Anchor Through My Eyes

As a pastor, as part of Anchor, who are we becoming, what ought to be true of us?

Anchor is located ten blocks north of Main Street. We're another ten blocks west of downtown. Our location impresses upon us the crucial need for urban renewal, for the integration of urban and suburban communities, for the collaboration of resources for the prosperity of the city. 

Because of the affordability of housing in Anchor's neighborhood, there is a high percentage of families with someone involved in the court or prison system. The effects of inadequate education and vocational training, the lack of character formation and social responsibility, the breakdown of families, the absence of fathers, and ineffectiveness of churches are keenly felt. 

Addictions, adultery, apathy, abuse, anger - all universal in their scope, seem to have a concentrated and blatant reign in our neighborhood. What would it take to help our neighborhood and city become a better place to live? 

Love God. Love Your Neighbor. Be the Anchor. 

Loving God and loving our neighbor is intertwined. So we must help each other - as individuals and as a community of believers - love our neighbors as an expression of our love for God, and love God as an expression of our love for our neighbors.

This takes theological reflection, spiritual introspection, and practical application. The pursuit of this reality changes who we are, who we are becoming. And it changes the communities that we part of, building a certain kind of momentum leading to a critical mass for renewal or transformation. 

Anchor is a both a community of believers and an organization of servants. We are believers wherever we go - at home, at school, at work - but we gather as believers once a week. We are servants wherever we go as well, but we organize in order to do more together then we could on our own. Our community and organization help produce a koinonia that cares for one another and those in our neighborhood and city. 

Loving our neighbor has a definite social and economic reality to it. Love for neighbor is often expressed to those in need - to those we know and to those we see. Thus we are learning how to best help, how not to enable, how to develop towards maturity rather then reinforce poverty of mind and heart. 

If our love for our neighbor is rooted in our love for God and the good news of Jesus, we have to think incarnationally. How do we enter into the world of those who do not yet love God or their neighbor and help bring the light and way of Jesus? Our incarnational ministry focuses on meeting people where they are at and helping them learn how to take their next steps with Jesus. 

Anchor is Jesus centered. We worship as a way to express to Jesus gratitude and our need for help. We study the Scriptures to know and understand what Jesus has already instructed and commanded. We gather to encourage each other and spur one another on towards good works of love for God and our neighbor.

Anchor thinks about it's influence on the city. What the city cares about, Anchor must learn to care about. In figuring out how to be good news to our community, we must discern what is the bad news, and be participants in helping. But Anchor's motivation for caring about the city, about our neighbors, about the problems of our culture is rooted in the commands and commission of Jesus.

In entering into our culture and society, we take into account those forces that powerfully shape our lives and values, our worldviews and presuppositions. In immersing ourselves in the way of Jesus, and learning about the world we live in, we better understand and can more wisely live out the Good News of God. This can have restorative power for cities and corporations, educational and health organizations, for institutions and neighborhoods.

This requires working with a wide variety  of Christians and leaders in the city, to collaborate with like-minded activists for accomplishing together what none of us can do alone. It also requires Christians bringing Christ into their workplace, into their vocations and letting Jesus shape careers, influencing how you use your skills and knowledge for good in light of community and cultural problems.

All of this hinges on the ability of the pastor and church leadership to foster a healthy community of believers and a productive organization of servants. This requires paying attention to congregational details about spiritual realities, relational needs, economic challenges, racial tensions, gender inequality, and socioeconomic factors.

It also is necessary to improve management skills to fruitfully train and empower for rewarding service. In serving one another in the congregation as well as in the realms of school, work and home, there is a need for effective administration and management to help support inspiring worship, effective small groups, helpful ministries, fruitful evangelism and discipleship. A church that can live out this dual role as community and organization will be a powerful catalyst for the neighborhood and city.

The temptation is to reduce the gospel to a tool for getting into heaven when you die. But a steady immersion in the Gospel of Jesus will reveal an obvious expectation for disciples: repent of sins, forgive those who sin against you, love as demonstrated by Jesus, join the ministry of reconciliation, be a blessing, heal in the name of Jesus, rescue the lost, pray for God's will to be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.

Following Jesus is about what God wants to do on Earth now. The heavenly reward is connected to our faith on Earth - and faith without good works is dead. But a trust in Jesus that produces good works as a blessing to our communities and culture - well this becomes an answer to the Lord's Prayer.

The Individual and Community

For thousands of years, the primary way that a human identified himself was through a community. And then came the Age of Enlightenment, the Light of Reason, the Way of the Individual. And we live amongst the confusion, a few centuries later, mired.

When people fail, we look at them with disappointment, assuming that they didn't take responsibility as an individual for their own life. We discount the role of their community and lift up too high the assumption that people have great power as an individual over their destiny.

We see people succeed and we admire them for taking their life by the reigns and victoriously surging forth as an individual. We downplay the contribution that any kind of community played in their life to prepare them for there accomplishments.

This downgrade of community and obsession with individuality has been part of our heritage for a few centuries now. It's too easy to look at our parents or older generation and reject their traditions and perspectives - for that's what they did in their days, and so on. We inherit from our parents the desire to think for ourselves - which means we must reject any accumulated wisdom they might be able to pass on. How smart is that?

What are the fears associated with a renewed emphasis on community? People don't like to be told what to do. They don't like to be forced into a routine, to have a tradition enforced. People don't like being accountable to people outside their family. People don't want to feel obligated to care for others outside their selective network of friends.

Christians are born into this aura of individualism. It's why we struggle so much with community. Yet Jesus places a high value on community, almost more so than on individualism. In our age, we think that community results from the gathering of individuals. But for Jesus, community is both the origins and nexus for individuality.

Christians are identified as the body of Christ - which implies that we only exist because of our connections to each other. How can a foot increase it's value to the body by insisting on its individuality? Of course the foot is a sort of individual, differentiated from the hand and heart. But it's value is not just that it is different, but that the difference plays a substantial role in giving life to the community to which is attached.

The greatest command for Christians is to love. God is love. We are go give God, to give love to the world. But we can't do that as individuals. Love can only happen in community. You can't love by yourself. You can't even come to know God or love by yourself. It requires a community to give birth to you and those ideas and structures and history from which you benefit and are nurtured. Love is can't be just an exchange between two individuals. Love is what makes community possible, what makes individuals able to be attached and make a contribution to the life of others.

It's almost as if you have to pick one: love or individualism. If you pick love you get community. If you pick individualism, you get yourself, your way of doing things, your thoughts, your attempts to relate to God and know love on your own terms. But God seems to insist on being first and primary - often at the expense of your individuality. God wants you to love and be loved, and that means embracing community, his way of becoming.

The funny thing is, people throw away their individuality in dozens of ways, all the while insisting that they are not going to be bound to community and let someone tell them what to do. So they live in this shadow world, rootless, anchorless, drifting. They claim to be an individual while at the same time embracing the fashion styles of celebrities. Just like a few million other fans. The individual asserts the ability to think for himself, and then aligns himself with a popular modern writer. Just like a few million others.

Oh, we want community. We want to be led. We want to be bound to tradition. We want love. But we've drank so long from the toxic well of the Enlightenment. Even our readings of Scripture, our thoughts on God are fueled by this pervasive attitude of individuality. We think of God as the supreme individual. Except that he exists as the Trinity. And he bound himself up to Israel, and the church. And the world. God lives in community. It's how he expresses love, himself.

We ought to reconsider our attachment to individuality. I am just as much an individualist as the next person. I was born into it, like everyone else. And yet. As powerful as the drug is, the call of community continues. The desire to love and be loved - God, my wife and children, friends, church - results in a draining of those individualistic energies that drive me towards loneliness. I want God's kingdom to come. I want to love. I want to see my city flourish. I want the church to prevail as a blessing. Those are all community-oriented themes that undermine my individuality. So be it.

There Are Two Kinds of People

Yawn. A bunch of churches getting together in a local park to worship together. Who cares! It sure doesn't look like anything is really happening. And yet...

On Sunday five neighborhood churches worshipped together in Hamilton Park for the first time. It could become an annual event. We prayed together, we sang, we took communion together, we shared ways of increased collaboration together, and we feasted together. It was good. It was fun. And it was strategic. 

We had Roger Reece, Executive Director of Associated Churches preach  - and it was good to introduce him to our congregations. Most of us are members of the organization, and in one way or another are involved in serving our neighborhood. But it's important that we think about how we can care for our neighbors together. And it's the togetherness aspect that I think was strengthened on Sunday. 

Churches have become very irrelevant and obsolete in their neighborhoods. Sure, they still find a way to contribute to the needs of the community, but ask a neighbor how they've benefited from the local church. The answer will reveal the disconnect. 

Anchor has worked hard to be relevant to our neighbors - but we don't want to continue to do that work alone. We want to learn from our other neighborhood churches from the ways they've become helpful. From the collaboration comes more helpful churches, a unity of spirit that adds strength to our good work, and new opportunities for the Spirit to accomplish the impossible in us and through us.

There were about 165 of us gathered together in front of the brown cinder-block pavilion at Hamilton Park. It was inspiring to hear the voices singing together, to see heads bowed in prayer, to join the long line for Communion. We were planting seeds. Now our vision is to grow our churches and invite our neighbors so that we fill the park, we want people sitting on the far back hill! Wouldn't that be a great testimony to the help we have given in the name of Jesus to our neighbors? 

More than anything, our churches want the Gospel of Jesus to be good news for our neighbors. We want our churches to be harbingers of that announcement. We want the kingdom to come where we live. This means, though, that we have to get involved in the lives and issues of our neighborhood. All the divorced families. All the kids without a father at home. Homes where the man is in prison. Families that are caught up in the court-system. Families that are dependent on the welfare system. Parents that don't know how to make it work together. People on disability, who are depressed, who are angry. People struggling to start over again, to get an education, to get a better job, to be a better parent. 

There are also great families in our neighborhood, homes that are good and stable and shine a lot of light. And our neighborhood needs our churches to do their best in making disciples who are the hands and feet of Jesus where they live. Disciples who use their resources, their connections at work, their influence, their skills, their wallets, their prayers, their kitchen tables, their community assets, their political involvement, their local schools, to help make our neighborhood a better place to live. Disciples who jump into a project that will outlive them, a task that is bigger then all of us, a work that requires more than we can ask or imagine. Disciples who work together, in the wisdom and grace and diligence and creativity and truth and perseverance of Jesus.

For me, the quotes below capture these ideas. They inspire me. May they provoke you as well. 

Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.  

~Saint Augustine

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.  

~Albert Schweitzer

The only way you can serve God is by serving other people.  

~Rick Warren

There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him. 

~Blaise Pascal

The first question which the priest and the Levite asked was:  "If I stop to help this man, what will happen to me?"  But... the good Samaritan reversed the question:  "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"  

~Martin Luther King, Jr.

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, "All right, then, have it your way."  

~C.S. Lewis

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.  

~Margaret Meade

Click here for more information about the neighborhood churches involved.

Take the Long View

It helps, now and then, to step back
and take the long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts,
it is beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of
the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.
Nothing we do is complete,
which is another way of saying
that the kingdom always lies beyond us.

No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.

This is what we are about:
We plant seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces effects beyond our capabilities.

We cannot do everything
and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something,
and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way,
an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results,
but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders,
ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Amen.


-A prayer of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was martyred in San Salvador in 1980

This quote was found on the justice blog for Trinity Grace Church in New York City. This church is doing some great work, an inspiration for what could happen in my city of Fort Wayne. These words of Oscar Romero add fuel to the fire for what I feel called to help create and accomplish. May his words add to your calling...

Neighborhood Churches & Great COMMUNITIES

Tonight we met at Grace Presbyterian Church with Megan Kelly of Great KIDS make Great COMMUNITIES. Megan presented an overview of the 40 Developmental Assets, particularly those that congregations can build into kids and youth. It was a lot of good information, a very empowering session. Our 46808 Neighborhood Churches want to make our neighborhood a better place to live - and building assets into children and teens is a key investment.

During Lent Anchor Community Church and other congregations in the neighborhood are meeting during four Sunday evenings to learn more about how to better serve our neighbors. Click here to read more about our meeting last week with Judge Charles Pratt and Kate Rusher. Click here to read more about our helpful meeting with Megan Kelly.

If you haven't read it already, here's an article on our meetings in the Journal Gazette called Lent in a New Light by Rosa Salter Rodriguez!

Neighborhood Churches & Subversion

The 46808 Neighborhood Churches met tonight at First Mennonite Church with Judge Charles Pratt. We're a collection of churches committed to making our neighborhood a better place to live. Through our collaboration we want to subvert the powers of injustice and despair.

This is long-term work, but it's Jesus-work, and that's what we're all about. Coming alongside children and families and neighbors and meeting them in their world, offering a hand and heart and a way forward - that's what we're working to do.

Read more about our plotting at the Anchorblog.

American Activism

I subscribe to the investigative journal Mother Jones. They sent me a survey the other day. One of the questions wanted to know the following about me:

In the last year, have you...
o voted in a Federal, State, or Local election?
o taken part in some local civic issue?
o actively worked as a volunteer for a nonprofit organization?
o written a letter to the editor?
o spoken at a public meeting?
o actively worked for a political party or candidate?

The question made me reflective of my participation in civic society as an American and as a Christian. I've voted and I volunteer, but I haven't taken part in a local civic issue, nor written a letter to the editor (I almost did two years ago...), nor spoken in a public meeting or actively worked for a political party or candidate. If I'm not very active in civic life, does that make me a leech?

The oft quoted tag-line for Mother Jones is, "It's worse than you think." The investigative journalism reveals the corruption and failures of government, business, civic and religious institutions and individuals. I can't read the magazine before I go to bed, otherwise I won't be able to fall asleep. I carefully choose when I'll read the magazine so that I have the emotional energy to react to the articles. Anger and frustration rise up in me as the stories unfold of the stupidity and cruelty that often mark the leaders and institutions of our nation.

What to do with that anger and frustration? Rant and rave? Despair and whine? Or fuel convictions with wisdom and action? And this is why I was affected by the series of questions about my activism as a citizen. It gave me a series of choices, ways to serve and channel my anger into constructive action. But it also revealed my lack of participation in American civic life.

There's obviously lots of anger in the air towards the state of affairs in America. Rage against government inefficiencies, bureaucratic sludge, corporate vampirism, and religious ridiculousness. But all of those institutions we are angry with are made up of fellow American citizens. We end up being frustrated at the system and at people - and maybe even with ourselves. And then we are torn between feeling helpless and wanting someone to come and rescue us and fix the problems.

Instead of waiting or wailing or whining, I must get more involved in civic life. Not from a posture of arrogance or anger, but as a neighbor. A neighbor who links up with others - others in need, others who are like-minded, others who have gifts to give, others who are different. A neighbor who gets involved in the complicated, messy, enduring stuff of community-life.

Revolutionary Christianity

In seeking to minister in the Same Spirit of Jesus in the real world of our culture and city, I'm finding the writings of Jacques Ellul to be very formative and disturbing. Who do you know that is content with life as it is? But could our life be any different? How could it be better? And in what way is the Church a part of that change, that revolution?

When Ellul talks about revolution, he is probing to uncover the subversive nature of the Gospel of Jesus. He discusses the nature of revolution, the necessity of revolution, and what it would like like to emerge in our life. It's not a wild-eyed rant by a crazy discontent. It's the deeply reflective ideas of a man who keenly sees life as it is, and proposes ideas on how a man or woman could live amidst the tension of living in the real world and following Jesus.

Out of all the quotes in the chapter that I highlighted and commented on, here's one that asked haunting question to me:

The revolutionary position is quite different. But we still have to ascertain what it is, for it cannot be merely the affirmation of "truth" or of "liberty," or the affirmation of a new political doctrine: a revolutionary position is totalitarian.

Now we ought to realize that if this revolution does not take place, we are done for, and human civilization as a whole is impossible. At the present moment (1967, and 2010) we are confronted by a choice: either a mass civilization, technological, "conformist" - the "Brave New World" of Huxley, hell organized upon earth for the bodily comfort of everybody - or a different civilization, which we cannot yet describe because we do not know what it will be; it still has to be created, consciously, by men.

If we do not know what to choose, or, in other words, how to "make a revolution," if we let ourselves drift along the stream of history, without knowing it, we shall have chosen the power of suicide, which is at the heart of the world.

But we cannot have many illusions; confronted by the power of organization, our revolutionary knowledge can scarcely be used. On the other hand, where are the men and women, at the present time, who have a true sense of "revolution"?
~ Jacques Ellul, "Revolutionary Christianity", The Presence of the Kingdom, pg 30-31

Forgive Us Our Debts

Religion Dispatches had this biting and passionate article on why we ought to oppose the debt-driven crimes of our era, A Matter of Life and Debt: The Role of Religion.

Here's the paragraph that was illuminating to me - and disturbing.

Question: All right. But aren’t these weighty systemic questions better left to experts and economists? We religious folk have a lot of other issues to worry about—issues that we are more competent to address.

Answer: Actually, just about all of the issues that we religious folk insist we really care about—issues like world poverty and hunger, resource wars and environmental degradation, human trafficking, widening domestic inequality, shrinking access to quality higher education, declining on-time graduation rates for low-income students and students of color, urban neighborhood blight, stress-related health problems, declining family life and domestic violence—are directly related to systemic debt oppression.

If the most urgent moral question of the 20th century was the question of color line, perhaps an equally urgent moral question for the 21st century is the debt line—a line not at all unrelated to ongoing race-based oppression.

What can a local church do in light of such global and insidious financial sins?

An immediate beginning is to live out the heart and mind of the early church that we read about in Acts 2 and Acts 4. When someone who is part of the church community has a need, work is done to meet that need. Stuff gets sold, connections get made, help is given to meet that need. The bigger the need, the bigger the sacrifice. But after awhile this kind of activity will force the local church to say: instead of treating the symptoms, how can we bring healing to the sickness?

If Anchor is committed to the long-term work of helping make our neighborhood a better place to live, we have much to learn. Our collaboration with others like NeighborLink and Fort Wayne Fatherhood Coalition and Lutheran Social Services and Associated Churches of Fort Wayne and Allen County, and other churches like Grace Presbyterian and First Mennonite and others are all part of this work.

But we still, at some point, have to prophetically address those institutions in our city that propagate the insidious financial sins that undermine our neighborhoods.

Jesus in Fort Wayne

It seemed appropriate to join in only a few weeks before the Christmas season on a gathering called Incarnate.  Thanks to Andrew Hoffman of NeighborLink Fort Wayne for his involvement in making this event happen. What's the best gift that Christians could give our city this Advent? A Jesus that makes a difference.

Incarnate, made flesh - Christians believe that Jesus is God Incarnate; Emmanuel - God with us. Christians also believe that the Church is Jesus Incarnate. It's vital that each local church is serving it's neighborhood, is loving one another, is living in truth and grace - all in the name of Jesus. It's a breath of Heaven when these local churches collaborate together to seek the peace of the city, to be a blessing to the community.

That's what NeighborLink is all about. It's what Anchor is all about. And having spent Friday at the gathering labeled Incarnate, there are lots of local churches, ministry leaders, non-profits, and individuals who are all about living according to the Same Spirit of Jesus. The Incarnate event was a great opportunity to start new relationships, strengthen the bonds of already forged friendships, and soak up the air of building momentum. It is invigorating to see these like-hearted people brought together.

Of course it's always easy to pronounce good intentions. Talk is cheap. And yet words and promises and meetings matter. Covenants are born out of spoken agreements. The collective enthusiasm for a missional life must be expressed in action, or else it will wither. Time will tell which of the individuals and organizations are able to live out this covenant. God has called us in Fort Wayne - he has blessed us, he is making us a blessing, and if we are willing he will bless the world through us.

We can't predict or control what the outcomes of this service to our neighbors will produce. We have to trust that doing the next right thing will contribute to a day when everything is made all right. The vision is not so much for an end product, but rather for the day to day decisions that lead to Jesus Incarnate.

At the Incarnate gathering, my resolve was strengthened to continue the journey Anchor is on. God is doing some amazing work in Anchor and through Anchor. Makes me very grateful. What makes it so thrilling is to be doing this work in collaboration with so many people and organizations. And it's so fun to continue meeting more people with a similar heart and spirit. The Same Spirit of Jesus is driving all sorts of men and women to do great work where they live - and to come together to do more together than they can do all alone, doing more to make things all right.

Some day God will make everything all right. It won't be in our lifetime. But it is deeply fulfilling to be part of a grand work that will outlast us. Well, actually, it won't outlast us... thanks to the resurrection!

How Do You Make Your Neighborhood A Better Place to Live?

This is the question that I keep asking for Anchor.

I keep asking it because there is no one simplistic answer. And because we don't have enough answers yet. But here's my best answer so far: Be The Church.

Why ask that question at all? Isn't there a better question for Anchor as a church to be asking? Maybe there are. Here's my point of conviction, though: when Jesus introduces his ministry, he announces that his work will be good news for the downtrodden, the prisoners, the disabled and diseased, the weak and powerless. These were the people of his neighborhood, and Jesus was the good news. 

So, fast-forward to these days: if we are the hands and feet of Jesus, and we are to be good news to our neighbors, how do you measure that in the community? Even though our congregation comes together from all over the city, we gather together in a particular neighborhood week after week after week after week. If we are good news, are we ever good news to the neighborhood we spend all that time in worshipping? And if worshipping and serving are two actions tied together, then is there a connection between our gathering in a neighborhood and our giving to it.

So what is it about being the church that makes the neighborhood a better place to live? That's what we're working to figure out. It's what we've been working on since day one. And the journey has taken us to develop a relationship with Judge Charles Pratt and the Family Court Division. Our neighborhood has many families wrapped up in the world of the courts and prison. So if we are going to be good news to them, we need to better understand what they are going through, and how we can be helpful.

Prior to the relationship with the judge, Anchor has been developing strong relationships with our neighborhood churches. This has proven to be a fun and enriching experience, fruitful and innovative. And because of that existing partnership, we were ready to join in on an opportunity presented to us by Judge Pratt. The Indiana Youth Institute wanted to re-establish a Fatherhood Coalition in Fort Wayne, and that meant making $160,000 available to institutions willing to come together and make it a reality. Two of our neighborhood churches have partnered with the YMCA - SOCAP, along with some other city non-profits and churches to serve and strengthen fathers in the city.

The National Fatherhood Initiative is a movement to mentor and lift up dads in need of wisdom and encouragement. And according to Judge Pratt, better dads would make a big difference in the families he sees in his courts, the same families that are in Anchor's neighborhood. And so, if Anchor is going to be good news to our neighbors, we need to keep partnering with others to lift up dads. This is part of what it means for the church to help make the neighborhood a better place to live. 

The Fort Wayne Fatherhood Coalition was approved to receive the grant from IYI, and so now begins a six-month project to invest in dads. If we are successful in meeting our goals, IYI is eager to fund our coalition again, as well as helping us improve and expand our services to fathers in Fort Wayne. Because of the grant we received, we will be able to hire a very skilled grant writer and program director for our project. This move strengthens our ability to provide long-term, innovative, and effective ministry to dads in our neighborhood.

Anchor is eager to serve the dads in our own congregation, in our neighborhood, and in our city. We're eager to partner with more churches and more organizations to encourage and train dads to be grow up and step up. And we're excited for where the Spirit is taking our neighborhood churches. It's a journey that will be a good gift to dads, a journey that will be a good gift to families in our neighborhood, and a journey that will give us more opportunities to not only share the good news, but to be be the good news.

If you'd like to be good news, you're welcome to join us!

More Plotting: Church, Community, and the Court System

Our neighborhood churches spent four Sunday nights during Lent gathering to learn more about how the court system works in our county. I still marvel at the willingness of our churches to meet and partner and collaborate and plot. And I'm thankful for the willingness of Judge Charles Pratt and his friends to invest in us, to encourage us, and to guide us in this new journey.

Our fourth Sunday was spent at Grace Presbyterian Church, and the goal was to put forth some action-items. With what we learned about the Family Court Division, we wanted to know: what now? Judge Pratt encouraged the church members to consider these options for volunteering and making a difference:
* partner with the YWCA and help care for women who are victims of domestic abuse
* get the training to become a foster-parent; also - consider adopting foster-children
* join CASA - child appointed special advocate
* help families get counseling from a Biblical, Christian perspective
* incorporate the 40 assets in the congregation

Some of the neighborhood pastors met this morning to keep the momentum going and discuss what's next for us. It was important for us to hear from each other what we wanted to do next. We charted out a process for points of contact - what is our plan for when different individuals and families reach out to us for help regardless of where they are at in their involvement with the courts and prisons. We highlighted what programs or actions are already being implemented or supported, but we also noted some new areas to investigate. It was really helpful to chart out where in the process we have much to offer, and where we need to improve.

There's definitely a strong sense that we are part of a God-thing here. Jesus, when he announced his arrival, read from the prophet Isaiah, announcing that the good news would, amongst other things, help set the prisoners free. This is what we are about - our neighborhood has many individuals and families who need the good news, who need deliverance, who need community, who need help breaking free from the prison-industrial complex. The whole gospel for the whole person. If we're part of the neighborhood, and we're going to be good news, then we have to bring light and hope to those walking in the dark.

Ministerial Leadership for a Missionary Congregation

New challenges for the church require new responses in regard for leadership and ministry. For our neighborhood churches that minister in our urban context, we face new challenges to our leadership and congregational life.

Is the church facility like an island in the midst of blight and secularism? Or is the church facility a wide and deep harbor, willing and able to accept many different kinds of individuals and families?

Is the congregation afraid of its neighbors? Or is the congregation becoming neighbors with a towel over their arm?

Are leaders of these neighborhood churches demoralized and visionless about ministry? Or are these church leaders confident in the gospel and God's work to restore all things to him through our work - his way, in his time, in his power?

Lesslie Newbigin charts out in chapter 19 of The Gospel in a Pluralist Society a way for leaders of churches to rethink what it means to be a missionary leader in their neighborhoods. The wisdom of this chapter energizes me, provides enlightened direction, and provides a sense of calm about the work ahead of us.

You ought to purchase the book, if you haven't already. And you ought to read this chapter (and reread this chapter if it's been awhile). Below are some portions of the chapter that were both convicting and inspiring to me.

If I am right in believing, as I do, that the only effective [interpretation] of the gospel is the life of the congregation which believes it, one has to ask about how such congregations may be helped to become what they are called to be.

I have already said that I believe that the major impact of such congregations on the life of a society as a whole is through the daily work of the members in their secular vocations and not through the official pronouncements of ecclesiastical  bodies. But the developing, nourishing, and sustaining of Christian faith and practice is impossible apart from the life of a believing congregation. It is therefore important... to consider... the question of leadership for such congregations.

The business of leadership is precisely to enable, encourage, and sustain the activity of all the members.

What kind of ministerial leadership will nourish the Church in its faithfulness to the gospel in a pluralist society?

We have lived for so many centuries in the "Christendom" situation that ministerial training is almost entirely conceived in terms of pastoral care of existing congregations. In a situation of declining numbers, the policy has been to abandon areas (such as the inner cities) where active Christians are few and to concentrate ministerial resources by merging congregations and deploying ministers in the places where there are enough Christians to support them. 

Needless to say, this simply accelerates the decline. It is the opposite of a missionary strategy, which would proceed in the opposite direction - deploying ministers in the areas where the Christian presence is the weakest. The large-scale abandonment of the inner cities by the "mainline" churches is the most obvious evidence of the policy that has been pursued.

If the gospel is the good news of the reign of God over the whole of life, public no less than private; if the Church is therefore called to address the whole public life of the community as well as the personal lives of men and women in the private and domestic affairs, what kind of ministerial leadership is needed?

The vision of the church as a body which exists for the neighborhood and not just for its members, as the sign of God's rule over all, is much harder to sustain.

Is it the primary business of the ordained minister to look after the spiritual needs of the church members? Is it to represent God's kingdom to the whole community? Or, and this is surely the true answer - is it to lead the whole congregation as God's [message] to the whole community?

The task of ministry is to lead the congregation as a whole in a mission to the community as a whole, to claim its whole public life, as well as the personal lives of all its people, for God's rule.
* It means equipping all the members of the congregation to understand and fulfill their several roles in this mission through their faithfulness in their daily work.
* It means training and equipping them to be active followers of Jesus in his assault on the principalities and powers which he disarmed on his cross.
* And it means sustaining them in bearing the cost of that warfare.

What, then, will be the relation of the minister to this community? I have used such words as "enabling,""sustaining," and "nourishing" to describe his role in mobilizing the congregation for its mission. But how shall this be done?

Ministerial leadership for a missionary congregation will require that the minister is directly engaged in the warfare of the kingdom against the powers which usurp the kingship. Of course the minister cannot be directly involved in each of the specific areas of secular life in which the members of the congregation have to fight their battles. But there will be situations where the minister must represent the whole Church in challenging abuse of power, corruption, and selfishness in public life and take the blows that follow.

The minister's leadership of the congregation in its mission to the world will be first and foremost in the area of his or her own discipleship, in that life of prayer and daily consecration which remains hidden from the world but which is the place where the essential battles are either won or lost.

He is not to look around to see who else is following. He is to look one way only - to the Master who goes before him. Ministerial leadership is, first and finally, discipleship.

More: Church, Community, and the Court System

This past Sunday night Anchor hosted the neighborhood churches, our third gathering during Lent to learn more about the court system of Allen County. Of course we started off the evening with a wide-array of homemade soups and other delish dishes. After feasting we headed upstairs for a session on the adult court system.

Stan Pflueger crammed a semesters' worth of criminal justice stuff into a seventy-five minute meeting. As the presentation got under way, I was a little nervous - what if the content gets a little boring? But when we hit the sixty-five minute mark it was obvious that just about everybody was intensely interested in the information.

I still marvel that about seventy or eighty people from the neighborhood churches gathered for a crash course in criminal justice stuff on a Sunday night. And liked it!

Some conclusions from the session with Stan: putting people in prison is punitive and expensive. It is crazy insane the system we put up with that sends people to jail as the primary punishment for committing a crime. I'm all for justice being served to criminals - but for most of them, prison is not about justice, but convenience.

It costs taxpayers about $55 a day for each inmate in prison, about $40 a day for each inmate in jail, and about $15 a day for each person involved with community corrections. Once a person is sent to prison, odds are they will return there upon their release. While in prison they are "hardened", they are further disconnected from participating in a healthy way within society, they are unable to work (or get work when they get out...), and thus instead of paying taxes and learning to contribute, they absorb tax dollars and remain unchanged..

What if we could reimagine a way to apply justice to crimes, justice that didn't require prisons as the primary strategy. Sure, some people need to be imprisoned, but not most.

Here's a very interesting takeaway from the last three meetings (dealing with kids, youth, and adults in the court system): positive relationships are the KEY to really helping people change their life. If the church wanted to make a difference in the lives of families who are wrapped up in the court and prison system, consider how to offer a community that loves.

This isn't a new or novel idea, but apparently it is often overlooked, it is more effective than assumed, and harder to do than imagined. Friendship, mentoring, hospitality, kindness, neighborliness, community are KEY factors for instigating and sustaining transformation.

This doesn't necessarily require a church to start a new program! Whew! It basically requires a church to...wait...wait...ready for this? It requires a church to be an accepting community! And it also requires mature Christians (character, consistency, love, wisdom) to volunteer in programs initiated by the courts and prisons! It also requires Christians to volunteer in organizations that partner with jails and community correction institutions. But it doesn't mean a church has to start a new small group, a new Bible study, a new series of classes.

Relationships: Connecting. Empowering. Listening. Being Present. Accepting. Inspiring. Praying.

We all know that Jesus Christ is the one with the power, the ability, the capability to change lives. And we also know that we are the hands and feet of Christ - we are the ones that Christ works through to change lives. We don't change lives, Jesus does that - but he works through our lives, our words, our actions, our decisions, our character, our consistency, our love, our wisdom.

If we want to make our neighborhood a better place to live, we need to keep letting Jesus work in us and through us - in this case, in the lives of families who are part of the courts and prisons. Individuals and families who are part of our neighborhood.... who are part of our church.


** This is info sent by Stan Pflueger via email of some info he presented Sunday Evening.

1. What percentage of the offenders sent to prison return to the community?

95%


2. What Country in the world has the highest documented rate of incarceration?

United States (751/100,000)
Russia is second (627/100,000).

The median incarceration rate for all nations is 125/100,000.
Other nations: England (151/100,000), Germany (88/100,000) and Japan (63/100,000)


3. How many people in the United States are currently incarcerated in local jails and prisons?

Approximately 2.4 Million


4. How much does it cost for an individual to be:
in prison ($55.00/day or 20,000 per year)
in jail ($40.00/day or 14,600/year)
on community supervision ($15.00/per day, most of which is paid by the offender)


5. What percentage of individuals who go to prison are re-arrested within 3 years of their release?

67%


6. If an offender is sentenced to a ten-year prison sentence, how much time are they likely to serve in Indiana?

A maximum of five years is likely with good time credit, and the time in prison could be adjusted down even more if the offender completes programs in prison like substance abuse, GED and others.

The Suburban Captivity of the Churches - 7

The central concern is ministry and mission: in metropolitan terms today, this means participation in the whole and breaking through the mosaic of insulated enclaves which shatter the public life of the metropolis. This is the only valid criterion for testing any reformation in Protestantism; its formative power will be tested by its assumption of responsibility for the whole.

Church planning, which has emerged in recent decades as a way of allocating new missions in efficient and co-operative ways, has been extremely useful as far as it has gone. Unfortunately, church planning has been preoccupied with extending the organization church in suburban and satellite areas.

Church planning, however, will fulfill its promise only when it regards participation in the whole metropolitan area as its essential principle, its first task is the breakthrough of insulated enclaves within Protestant religious life.

The metropolis is a mission field not because there are unchurched people but because there is no public ministry. By treating the metropolis as a Christian culture in need of supplementary church construction on the periphery, we are seeking to escape from the missionary task.

Missionary strategy must concern itself with the whole. In other other way can it adequately express the Gospel of God's reconciling work for man.

This analysis has offered up incontrovertible evidence that the metropolis is a religiously broken, fragmented cluster of insular pockets estranged from one another. Its religious life is split through the middle by the schism - a truly satanic division - and its religious organization upholds social class identities rather than the universal identity of those who are interdependent in Christ.

We have, in fact, the strategy of an established church in a missionary situation.

The church proclaims a universal identity largely by involving its membership in experiences of obligation toward other people in the congregation. For many people today, church membership means the opportunity to see the same people they meet at Kiwanis or the country club.

The church will guide the metropolitan community toward the meaning of community when church members transcend the social, racial, and economic barriers that inhibit communication.

These members may represent different local fellowships, since housing in the metropolis is more and more confined in particular neighborhoods to single social class levels, and no local fellowship can be all-inclusive. Their church membership, nevertheless, will be proof of their determination to disregard social barriers; it will mean willingness to assume responsibility for financial and personal ministry in areas of radically different social and cultural background.

The church communicates essentially by what it is rather than what it says.

The Church speaks, as does Her Lord, from the reality of Her life rather than the imagination of Her heart.

~ The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, Gibson Winter, 1962, Chapter 7 "The Renewal of the Metropolis", pgs 202-204

The Suburban Captivity of the Churches - 6

The renewal of public responsibility and the creation of metropolitan community are two sides of the same coin. Each is essential to the other.

When the churches suffered a breakdown of community as Christian people, the metropolitan area was deprived of the sustaining power of a faith that embraced the concerns of the whole. The collapse of the public sphere was almost inevitable without a community to represent the whole, for the free play of economic interests fragmented the metropolis, and no countervailing power represented the common good.

What are these issues and problems?

1) Slums are growing and they are increasingly the habitat of minority groups who are isolated and discriminated against, both in terms of housing and in terms of economic opportunities.

2) Social tensions are reaching the explosive states and we continue, doggedly, to ignore causes in favor of treating the results (e.g., juvenille delinquency).

3) Social and political communication is almost at a standstill as the idea of responsibility is lost midst the welter of consumer -oriented propaganda.

4) The concentration of urban populations is raising sever problems of water supply and disposal of wastes.

5) Open spaces are increasingly difficult to preserve, and the implications of this for food supply, standards (material) of living, economics of land development, and aesthetics are keeping many people awake at nights.

There is a grim physical reality to the metropolis. From time to time we make pitiful token gestures toward its "problems." But no one guides us toward a meaning of community which comprehends more than profit taking and congeniality. Will the Church fill this emptiness in our society?

To provide guidance toward metropolitan community the Church can:

1) affirm community by forming a ministry to the whole metropolis.

2) offer a vision and experience of metropolitan community by exemplifying a community.

3) inform the metropolitan struggle for community with its own prophetic concern for the common good of the metropolitan area.

The deformation of Protestantism came about by the severing of its ministry from participation in the whole of metropolitan life; the reformation of Protestantism will come about through the participation of its ministry in the whole and representation of the whole community in the communities of Protestant faith.

The renewal in Protestantism will be tested by the extent of its formative power - whether it can generate inclusive ministries to the whole metropolis. Many pastors and laymen are ready to participate in the whole life of the metropolitan area. Having tasted the emptiness of an insular congregation, they are searching for opportunities to share responsibility with other pastors and congregations.

~ The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, Gibson Winter, 1962, Chapter 7 "The Renewal of the Metropolis", pgs 200-201

The Suburban Captivity of the Churches - 5

The signs of renewal in Protestantism are striking.

The insights of developmental psychology and group processes are being successfully applied to the teaching task of the Church. Pastoral care has benefited from the perspective of depth psychology, enabling churches to respond magnificently to the infinite problems created by industrial development.

The most striking fact about contemporary Protestantism is the re-emergence of lay responsibility. The lay movement is a strong attempt to counteract the shallow activism of the organization church and to search for meaning and direction in a mass society. Many clergy have shied away from this lay movement for fear that it would disrupt the smooth pattern of church life, but those who have nurtured it have found new support for their ministries in sharing their task with laymen.

Two other signs of renewal can be noted in Protestant life. New ministries to the nonresidential structures of society are emerging: ministries to hospitals, universities, industries, and, more recently, to political organizations; furthermore, a ministry to the communal organizations of the cities has appeared in the form of church planning.

The significance of these ministries, at present, is their concern with the structural problems of a mass society. Their potential power for renewal is considerable, since they signify the formation of a public ministry.

The organization of faith expresses or denies the Word to the world. When it expresses the Word, it channels the ministry into mission and servantship.

Renewal of mind is essential to the creation of a ministry to the whole metropolis; renewal of mind through the Spirit is the essence of life in the churches and ministry is the vehicle of that life in the world.

When the forces of renewal now present in the churches begin to shape the ministry, Protestantism will become the central force for renewal in metropolitan life.

~ The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, Gibson Winter, 1962, Chapter 7 "The Renewal of the Metropolis", pgs 198-200

The Suburban Captivity of the Churches - 4

The deformation of the ministry is a religious symptom of the sickness of industrial society.

Many successful pastorates exist under these circumstances, many faithful and devoted lives emerge from them; but the saints of the organization church are apt to appear despite the program rather than because of it.

Notwithstanding the piety of individual pastors and laymen, Protestantism as a whole was vulnerable to the centrifugal forces of metropolitan life. The emphasis on voluntary congregations and individual piety made Protestantism a prey to the distorting forces.

Each new stage of metropolitan disorder will manifest itself within religious institutions unless the churches assume a formative role in their ministry to the metropolis.

This analysis of Protestantism could be summarized as a loss of contact between the churches and the community as a whole.

The choice confronting the churches today is whether to continue ministering to fragments of society or to reform their ministry in order to participate in the whole of life of the metropolis.

It is a difficult choice, since the losses will be great in either direction; ministry to parts means continued frustration and the neglect of the genuinely religious concerns; participation in the whole means organizing a new form of the Protestant ministry.

~ The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, Gibson Winter, 1962, Chapter 7 "The Renewal of the Metropolis", pgs 196-197

The Suburban Captivity of the Churches - 3

Industrial life drives the lower classes into apathy, making them a prey to psychosis and religious escape; competition on the economic ladder drives the middle classes into frenetic attempts to demonstrate their adequacy, which leads to despairing emptiness.

The apathy of the lower classes renders them inaccessible to the ministries of organization churches, for the manipulation of words and people in the organization churches is alien to lower-class life.

This organizational style of religious life, on the other hand, is deadeningly familiar to the manipulated middle classes. Thus, the cleavage within industrial society is mirrored in the styles of Protestant religious life.

Pastors experience the deformation of religious life most acutely in their sense of alienation from the significant spheres of contemporary life. Their ministries certainly touch the sufferings of private life - illness, death, familial estrangement - but they seldom intersect with the collective structures that shape the lives of their congregations.

The pastor runs an ambulance service, so to speak - an important and indispensable aspect of the Church's ministry; but his services in this respect are performed without ever contacting the powers that shape the destiny of the metropolis and the world.

Religion is now relegated to the sphere of personal emotional adjustment.

~ The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, Gibson Winter, 1962, Chapter 7 "The Renewal of the Metropolis", pgs 195-196

The Suburban Captivity of the Churches - 2

This preoccupation with [the role of churches in the renewal of the metropolis] arises... because of the seeming helplessness before the forces of metropolitan blight.

The churches are essential at this juncture in metropolitan development, for they can best represent the interests of the whole in the midst of conflicting economic interests, and can speak out most strongly for life and human values. The churches will fail to bring about a renewal of the metropolis, however, unless they first put their own house in order.

We have been concerned with the renewal of human life in the metropolis - the struggle of the immigrants and newcomers, the alienation of the Negro population, and the frantic search for traditions and security among the middle classes. Such concerns may seem nonreligious or irrelevant to the main stream of American Protestantism, which holds the object of religious concern to the individual piety and spirituality. This religious tradition assumes that preaching the Gospel leads directly to the reconciliation of society; the Church's work, therefore, is to spread the Gospel and let social problems take care of themselves.

The only answer to this pietistic tradition is that the Gospel embraces the whole of human life and society. Man's life in society is an interdependent web. Personal immorality is no more nor less accessible to spiritual renewal than racial discrimination in housing.

A narrow spirituality refuses to recognize the interdependence and wholeness of life; its concern rejects involvement, and its preoccupation with individual piety derives from the false assumption that the individual soul is more open to change than the social institutions.

~ The Suburban Captivity of the Churches, Gibson Winter, 1962, Chapter 7 "The Renewal of the Metropolis", pgs 192-193