It Didn’t Start in Africa

I know I came back from the sabbatical preaching all this stuff about the poor and hungry. I’m painfully aware of how that sounds. The preacher runs off to Mexico and Africa for a few months and gets on a kick about poverty and now we have to listen to that for a while. But I have to tell you that it didn’t start on the sabbatical. I owe you the more complete story.

In fact, the choice of where I went and what I did on the sabbatical was determined more by what had been going on inside for some time. The deepest roots of this probably extend nearly thirty years into my life. As a summer intern during my seminary education I took a group of high school kids to El Paso and worked with some poor children along the border. Later, I took a doctoral seminar in biblical ethics at Baylor that led me to look at biblical teaching on the care of the poor and hungry in some depth. (I’m working on having a paper I wrote back then digitalized so that I can edit it and share it with whomever might be interested.) I came away believing in my head that the church is mandated to engage the needs of the poor, but without a clear understanding of how to move in that direction.

I spent two years in my first pastorate serving a church in the inner city of Houston, working with lower-middle income families and a few genuinely poor people along the way. I took my first international mission trip during those years, visiting Campinas, Brazil, and seeing from a distance the cardboard houses filling a hillside in Saõ Paulo. I did not know then how common that the scene is around the world.

I taught the Old and New Testaments academically at Houston Baptist Univeristy for nearly eight years. I was always careful to teach the words of the prophets about doing justice, loving kindness, and caring for the poor and hungry. But nothing going on in my life reflected that. I made a couple of trips to the Rio Grande Valley and helped to conduct VBS with some poor children there. But when I returned home, life continued unaffected.

Over the years more mission experiences have helped me see what is taking place in my world – Brazil again, Ethiopia, Uganda. But back at home, it remained business as usual. Most of my attention in those places was focused on the spiritual lostness of the people, not on their lives here and now. That was the way I had been formed spiritually to see the world. My upbringing did not train me to see poverty as a religious or spiritual issue.

Gradually, a few years ago, things began to change for me. I have written of this elsewhere. (Click here) What began to grow in me was a vision for compassionate ministry. This is good and Christlike. It ought to be what we are constantly doing. But I have come to understand that there remains more to this life in the Kingdom than even compassionate service.

A little more than a year ago I was having one of those prayer-exchanges with God that are nearly conversational. They don't happen often for me. I mean by that that I could sense a response from God to my questions and complaints. On my side, I was wondering aloud in prayer whether I was the right pastor to lead UBC into the future, whether I needed to be elsewhere, whether God needed someone else here. I was complaining about the stagnation I was sensing in me and in the church. I suddenly sensed a response: “Get back to work. I am fully capable of placing you elsewhere or placing someone else here if that is needed.” So I went back to work and dropped the whining. Actually I did not think much more about that exchange until earlier this year.

In January 2005 I spent a week in Dayton, Ohio, experiencing the first of five weeks in which I will serve as mentor to a group of four pastors who are Doctor of Ministry Students at the United Theological Seminary. I knew no one at the seminary, but their invitation seemed like an assignment I ought to take. It satisfied my need to teach in a seminary setting without costing a whole day every week for sixteen weeks. I make a trip to Dayton twice a year and then work with the students by email, Internet, and phone. Twice a year we meet for two days to review their work. My group was in town a couple of weeks ago.

Anyway, I was exposed to a different kind of culture at United. The stated values of the school are “Nurture of Piety, Love of Learning, and Pursuit of Justice.” I read those on their web page. Although those values were not spoken during my week with them, they were lived out everywhere. Their academic program impressed me. It is a demanding program, different from other Doctor of Ministry programs I was familiar with. Worship each day was alive and vital. A new Dean of Doctoral Studies was announced and the faculty was called forward to lay hands on her and pray for her. Piety was nurtured unashamedly. During the week I heard lectures and sermons by both black and white preachers and teachers that focused compellingly on the pursuit of justice in the Christian life. I heard things that challenged both the way I think and the way I live. I realized I was going to have to process that week carefully when I returned.

As I began to think and pray through those days, God reminded me of our exchange more than a year earlier. It was as if God said, “You were right. You are not the right pastor to lead UBC into the future. But I'm ready to help you become that pastor.” I am coming to understand my own need to grow beyond compassionate ministry into the doing of justice.

One writer puts it this way: evangelical Christians are becoming better about compassionate ministries. It is as if we are standing on the bank of a river and compassionately reaching out to pull struggling swimmers to the shore and to safety. That is important. But we now need to learn to ask, “Who is upstream throwing them in the river?”

It is good to sit with an AIDS victim in Africa or a small child at Emerald Pointe and to express the compassion of Christ to them with your very presence. It is good to feed the poor and hungry. The step beyond that, however, is to begin to ask what it is that keeps people in poverty, and how do we have an impact on that? What are the systemic issues in government, healthcare, education, nutrition, and culture that hold people in their place so effectively? What are poor Hispanic families in Pasadena up against that we do not even recognize? How can those who have resources, wealth, and, thus, power, use our voices to speak up for them (Prov 31:8-9)?

Last spring, soon after returning from Dayton, I attended a Renovare Conference in Houston and heard Dallas Willard and Richard Foster teach. In one session they discussed the six streams of Christian tradition that are flowing together in the church: evangelical, contemplative, holiness, charismatic, incarnational, and social justice. Each of these streams has had a denomination or tradition that has “specialized” in it. However, the Body of Christ needs the impact of all of them. As Willard spoke about social justice, he made the point that those in the Christian community who have a voice are obligated to speak on behalf of people whose voices are muted. Once more, God seemed to be pointing me to the role we at UBC must take alongside our concern for spiritual lostness and compassionate ministries.

In April I went to Dallas with four others from our church – Dr. John Wilson, Harold Draughon, Rick Carpenter, and Jeff Waldo. We participated in the Externally Focused Church Leadership Community. A dozen churches from all over the country sent teams. Each of these churches is at some stage in attempting to focus its ministries outside the walls of their campus. As we engaged the exercises and discussions we became convinced that we needed to have some specific places to focus our ministries. Emerald Pointe and the Whitcomb Elementary School distict emerged as the most viable places to focus.

Along the way during the Spring I was finalizing plans for my sabbatical. It seemed clear to me that I needed to be with those who spend their lives sharing good news and compassion with the poor. Opportunities in Oaxaca, Uganda, South Africa, and Thailand made their way to the surface. I knew I would have my life challenged by things I saw and heard. I knew I would need to learn more about God's call for justice in our world.

Then I left on sabbatical. With all that simmering in my heart and mind. I walked in the villages of Oaxaca and sat with AIDS patients in Africa. I spoke with village pastors about the needs of their people. I watched the news coming from Scotland, as nations who have much debated about how much and in what ways they were willing to share their resources with nations that have little. I continued to read and study and pray. I visited with missionaries from Asia who have been serving tsunami victims who have nothing left. And when I returned and prepared to preach, Isaiah and his fellow prophets were waiting for me in my study.

This has been the journey so far. It is not over. I have questions – lots of questions. I don’t have answers. I am both ignorant and naïve about many of these matters. I am certain of little except that the inescapable biblical teachings call us to attend to issues of poverty and hunger, and the more so since we do not face those issues ourselves. I do believe that Christian citizens are obligated to speak to our government about these matters regardless of which party is in power. We are called always to speak Truth to Power. We are called to speak from a moral position grounded not in party platforms but in Scripture. I am certain that government has a role to play in these issues, but that it does not have a solo or even a lead role. Churches, charities, faith-based organizations and other non-profits will be vital.

I do not hear the themes of poverty, hunger, and social justice echoed much in the “mega-churches” of our culture, so I’m fairly certain that this may not be the best way to build a huge attendance. (For an exception to that statement, see the work of Rick Warren and the Saddleback Church on AIDS in Africa.) I cannot see us being faithful to the gospel, however, without attending to such matters. A half-dozen emails I received last week encourged me as I heard from some of our members who are engaged regularly in ministries to people in need. I know of many others as well. It is a ministry we must do more than give lip service to.

I will not be preaching weekly on poverty and hunger, I promise. But I also promise not to avoid the portions of Scripture that say hard things to us and call us to justice. I have no intent to induce guilt in us. Guilt-avoidance serves little purpose in changing behavior long term. I do want to allow the way we think about ourselves and our world to be permanently re-shaped by the freedom and forgiveness that is found in the whole gospel. I want us to learn to follow Jesus, simply put.

But trust me on this – it didn’t start in Africa.

Blessings,

rrc