The Dregs…

I was going to post this as a comment on my brother’s blog and realized it was a bit too long for a simple comment…

When our church fellowship adopted a block in a rough urban area five years ago, I thought that “fixing” the people on the block would be a matter of cleaning up trash on the street, bringing the neighborhood folks gifts, telling the story of Jesus, and modeling a healthy life. And granted, such things do make a difference when done in the context of authentic friendship and relationship. But what we discovered is that even when some of these underprivileged people are drawn to the Christ of the Bible, they are mired in the struggles and rules of their own class, and they don’t make the progress that we think they should make. For a while I thought that their new faith wasn’t valid because it wasn’t helping them to look and act more like me and the rest of the middle class.

We discovered over time that God rarely changes people’s lives dramatically overnight and, equally important, we learned that our objective of turning them into middle class folks was missing the point. Maybe the point of these folks coming to Christ is that their drug habits are lessened, they begin to see their children as valuable image-bearers of God to be fed, clothed, and not abused, and they are willing to share their limited resources with those whom they had once feuded. Maybe some of these people will never get a good job, be completely free of substance abuse, or get married to their common law spouses. But maybe it is about God changing one thing at a time as they see him in each new aspect of their lives. Isn’t it that way with us “good” middle class folks, too? None of us changes everything overnight either.

Another thing I learned from the so-called impoverished class is about the importance of people and relationships. People are of the utmost importance to them. But it’s different from the Who You Know game. Instead, it is a priority placed upon knowing how to simply “be” with others. They have figured out the whole Ministry of Presence thing. They don’t feel the need to have a goal, purpose, Bible study, or prayer time every time they interact with another person. And they know their neighbors better than any of us who have automatic garage doors ever will. They raise their kids together, look out for each other, tell each other off, and pitch in to help with their neighbors’ needs. It sounds like community to me. Perhaps the church could learn something from them. Maybe it is we who are bankrupt in the area of relationships.

As our small church gets a little farther into a fairly new relationship with the neighbors around our church building, I hope that we can translate the lessons we learned a couple of miles away. I hope that we can remember that we possess very few of the answers for fixing our neighbors’ problems, especially admitting that we do not completely understand their context. And I hope that we can humbly receive from these folks who know more about “being” and giving their last mite than we do. If we can remember these things, it is just possible that we might have mutually enriching relationships. We’ve got a good start on this at the beginning of this relational adventure. We’re taking care of needs and developing our ability to simply “be” with them. As the adventure continues, I hope we will learn to listen carefully to our new friends and make sure that rather than a new set of chains, rules, and the death of what is good around them, the gospel is truly the good news, freedom, and life it was intended to be.