Church Transforming Lives

One of the concerns I have expressed in this blog is the fact that the Church has not been the champion of community change that it ought to be. I have argued that the Church has not been involved significantly in helping to transform the lives of our people from despair to hope, at least in significant ways. It is true that many who come to Jesus find themselves transformed – their lives taking on new meaning and impetus. But what about those who do not come? Does the Church have a responsibility to them also?

It has been my point, that as the bastion of hope and life, as the institution which most celebrates the fact that man is created in the image and likeness of God, the Church cannot ignore anyone in society. Instead, she should pamper that image, even in the worse outcast, and should do all to reverse the effects of sin, which threatens to denigrate God’s image in man. Sin threatens man in obviously spiritual ways, and the Church is right to call man to repentance as he sets himself on the path to renewal in God. But sin also threatens man in the other areas of his life – physical, social, emotional, etc. As such, the Church must be involved in ministries which will seek to reverse trends in these areas that are detrimental to man.

Take the area of the social. I believe that the Church’s involvement in the social dimension of man has been token at best, when looked at generally. That the Church is involved in much social action is not in doubt, but I believe that this had not been in a significant way to help in the transformation of the individual, except in minority cases. Let me try to explain.

Perhaps the greatest act of social involvement on the part of the Church in Jamaica took place with the creation of the Baptist Free Villages, just after Emancipation. These villages provided not only property for ex-slaves, but also a sense of responsibility and livelihood, as the newly declared freed-men sought to make a contribution to a new society. For the first time the ex-slave was his own man, farming his own land, building his own home and saving for tomorrow, in short determining his own future. He was released from the shackles of depending on the welfare offered by someone else, if and whenever such was offered. Whereas he was previously tied to the goodwill of others, now he was in the place of being able to largely determine his own and his family’s future. Church’s today offer a lot of social help, but not in the same way as the Baptist Free Villages did, at least not in the main.

Two examples from Jamaica’s more recent history (and as far as I know the only two that exist) continued in the tradition of our illustrious Baptist counterparts, and sadly, one struggles for survival. In 1940 a Methodist minister by the name of Hugh Sherlock established a project in a part of Trench Town to help transform the lives of poor black boys who lived there. Boys’ Town was created, and largely through sports and entertainment, Father Sherlock helped give hundreds an opportunity for advancement that they otherwise would not have. The significant Jamaicans that passed through Boys’ Town are too numerous to list, but include names such as the Late Collie Smith (West Indian Cricketer), Carl Brown (Jamaica’s Former National Football Coach) and Lyndel Wright (Manager, Jamaica Cricket Team). Unfortunately, Father Sherlock’s dream has not survived as a church based idea. Thankfully other social agencies are attempting to replicate some of what he did but apparently with the significant disadvantage of the absence of a certain essential morality that is a part of the church ethos.

The second example still exists in the form of Alpha Boys’ Home. Alpha Boys’ is an institution that caters to boys from economically deprived backgrounds, many homeless. As a boarding facility, the boys are nurtured in a Christian environment, where they are given an education and taught necessary values for life. But Alpha has become best known for the musicians it has produced. Boys are taught to play musical instruments, and the Alpha Boys’ band is of national renown. Many of its graduates have gone on to become world famous, and have escaped the poverty to which their backgrounds threatened to condemn them. The most famous Alpha graduates from yesteryear were Don Drummond and Roland Alphanso, but today Dwight Richards and a slew of others carry on the tradition of excellence that the school has become known for. The Alpha experience has not only met their social need for schooling, but it transformed them into men who command their own destinies as well as that of their families. Along with education it gave them a way up and out of a lifestyle of poverty and aimlessness.

Perhaps other such initiatives do exist in the Church, but they are not well known and are definitely not the norm. They should be. And it’s not about the Church blowing her own trumpet; it is about promoting life and hope…about showing an increasingly desperate populace that God has created them for achievement and progress. The life of being a noose around society’s neck and a dagger in the heart of others is not a given, especially when the Church becomes involved in promoting the full humanity of all, as this is the only way to fully preserve the image of God in which we are created.

What do you think?

A Contextual Reading of Luke 5:17-26

One well known rule when reading the Gospel of Luke is that we must see the evangelist as concerned with portraying Jesus as the liberator of the poor and outcast. Jesus’ initial declaration of the purpose of his ministry (4:18-20) clearly declares such, but the narratives form beginning to end are steeped with the concerns of the poor and outcast, whether they be the sick, the sinful, the foreigner, or women. Throughout, the faith of the outcast to come and receive from Jesus is always rewarded with a blessing, much to the chagrin of the “righteous.” Keeping this in mind will help us understand and apply the Gospel to our setting in very real and relevant ways. I hope to demonstrate this by looking at Luke 5:17-26.

The passage under consideration tells us of Jesus teaching in a house, apparently in Galilee. His ministry was growing in popularity, and a large crowd gathered to hear him speak. Seated close by him were Pharisees and Teachers of the Law from all over Galilee and Judea, listening intently to what he was saying. Because the crowd was so thick, some men carrying a paralyzed man on a mat, and who wanted to get him to Jesus for healing, could not pass through. They therefore made their way unto the roof of the house, removed some of the tiles and lowered the man in front of Jesus. On seeing their faith Jesus forgave the man his sins and then healed him, much to the amazement of the crowd.

Often, what concerns us is the confrontation between Jesus and the religious leaders over his ability to forgive sins. They chaff under the implication of His pronouncement, which leads him to astoundingly heal the man from his disability. But there is so much more in the passage of relevance to us than Jesus’ identity, as important as that might be. We need always to keep in mind the question of the poor and outcast, and how God acts on their behalf despite the actions of the religious establishment of the day, to the contrary. When we do this many other points of application, very relevant to our context, become clear.

For instance, there are the many things that we concern ourselves with as religious people to safeguard God’s integrity, which indeed hinder his work with those who most need it. We camp around doctrinal matters and build fortresses around our ideas that bar non-conformists from entry while protecting the faithful. Unless outsiders are willing to toe the line they do not gain entry, and dissident insiders quickly find themselves on the outside. Protecting the truth about God has led to denominational schisms too numerous to count, and form the focal point of our existence. It saps so much of our energies that we easily ignore the maimed and pained who are looking in from the outside, longing to receive from God’s love. Many have stopped looking in, instead drinking from “broken cisterns” to have their longings met.

Additionally, the attitude of the friends in the story stands in stark contrast to that of the religious establishment. As they, along with other curious onlookers bar the way of entry to the one who needs Jesus the most, the friends make a way to get the crippled man inside. Do the maimed and crippled find it physically easy to enter our sanctuaries of worship? Do we have ramps for those bound to wheel chairs or seats specifically designed and set aside for those who find conventional sitting impossible? Just by the way we structure our pews we often send out the message that God’s word prefers the able-bodied and normal, which is in stark contrast to the message of the Gospel. God holds no favourites, and if He did his favourites would be those who cannot help themselves. Like Him, these people must be the focal point of our attention as we share the message of the Gospel.

Luke 5:17-26 shows us that we can be assiduously practicing our religious duties and still ignore that which most concerns God. Too often when we do this we end up ignoring the needy and thus become bad representatives of God. Each and every person, especially the one helpless for whatever reason is special to Him and so should be to us. It behoves us then to think on these things and design our ministries in such a way that brings hope, love and joy to those who most need it. Anything else means that we are merely taking up space.

As usual, what do you think?

Religionless Christianity

A friend of mine recently commented on the source of what he saw as my social conscience. Having attended my mother’s funeral, and hearing the remembrances of her, which all stressed her practice of caring for the poor and less fortunate, he concluded that I am attempting to live out that which was instilled in me from an early age. Frankly, I had never thought about it that way before, but in hindsight I have to admit that I have always been concerned with the mistreatment of the “small man.” The thing is, that from very early in my evangelical sojourn, from just before my twentieth birthday, that which was instilled in me by mom made me uncomfortable in a church that did not have a similar concern. That discomfort has become almost full-blown, to the point of a total malaise, especially since I have found out that my mom’s concern is more biblical than the practice of my evangelical tradition that emphasizes the spiritual to the detriment of the physical and practical.
What is even more disturbing to me is that though my mother was not a churchwoman, her lifestyle was more biblical than that of many good, church going Christians. She had very little patience for persons who spent a lot of time in church. She maintained that she was a woman of faith, always praying and seeking to know what Bible passages meant, and even commented to me a few months before her death that she had accepted Jesus “a number of times” when she was a little girl. But for her what was more important than the “practice of religion” was that she should care for people, especially those that could not help themselves.
The Bible does say that we “should not forsake meeting together as Christians (Hebrews 10:25).” Thus, the idea of Christians gathering together to bolster each other is quite Biblical. What our churches often miss is that the “practice of religion” is very often an easy distraction from that which is more necessary – living daily as God would have us do in this world. And it seems quite evident that many of our churches have become distracted by their religious observances. Weekly prayer and fasting service, Bible study, choir practice, early morning prayer meeting, praise and worship, door to door witnessing, men’s and women meetings, Sunday school, youth fellowship, as well as leaders meetings, when added together means that the active Christian does little else than go to Church. When coupled with the number of hours s/he spends at work, life consists of working and going to Church. There is very little meaningful social interaction with people outside of these spheres, and because the emphasis is so “heavenward” there is little commitment to practicing the faith practically now.
I believe the Church must change this orientation, if we are going to impact the community in necessary ways. I can’t help thinking of my favourite theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and his emphasis on “religionless Christianity.” There is still some amount of debate as to what Bonhoeffer meant by the term, but it seems quite evident that he was concerned with the Church’s emphasis on the ritual aspect of Christianity to the exclusion of it practical obligations. He believed that the practical obligations were more important than the ritualistic, and so he called for a “worldly Christianity,” which would live out Christ’s concerns in daily life without needing the ritual to identify it as Christian. One of his solutions was quite radical – sell the Church buildings and use the proceeds to care for the poor. I am not certain that such is necessary, but we must find ways of becoming more practical, as this ought to be the greater emphasis of our Christianity. I thank my mom for being a good Biblical example in this regard.
As usual, what do you think?

Spiritual-Social Dichotomy

Is it the Church’s responsibility to seek for social change and/or reform? This is perhaps the single most asked question by conservative Christians when the issue of Church and community involvement comes up. As far as these well thinking believers see it, the Church has a spiritual responsibility and ought not to be side-tracked by social concerns, as urgent as those might be. We elect governments to see to the physical and social wellbeing of the community; the Church ought to care for the spiritual.

In my previous blogs I have shown, I believe clearly, why I do not support the above view, at least not in its entirety. The Church does have a spiritual concern, and merely thinking socially does not address that concern. However, if we divorce the physical and social from the spiritual, we have missed the full essence of the Biblical message. I will not argue that point again here. What I am more concerned with is where this dichotomy has come from, to the extent that it is the dominant way of thinking for so many Christians today.

I want to suggest that this dichotomized spirituality is as a result of our former colonial masters being the ones who brought us the Christian message. In England, even in the heyday of slavery, this strict separation between the social and spiritual was not a reality in the Anglican Church. In fact, the Church of England was, in the minds of many thinkers, a mere change in name and titular head, when compared to the Roman Catholic Church that it replaced. As the Roman Catholic Church was the final authority on all matters spiritual and social, so was the Anglican Church in England. How then did this change in the Caribbean?

Historical evidence suggests that when the Anglican Church established itself in the West Indies in the mid 1600’s (see Arthur Dayfoot – The Shaping of the West Indian Church) as a means to minister to the British Plantation owners and operators, they soon found it pragmatic to separate their spiritual message from that of the social responsibilities of their followers, as a means of keeping the financial support of these said followers. The government in England had told the Church in the West Indies that they would not be supporting her financially, and so created the Parish system where taxes levied on the planters looked after the social and spiritual welfare of the colonies. Apparently the church leaders believed it expedient not to overly trouble the planters about the social misbehaviours, fearing their withholding of taxes, which would lead to the church’s demise. As such, in a fairly short time the church’s message was limited to the spiritual, to the extent that there was not even a community centre present on any church property. The buildings were only seen as places of worship.

What began as expediency for the survival of the Church soon became binding law, and later non-conformist churches that came (Methodists, Moravians, Presbyterians, etc.) found themselves operating in these strictures in order to be allowed to maintain a presence here. Apparently, this was the pattern of the establishment of Christianity wherever the colonial masters went, to the extent that we have had a large number of Christians growing up in such contexts where today they themselves defend the idea that as long as the soul is alright for the afterlife, we need not be overly bothered by the social realities in which we live. They know no other theology.

Unfortunately, these same Christians scoff at theology and theological education, saying that such amounts to nothing more than man’s perverse ideas of the Bible. They strongly believe that their ideas are taken only from the Bible. But if they were to take off the denominational lenses they have inherited, and read the Bible cover to cover, they would see that though the spiritual is not the same as the social, it is almost impossible to maintain the spiritual without a serious concern for the social. The challenge is for them to take up any book of the Bible, and attempt to read it without bias. I guarantee that they will see that a dichotomy does exist between the spiritual and the social, but not in the Bible. Such exists only in the minds of people who have been conditioned to see it just that way, simply because it was sinfully beneficial to others. And that dichotomy continues today, simply because it remains sinfully beneficial to some.

What do you think?

Initial Principles for Involvement

One reader of my last blog (Church-in-Context) suggested that our churches might not be as involved in community because their leaders do not know how to be. I wholeheartedly agree, but wish to look at some of the implications of that reality. Whether or not they have been successful in the past, right now many are accomplishing very little in terms of community transformation. For a long time they have been on the periphery, maybe enjoying a mere modicum of success, if any at all. Now, our community realities require a different approach and our churches do not know how to respond. It’s like driving a standard shift car for years, where your left foot serves only for the clutch. If you were to change to a Go-cart where there is no clutch, your left foot is there to operate the brakes. Adjusting to this is such a difficult task, that some persons never bother driving Go-carts after one try. Unfortunately, as difficult as effective community ministry might be, our churches cannot opt-out of it. I hope to show in what follows why this is so.

How do we become more relevant to our communities? The first thing to realize is that we are not speaking primarily about more relevant programmes as much as we speak about a more relevant mindset. Programmes are known to be notoriously contextually sensitive, that is they work in some contexts and not in others. But a more relevant mindset (a contextual one) will keep various principles in mind, and will continue to devise programmes that will then seek to minister effectively according to these principles. What are some of these? Do not be surprised that their foundation is Biblical. This is what sets the Church apart from other social agencies, and is her very raison-d’etre.

1. All men (not just Christians) are created in the image and likeness of God. The worse offenders in our communities are themselves God’s image bearers.
2. Sin has tarnished that image in man, and in every case is seeking some opportunity to further denigrate man. Thus, sin is dastardly, not because it offends God’s sensibilities, but because it destroys God’s creation, hence offending his sensibilities.
3. One of the main ways in which sin manifests itself is through our need to show ourselves better than others. Mankind uses every means possible to put down others and elevate self: sex, gender, race, class, politics, religion, profession, wealth, education, employment, etc. Our communities are rife with these sins, even when sexual sins are non-existent, as is thought in some of our churches.
4. Jesus Christ died to restore God’s image in man, and the relationship between God and man. Those who have experienced restored relationship with God are now responsible for addressing issues in the social order that continue to denigrate God’s creation. This responsibility is not popular among many, but is essential to our lives of renewed minds encouraged in Romans 12:2. The previous verse indicates that anything else is worldliness.

If our churches keep the above in mind, what issues will they see in their communities that need addressing? I suggest that leaders and followers alike discuss these things and identify situations that need attention and then work at them. Some may require long term effort, like the re-socializing of our youth. Quick fixes might do for others, like helping to repair someone’s roof. In all cases what will be required is a new way of seeing each individual, as a special child of God requiring all the love of God that his people can show. When we think like this relevant programmes become easier to identify, as well as the expertise required for effectively implementing them. This opens up possibilities for us to involve more believers in ministry, according to their giftings, and to train them for the most effective use of these gifts. Surely, as they get more involved a more meaningful bond between them and the people of our communities will be created. But everything begins with a change of mindset. In a nutshell, the people of our communities are bearers of the image of God, battered by the ravages of sin. The church must be involved in an attempt to restore the lustre to that image, by tackling sin and its effects, wherever such becomes manifest.

What do you think?

Church in Crisis?

In so called Christian countries, like Jamaica where I live, the Church is constantly under the microscope, especially as our society continues the downward spiral into lawlessness. Recent apparent increased abductions, rapes and murders of children and the elderly have caused a firestorm of debate nationwide. As I write the country's parliament is taking a conscience vote as to whether or not capital punishment is to be retained on our law books, with most parliamentarians seemingly ready to back the desires of their constituents - namely, not only to retain the death penalty, but to speedily resume the execution of murderers as a means of stemming the rot that has set into our society. In all of this many are pointing an accusing finger at the Church, as they believe that for too long there has been a greater concern with "self-preservation" on the part of Pastors and denominational captains, than on the social and moral upbringing of our people and communities.

What we cannot deny is that in spite of the rumblings in society, and the malaise that have set in in many churches, there are many others that are enjoying record attendances. And there are not only a few such churches in our land. Yet many of the communities in which these churches exist are themselves examples of the worse poverty imaginable, where people are asked each day to sacrifice families, friends, neighbours and themselves for less than a basic survival. How can these churches continue to exist in such circumstances, happily praising God without a thought for addressing the reality in which many of their own people live?

One of the first problems is that the churches seem to believe that their greater responsibility lies elsewhere. I have arrived at this conclusion from a mini-survey done by some of my students at the Jamaica Theological Seminary (JTS) where I lecture. Ten of my students, representing eight different denominations, each did a recorded report of sermons in their churches over a twelve week period, to evaluate the community conscience and care that came forth as a challenge to believers. In the approximately 100 surveys collected from the ten churches, only two had anything to do with the community, a mere 2%. Instead the vast majority was concerned with issues such as "overcoming spiritual struggles", "standing on God's promises", "leading others to the Lord", "avoiding sexual immorality", and such the like.

Does anyone else see with me that our churches are in crisis precisely because they have painted themselves into irrelevancy? They have adopted an all too personal and private understanding of a relationship with God and in so doing have neglected the community. When we do this we become guilty of the very thing Jesus chided the religious leaders of his day for: "...you tithe dill, mint and cummin, but have neglected the weightier matters of the Law: love, justice and mercy" (Matt 23:23). The weightier matters do require a personal commitment on the part of all Christians, but they can only be enacted in community. When these become our focus then indeed we will see a more relevant Church, involved as a part of the solution to our society's disintegration, instead of our standing on the periphery shouting irrelevant platitudes.

What do you think?