Uncommon Church

Community Transformation for the Common Good

Alvin Sanders

• Publisher: IVP
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780830841622
• eBook ISBN: 9780830841639
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

How can the people of God develop churches in ways that help and don't hurt poor neighborhoods? In urban ministry, Christians too often treat the poor as goodwill projects instead of people. Because of this mindset, many remain unchurched. Healthy, local, urban churches are needed because they combine personal empowerment and community transformation.

Every poor neighborhood needs uncommon churches that will seek the common good of their communities. Alvin Sanders engages hard truths about these neighborhoods and provides a model for how to do ministry in difficult conditions. The local, urban church is the key to community transformation, as it plays three crucial roles of empowering, partnering, and reaching.

Pastors and church planters interested in Christian community development will find here practical insights into the power of the local church, which is often underrated. Churches can serve their communities and improve the quality of life of every facet of the neighborhood.

Show me a hero, and I’ll write you a tragedy.

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

SHOW ME A HERO by Lisa Belkin highlights a low-income housing fight in Yonkers, New York, during the 1980s not unlike conflicts that continue to happen throughout the nation. Yonkers, like many cities, was racially segregated, and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the federal government teamed up to try to bring change. Together they filed a lawsuit against Yonkers with the goal of integrating the city’s institutions, such as the housing system, and they won a court order that the city desegregate.

Yonkers had followed the pattern of many cities, limiting public housing to a small section of the city, resulting in the isolation of its poor residents. Those who benefited from this illegal practice decided not to let four decades of segregation go quietly into the night; they fought the court order fiercely. When the inevitable happened and low-income housing was built on the historically white side of town, ugliness ensued, reminiscent of the civil rights clashes of the 1960s.

The hero of this story is the young mayor, Nick Wasicsko, who at twenty-eight became a rising star when he unexpectedly won the mayoral race in the middle of the conflict. The campaign promise that swept him to victory was his pledge to appeal the desegregation order. When he came into office in 1987, promising to fight the housing mandate, he realized there was no way to keep his campaign promise, and he became an advocate of integrated housing. The decision was somewhere between a political expediency—the city budget was going to crash if he didn’t go along with the order—and an authentic change of heart.

Predictably, there were dire consequences. Wasicsko was bullied and threatened, and he was eventually voted out. He bounced back and returned as a councilman in the 1990s, but he killed himself in 1993 at the age of thirty-four.

Is advocacy a vicious cycle that dooms a person in the end? It certainly can seem that way. In 2020 we’re still fighting battles concerning fair housing. As people of God who have an eternal perspective, we definitely should play a role in helping to solve justice issues such as these.

You may not have heard the name Howard Thurman before, yet if you haven’t, I would bet you unknowingly know of his work. He was called Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal theologian, as Dr. King based much of his work in Thurman’s teachings. Thurman’s most famous work was a book titled Jesus and the Disinherited. If you have never read it, I highly encourage you to do so.

Oftentimes this work is situated in liberation theology, yet I don’t agree. Although we can sift elements of that genre from its pages, I would categorize his insights more in the realm of providing a spirituality that is liberating. He says repeatedly in the book that he is exploring “what the teachings of Jesus have to say to those who stand at a moment in history with their backs against the wall . . . the poor, the disinherited, the dispossessed.”

In other words, he imagined how people on the margins of society could remain human despite the “three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited”—fear, hypocrisy, and hatred. His advice was to abandon the pursuit of these things as answers to their situation and honor God. In the chapter titled “Jesus—An Interpretation” he frames holiness as the key to survival:

In the midst of this psychological climate Jesus began his teaching and his ministry. His words were directed to the House of Israel, a minority within the Greco-Roman world, smarting under the loss of status, freedom, and autonomy, haunted by the dream of the restoration of a lost glory and a former greatness. His message focused on the urgency of a radical change in the inner attitude of the people. . . . Again and again he came back to the inner life of the individual. With increasing insight and startling accuracy he placed his finger on the “inward center” as the crucial arena where the issues would determine the destiny of his people.1

Thurman clearly believed that a mindset followed by behaviors that demonstrated being people of God was critical. However, there is more to the story. If we look at the original 1935 essay “Good News for the Underprivileged” on which the book was based, he makes it clear that the disinherited being the people of God goes beyond just personal salvation. He stresses a transformation of society in order to move to a new day where the oppression ends.

THE CHURCH NEEDS WILLING WORKERS

I hope to stand on the shoulders of Thurman. This book is for people who believe in the power of the local church to make a difference in the lives of the urban poor. Many who fight for justice for the poor come from Christian backgrounds. However, the American church has two main problems when it comes to addressing justice for the poor. The first is philosophical: too many Christians treat the poor as charitable goodwill projects instead of as people among whom the church can be God’s witnesses. Charity and witness are not mutually exclusive.

Poverty is a condition people live in that needs to be addressed from a godly perspective. In this book, we’ll engage hard truths about poor neighborhoods and explore pathways to ministry in those places.

Christ said, “I will build my church” (Matthew 16:18). He didn’t say he would build a food pantry, a tutoring program, or a community development enterprise. He added, “And the gates of Hades will not overcome it.” I am all for good works, but I believe the witness of the church is an undervalued and overlooked asset when it comes to urban poverty.

A healthy church is a holy place, because holiness lies at the heart of the Christian faith. The apostle Peter wrote, “It is written, ‘Be holy, because I am holy’” (1 Peter 1:16). We’re instructed to be like God—holy in everything we do. Holiness displays the character of God; it means being set apart for service to God. As we do this, we have the privilege of influencing situations for God’s glory. A key understanding that many miss when ministering to those who are marginalized is that holiness is the way to victory.

Many mistakenly think that the pursuit of holiness happens only on a personal level. But the church is also to pursue holiness socially through God-created institutions. This is where advocacy comes in. Social institutions are permanent and complicated structures formed to meet basic human needs. They are powerful, they endure for generations, and they influence many lives. The church is one of those institutions, sociologically speaking. Pursuing holiness on the institutional level means seeking the common good of a community.

What is the common good? It is the answer to two questions. What do those who have put their faith in Christ have in common with those who have not? And what can the local church do to make the world a better place for them? The local church ought to understand differences and act on commonalities. God wants all neighborhoods to flourish, and they can’t if institutions don’t function well.

The second problem—closely related to the first—is theological. Or more accurately, I should say a lack thereof. What I am about to write may trigger a “Boomer alert” moment, but hear me out. Besides, I am not of the Boomer generation but of Gen X—you know, the generation no one cares about! The point is I am old enough to detect a subtle shift.

When I started off in urban ministry in 1991, I believe a huge problem was many had good theology but didn’t live it out well among the urban poor. I’ve noticed we’ve come full circle. Today I see people doing a lot of advocacy in and for poor neighborhoods, but their actions have little to no theology behind them. When this is the case, the local church becomes an afterthought. If we say we are Christian, this cannot be. There is no way around the fact that the Bible makes it clear: the local church is the hope of the world, regardless of where it is located. I’ll state my case for this later in the book.

UNDERSTANDING THE HOOD

When academicians study institutional dysfunction, they flock to the hood. A hood, as I define it, is a place where a large percentage of the residents have inadequate financial resources. Traditionally the word hood referred to certain inner-city neighborhoods, but in today’s gentrifying world, a hood can also be in a suburb. Ironically the challenges in these neighborhoods mirror those in rural areas.

Hoods don’t just happen. Policies and practices make it tough for groups of people to leave their neighborhoods and/or to make them better. These policies and practices grow out of underlying issues of race and class. The sociological term for this is racialization.

A racialized society is a society wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships. It is one that allocates different economic, political, social, and psychological rewards to groups along racial lines.2 Typically when whites move out of a neighborhood at a high rate, so does access to financial resources and a good quality of life. The neighborhood is doomed to fail, mainly because it isn’t given a fair shake. The mostly black and brown people left behind are seen as projects rather than as people. And the prevailing thought is that if they would get their act together, they could escape that hellhole. People drive through such neighborhoods as quickly as possible, and they certainly don’t want to be caught there at night. Hoods are city or suburban quarantine areas for high poverty.

In April 2001 Timothy Thomas, a nineteen-year-o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Foreword by Efrem Smith
• Part 1: Uncommon Church
• Part 2: Seeking the Common Good
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• About World Impact
• Titles from CCDA
• Praise for Uncommon Church
• About the Author
• More Titles from InterVarsity Press
• Copyright