help him in their own way, we finally had to make this blanket announcement: 'Don't give him anything; if you want to take him over there and buy him a sandwich, fine, but don't give any money to him because it's not doing him any good at all.' "
Every churchgoer interviewed for this article said that they felt loved and "supported" at Lawndale. Deacon Carrie Moore remembers how the church family took care of her children for six months while she tended her husband who'd been hospitalized out of state. Anthony Franklin calls Coach the father he didn't have. And Vanessa Little relates that it was the congregation's support that helped her get over the murder of her sister.
All these individuals say they attend LCC not just for the emotional support, but for the biblical teaching. As Vanessa Little put it: "A lot of the churches, they give you emotions. They do a lot of screaming and shouting and chanting and you. . . get all emotional on Sunday but then on Monday you can't remember anything. And basically what LCC has done for years is teaching."
Some church members think there is less drug and gang activity in the neighborhood now, though others disagree. (Little of this activity is visible in the immediate vicinity of the church; dope-dealing seemed more common three to four blocks away.) A middle-aged Arabian employee at a small corner convenience shop is noncommittal when asked how safe he feels in the neighborhood now, as compared with several years ago: "So-so," he said. (At about 3:00 a.m. the day before we talked, the store alarm had woken him announcing a break-in attempt.) Outside, in back of his shop, he points to a pile of discarded tires and rubbish someone had dumped in the alley a few nights before that. But then he pointed south, towards Ogden Avenue (where all LCC's buildings are located.) It's safer up there, he said.
Public aid administrator William Brown says that, based on data from the welfare agency's address records, the neighborhood has become more stable, less transient: "Sometime ago, the area [had been characterized] by people moving in and out. Now people come to the area and there is a tendency for them to stay…because of the convenience of the children's center, the impact of maintaining the community in terms of cleanliness, gym activities, and that kind of stuff."
Despite all the changes-and the growth of LCC's ministries beyond the Gordons' wildest dreams-Anne Gordon admits she sometimes feels that the church has made only "a tiny dent" in light of the neighborhood's "overwhelming" needs. Lifetime Lawndale resident Carrie Moore says things are better now, but wishes more churches would get involved in LCC's efforts. "If everybody would come together…and work for the betterment of the community, we wouldn't have the drugs and crime as much, but it's not like that."
Meanwhile, LCC's very growth has stimu¬lated some grumbling among some of the ear¬liest members. One ex-student of Coach's complains: "It's no longer personal…you can't just barge in [on Coach], you got to have an appointment now." Another is disappointed that some key staff positions have been filled with people from outside Lawndale (Pastor Casey and Thomas Worthy are from Kansas City). "What went wrong," one explained, "is they brought people in from other cities and they don't understand us and our community."
Linda Jones acknowledges that there was some concern but that "overall, the response [to Mr. Casey's hiring] has been very positive." According to her, the church leaders have evolved in their vision for the ministry: "When the church started 16 some years ago, I thought that we were going to help start something, turn it over to neighborhood leadership, and leave. My thinking on that has changed. I'm more interested in a ministry of reconciliation and of working together than of turning something over and leaving."
Mrs. Jones is quick to acknowledge that not everyone thinks similarly, "so there's been some misunderstandings…about why some of the Caucasian staff are here and what they should be doing-whether they should be try¬ing to work themselves out of a job or work side by side" with black staff members.
Anne Gordon points out that the church has to be on guard against its own successes. For example, from its inception, LCC emphasized a "come as you are" dress policy. This had an enormous impact: Parishioner Vanes¬sa Little says that the thing that impressed her the most about the church when she first began attending was that jeans and shorts were acceptable Sunday attire. Now, Mr. Gordon reports, the church has more and more people working. "They're able to buy clothes and it's a natural thing [culturally] to kind of dress up for church." But she worries about this making newcomers feel less welcome.
These concerns are real; nevertheless, the church continues to have a magnetic attraction that draws affection-starved children like Tyrone and Natasha, and men like Mark-a new Christian, recently "clean" from drugs, who just joined the lmani program in hopes of finding work. The slow but steady growth of the congregation has made it difficult for the church to remain as intimate as it once was, but it still has a readily observable "family feel." The warmth of LCC's fellowship and the light from its proclamation of God's Word continues to draw in teenagers, single moms, and stray kids.
Some of those teens, moms, and kids have stayed-and changed. But Anne Gordon's feeling that there is still so much to do is a realistic appraisal of the hard, long- term work of encouraging individual transformation through Christian discipleship. Take Natasha and Tyrone's 23-year-old mother, for instance. Substance abuse counselor Leo Barbee started working with her last March, and for a short while she was off of drugs and regularly attending church. Then she relapsed and lost her apartment. Now she is in danger of losing Tyrone and Natasha-and her three other children-if she does not enroll in the inpatient drug rehabilitation program with which Mr. Barbee has made contact. Hard cases like this one explain LCC church workers' modesty about what they have accomplished-but such cases do not limit the congregation's vision of what might yet be done to transform the ghetto. Coach Gordon says the church is trying to do no less than "create a village." "We haven't done it yet," he acknowledges, "[but] we have the foundation to do it."
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