Chapters 12-13: Avoiding Burnout and Finding Our Place

This week’s chapters focus on the challenges Christians faced in finding their space in the struggle between segregation and Civil Rights.  Aligning convictions and practice, particularly in the face of opposition, is strenuous work, as evidenced by Dr. Odenwald’s story.  This chapter reminds me of the importance of support networks.  Because we’re following Jesus into our work we’re never alone. However, it’s crucial to also have a network of caring, like-minded people around us to sustain us through challenging times.  That’s where the relationships in your core teams come in, I think.

These chapters also contain a challenging critique of the Church’s role in the struggle for Civil Rights.  A few notable quotes:

“Finding financial support to attack hunger and economic ills wasn’t so easy.  But we could always get Bibles” (98).

“One of the greatest tragedies of the civil rights movement is that evangelicals surrendered their leadership in the movement by default to those with either a bankrupt theology or no theology at all, simply because the vast majority of Bible-believing Christians ignored a great and crucial opportunity in history for genuine ethical action.  The evangelical church – whose basic theology is the same as mine – had not gone on to preach the whole gospel.

…man cannot create justice by human manipulation alone.  But at the same time, the Church, by so-called ‘spiritual’ manipulation alone, cannot effect justice” (99).

“In terms of social justice, evangelicals just didn’t have a team on the field” (111).

“…Does the gospel – that is, the gospel as we presently preach it – does it have within itself the power to deal with racial attitudes?  ... If evangelism is truly on the side of God and His love, then it should never allow itself to look like it’s on the side of a bigot-producing system” (112-113).

All too often, it seems, the Church has been content to focus on the me-and-Jesus portion of Reconciliation, without addressing the me-and-you aspect.  Maybe it’s lack of awareness, unwillingness to change our attitudes, or fear of creating controversy, but many in the Church tend to shy away from opportunities to take action in pursuit of justice that reflects God’s Kingdom values.  There’s a lot more on this idea in Richard Stearns’ The Hole In Our Gospel, which some of you might have read last year during the Embracing the (W)hole Gospel conference on campus.

Questions for you:

Burnout is a serious issue in college and ministry, probably even more so when you combine the two.  What are some ways you’ll seek to be sustained through this year?  What can we as a team do to support and encourage each other?

If you grew up in the Church, did you see more examples of social justice engagement or avoidance?  In what ways?

What might motivate believers to become engaged in social justice issues?

Should we be concerned about a “slippery slope” toward a social gospel that isn’t Biblical?  What safeguards might help us avoid the slippery slope?

What's in your Ipod?

I'm a big music fan; I think there's a lot you can learn about a person by knowing what they're listening to.  So,

What are you listening to this summer?

Vision, Calling and Relocation

Perkins’ understanding of inequities and needs in Mississippi lead him to return to the community from which he and Vera Mae had come, to help the community develop.  In these chapters we see Perkins’ call to ministry, both in vision for the work God was leading him to and the family’s challenge to understand and respond to that call, as well as the need for the Relocation principle, being in it with the people.

A few quotes jumped out at me this week:

The need: Equality in education.

“Of course, a root problem is that Mississippi has always been one of the poorer states in per capita income.  So it naturally has had less money overall for everything, including education.  With that kind of cash scarcity there never seemed to be enough money to provide a good education for everybody who wanted one” (89).

For more on the idea that there isn’t enough to go around, see Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities, written in 1991, including a chapter on Camden, New Jersey, where we’ll send a group of volunteers this Christmas Break.  After researching urban, diverse America schools, Kozol concludes that the fear of upper-class, majority culture families is that their kids will suffer if they have to “give up” their advantages in order to provide equal, adequate education for all.  It’s a challenging argument.

Vision for ministry.

“You see, I knew that if the Bible I was teaching could ever really do something there, it would have to be a visible truth.  I knew that if I only had students, even lots of students, the whole thing could drift away like many other ‘religious’ programs.  I knew that I had to develop fellow workers, not just Bible club students” (pg. 93-94).

Relocation: The importance of being with the people.

“My work as a Bible teacher and pastor didn’t just lean on whatever skills I had in class teaching; just as important was letting people know I was also involved with the needs of their daily lives.  Our income, our life-style, our needs and problems matched a lot of these people’s concerns; we could live among them more like friends helping friends than like well-off outsiders coming to do good” (92).

For more on Relocation, as well as the other 7 big ideas of Christian Community Development, check out www.ccda.org/philosophy.

What about you?

Have you witnessed other examples of people responding to God-given vision by planting themselves in a particular community?  Tell us about that.

What needs do you recognize in the ministry you’ll serve with in the coming year?

Relocation is a tricky endeavor for college students, who tend to be rooted to a campus and have constraints on their time.  What steps will you take this year to get close to the work you’re doing, in pursuit of the Relocation principle?

Chapters 8-9: Evangelism, Salvation, Mentoring

In these chapters Perkins commits his life to following Jesus and immediately jumps into the work of ministry and evangelism. In addition to living a changed life and telling people about it, John Perkins' faith also focuses heavily on mentoring.

"Every Tuesday night I sat with my white teacher, Mr. Wayne Leitch. God was taking me step by step. First He showed me black people changed by the gospel. Now He was showing me that it had power even for whites.

"Mr. Leitch didn't hold me back with any rigid ideas of what he thought my abilities ought to be. When he saw what I could handle, he offered to work with me during afternoons as well" (75).

"But I had more than survived. God had let me succeed where these young men had failed. I had a good job, good opportunities. My wife had a good job and all that, too. And here these young men were – in jail, in trouble. Yet God loved these young me no less than he loved me.

"So if God had done all this for me, and if He loved these others no less than He did me, what did all this mean? What did it say to my plans for my "good" Christian life?

"Well, first thing, I saw more clearly that the roots of many of the black man's problems in the ghetto were really the unsolved problems of the South I had left. I couldn't escape a conviction growing up inside of me that God wanted me back in Mississippi, to identify with my people there, and to help them break up the cycle of despair – not by encouraging them to leave, but by showing them new life right where they were" (79).

As you think about your own journey of faith and personal development,

What impact have mentors had on your life?

Have you had the opportunity to mentor others? In what ways?

Incidentally, if you come from a church background where evangelism isn't emphasized, or if it's difficult to explain what it is we do when we "give our lives to Jesus," you might enjoy True Story by James Choung. In narrative form (Yes, it borders on college love story, but it's based in Seattle, so that balances out) Choung outlines a metaphor for Christian conversion that goes beyond the famous Bridge Diagram (http://www.navigators.org/us/resources/illustrations/items/The%20Bridge%20to%20Life) to focus on God's plan for reconciliation and restoration of everything, and believers' role in carrying out that transformation. It's a good read.

Also, maybe you wondered to yourself: "What's a Quonset hut?" (pg. 78) I'm so glad you asked! http://www.google.com/search?q=Quonset&hl=en&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&prmd=ivnsm&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=bdYMTsacF6vTiAKD24jhDQ&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CEAQ_AUoAQ&biw=991&bih=684

So how's it going?

Post your updates here!

The Gospel, or not...

In Chapters 6 and 7 Perkins meets a nice girl, finds fulfilling employment, serves his country and loses his father, but 3 out of 4 ain't bad. Most notably, I think, the man many of us now know as a fervent preacher begins his adult life in pursuit of secular dreams with little interest in Christianity.

"I'd been to religious services as a kid, of course, but I never learned that I could have the power of God in my life; a power that would make a difference in me and in my surroundings. The few times I'd been in church, I had sat and watched everybody else getting emotional. Maybe it's because I always look at things economically, but it was hard for me to see how all that shouting and bench turning I saw in black churches was giving people any kind of incentive to develop. …

"And I did not see white Christianity as meaningful either. To me it was part of that whole system that helped dehumanize and destroy black people; that system which identified me as a nigger. So how could the white church really be concerned about me?" (57).

This perspective on Christian faith is evident today, and one that you'll probably encounter in your work with the Perkins Center this year. Many people view Christianity as at best an abstraction, at worst a club that excludes others while insulating its members. In order to explain why it is that we care about the Christian in Christian Community Development, we'll need a good grasp of the Gospel and what difference it makes in individuals' lives and the world around us.

In your experience,

What is the Gospel message?

What is the importance of the Gospel message for our communities today?

How does the Gospel "make a difference in me and my surroundings"?