Hopeful Realism in Urban Ministry

Critical Explorations and Constructive Affirmations of Hoping Justice Prayerfully

Morris

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498221443
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Religion

What, pray tell, does a faithful urban ministry require if not a triadic relationship of prayer, justice, and hope? Could such a theologically conjunctive relationship of prayer, justice, and hope fortify urban ministry and challenge students and practitioners to ponder and practice beyond the box? Frequently, justice is collapsed to charity, hope into wishful thinking or temporarily arrested despair, and prayer a grasp at quick-fix interventions. An urban ministry's steadfast public and prophetic witness longs for the depth and width of this triad. Via three countries' decades of endeavors, one chapter brainstorms urban ministry practices while another's literature survey signals crucial convictions. Amid many, seminal theologians are summoned to ground urban ministry intimations and implications: Niebuhr on justice, Moltmann on hope, and Merton on contemplative prayer. Evident is passion that fuels compassion in the service of justice, hope that engages despair, and prayer that draws from the contemplative center of it all--thankful resources for long haul ministry. The triad presses to illumine a concrete ministry's engagement of relentless, forced option issues yet with significant networks resourcing. Contrast-awareness animates endurance. The summary exegetes the original grace-based serenity prayer. Hence, hope vitally balances realism's temptation to cynicism. Realism saves hope from irrelevancy.

Chapter 3—Urban Ministry Dynamics and Triad Intimations

We have for once learnt to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcast, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed, the reviled—in short from the perspective of those who suffer [. . .] neither bitterness nor envy should have gnawed at the heart during this time, that we should have come to look with new eyes at matters great and small, sorrow and joy, strength and weakness, that our perception of generosity, humanity, justice and mercy should have become clearer, freer, less corruptible.85

When I ponder ways and levels to depict ministry in the city, these prepositions assist. “In” the city implies being involved where a ministry resides and beyond—beyond the immediate address to the surrounding area, district, and even city-wide region. When an urban ministry engages issues that cannot be addressed and redressed merely within its limited sphere of influence, the wider framework of decision-making comes into play. “With” the city implies an embodied or incarnate sensitivity as to what a ministry can possibly engage by walking and struggling with the city’s ministry’s people and their concerns. The witness to and fostering of a community within urban environs burdened with dislocation or disconnection is an uppermost aim of most urban ministries. These burdens are more than a mere fragmentation of city life; dislocation and disconnection has political causes and economic and social consequences—widespread implications for addiction, for example.86 “To” the city implies a pastoral and chaplaincy posture, that of the proverbial summons, sympathetically and supportively to “speak the truth to those in power” on behalf of those for whom the chaplain is advocating. Finally, “against” or being “contra” the city may well arise when a ministry’s attention prophetically intuits the presence of the virtually demonic at work, when pressures and forces bear down upon a ministry and its care of people to the extent that it seems nigh impossible to cooperate lest the ministry starts or continues collaborating in an evil situation. All four of these modus operandi express themselves in a ministry’s presence, advocacy, prophecy, and prayers for deliverance or exorcism, as attested, by Harvey Cox’s Secular City and Religion in the City, Walter Wink’s trilogy on The Powers and, among others, Robert Linthicum’s City of God City of Satan. There is in the midst of the dynamic pressures of city life a relentless drama of good and evil with hope and despair. The challenges of urban ministry stretch and strain its practitioners to wonder what credo, what literary and vocational resources there are for a steadfast, faithful, public, prophetic, and personal witness.

In the Midst of Despair, Hope Intimated

For a concrete sense of urban ministry dynamics, there are a range of themes and responses that one’s own ministry undertakes, thinking of a typical day in a composite way. As urban ministry is a fluid and dynamic phenomena, a neat and complete definition is impossible – other than describing it generically as ministry in the city and given gentrification pressures, not merely the inner-city or urban core.87 However the following contributes particularly in terms of what urban ministries actually endeavour to practise, including the confessions of our sins. There could be more descriptive elaborations of actual urban ministries and, of course, the discipline terms of the triad employed. Here is a composite day in the life of the Longhouse Council of Native Ministry, offered while mindful of many other urban ministries as well.88 Each day signs the sighs of efforts made but no day exemplifies hopes fulfilled (other than briefly, partially and fragmentarily). Thus, there is emergency help to persons: from food to transportation, to use of the phone/bathroom, and ad hoc trips to the hospital, to detoxification, to funerals or cemeteries or, if available, “home.” There is a response to urgent requests: for a visit to the dying and/or space and help for a funeral or memorial. There is advocacy: for help in saving furniture for future needs when going into detoxification or the hospital. There are visits to a local hospice as well as regional hospitals. There are emails such as to emailaprisoner.com, or for the ministry’s seasonal newsletter or for the annual “Advent or Lent Vigils for the Silenced” in the central parts of the city. There are almost endless meetings such as for the monthly Building and Strategy Team of the Metro Vancouver Alliance (of which the Longhouse is a founder). There is the collegial network such as supper with a youth pastor regarding recovery from addictions. There is the hosting of community events such as a regular Tuesday morning “sharing circle” at the Longhouse Church (along with a neighboring school and a recovery-from-addictions First Nations organization). There is a response to a request to cite numbers for a forthcoming ministerial forum on common needs. There is the hosting and conducting of a mid-week Bible Study on the lectionary texts. There is an acceptance of donations of money and food for Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter dinners through the Longhouse. There is the dealing with volunteers to assist one of the live-in volunteers of the Longhouse. There are family communications with a son’s mother regarding her son’s well-being. There is the personal as forgoing an evening lecture on harm reduction in order to aim for some rest and recreation. There is study, other than sermon preparations and thesis work, to read for a monthly Karl Barth seminar and attend to relevant news or research reflections, especially on the raw, enduring realities of inequality.89 There are the endless concerns of follow-ups, such as verifying and communicating regarding a Coroner’s Inquest on fire deaths in the neighborhood. There is the invitation to critique, such as for an article by Pieta Woolley in The United Church of Canada Observer on debt loads and the First United Church’s current state of affairs. There are again, referrals, such as requesting a Victoria, BC, colleague to visit a dying street person from Vancouver. There is the maintenance of the student and volunteer requests for community hours. There is the participation in East-End networks of ministers: two monthly ones, local and regional, both involving prayer and sharing concerns. There is networking: including participation in coalitions, support networks, alliances, and occasionally through regular gatherings. There are fresh calls to visit and/or hold the ailing or anxious in prayerful contemplation, including urban-core, long-term facilities and hospices.

Each of these variables invites elaboration. Those akin to a hoping justice prayerfully triad are further discussed in the remainder of this chapter. Suffice to note the range and intensity of what arises from the personal to the political; from the contemplative to social justice advocacy; from on-site or in-house work to that of an outreach ministry; and with interdisciplinary focus—further labours for the sake of long-term organizing. Organizing rarely arises in any natural or automatic way as one might wish for example by organizing an eventual move from charity to advocacy, or to organize for power in the name a faithful public and prophetic witness. Earnest, patient, and perseverant work is required with a realistic anticipation of multiple setbacks and disappointments.

In the Midst of ‘Endless’ Charity, Justice Intimated

How do these above variables fit on a charity-advocacy-justice-other continuum? For many urban ministries, there is a mixture of these components. Some ministries strive to engage chiefly the justice virtue; others begin with charity and hope to include aspects of justice along the way, while many of us, alas, succumb to a mere charitable response to poverty.90 A “forced option” comes into play;91 ministries have little option other than to practice charity responses to poverty, especially in view of the annual funding appeals, which dovetail with the irresistible and seemingly irreducible Christmas charity appeals and year-end charitable income tax inducements. Ministries may well be “forced” to practice bread-and-butter charity responses to the inequalities of poverty for the sake of raising funds—by providing statistics and stories to encourage “feel-good” giving (which Streams of Justice and others challenged on the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Vancouver, BC, Food Bank). Later in this thesis, the whole charity/justice tension is explored as it simply will not exit the stage of any urban ministry’s life. In a “Charity or Justice?” presentation at a Streams of Justice 2011 forum in Vancouver, Jean Swanson drew from her 2001 Poor-Bashing: The Politics of Exclusion. She noted the five factors of charity: fostering unjust power relations; creating illusions that needs are being met; using charity for corporate public relations images; demeaning people who receive charity; and the fact that charity does not really end poverty.

Each of these elements illustrates the responses of urban ministries to what is going on in our cities. Forthwith we ask what should be our fitting response in light of the historic and present responses of others. The Toronto CRC thus drew from the East Harlem Protestant Parish model of the 1950s and 60s, especially a steadfast dedication to the urban core of a city. Urban ministry responses...