In my last post I began a "how to" list of sorts for churches seeking to make a real difference among the "urban poor" and in addressing the challenges of urban life in a city like Dallas, Texas.
My list continues here:
3) Re-think, in a comprehensive manner, the annual church operating budget with a view to the inner city and its residents who live in poverty.
This is a tough one, testing the authenticity of a congregation's resolve and actual commitment to answering the question, "How can we help?" in a serious way.
No disrespect intended--and remember, I served as a senior pastor for almost 25 years--but, churches tend to serve themselves. Many a preacher has counseled his or her congregation to do an assessment of personal priorities and commitments by looking at checkbook ledgers.
What is good advice for individual members of faith communities is excellent advice for congregational decision makers. Take a hard look at your church's annual financial plans. Who benefits most from the story of the numbers? What are the percentages?
Here's a hard one: compare the funds earmarked for facilities and those set aside for action among the poor.
How about a similar comparison between adult education or discipleship training and a commitment to overcoming poverty in the city? I ask that question based on my assumption that most adult members of congregations already know and understand more about what should be done as a person of faith than is actually being done!
Take a long, hard, honest look at your congregation's financial plan.
4) Teach your children and the children of your church the truth about poverty.
Among the many reasons why I admire Edd Eason, my longtime friend and former associate in ministry at a church, is the fact that he always found a way to teach the kids in his youth ministry about the church's responsibility to address and even attack poverty and its causes. No young person could pass through Edd's program and not understand the love of fellowship or the importance of living just and compassionate lives in this world.
Take a long, hard, honest look at what Sunday School or faith education conveys to the next generations. The concerns related to poverty and injustice are so much a part of the historic story of Judaism and Christianity that a curriculum ignoring these fundamental truths of the faith should be discarded and quickly.
5) Don't allow your understanding of "personal salvation" to let you off the city's hook.
Can I be blunt? The church spends so much time talking about, worrying about and preparing for the end of things that it gets confused in this "in between" time.
This reality cuts in lots of directions.
For some faith communities this issue is about all that matters. But, not the ones who call me trying to figure out how to help the city.
Still, there is a tendency to so emphasize personal salvation that the pain and oppression of the here and now of life takes a secondary seat in the church's response to the world.
Sometimes I have the feeling that church folks hide behind their salvation so as not to have to face the reality of the world. Believers who are Christians need to step out from behind the Cross and engage the world in all of its pain and difficulty as did the One whom they claim to follow.
A wise man once said, "There is no way to heaven except through the earth."
More to come. . .
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