Church and Community - A History from My Perspective

This is a post that I've been struggling to write for my personal blog for quite awhile. I've started and stopped several times trying to find the words to express my thoughts and feelings about Levy and our place in the community. When Ted started this blog I told him what I'd been trying to write about and that I'd post it here. So here it is, a look at where Levy has been and where we're going in our efforts of Community Outreach. This is a little bit history, a little bit personal journey and a little bit jumping on my soapbox. This is a long post and I've had to leave out so much (no mention of the police, Christmas overkill, or the VBS experience).

Several years ago our church here in Levy came to a crossroads. Should we stay in our present location or was it time to rebuild elsewhere? A large portion of our building needed to be replaced plus we needed to expand. Like a lot of city churches as the economic level of our membership rose and the economic level of the area fell over the years, we became more of a commuter church than a neighborhood one. We decided to stay, we felt like we needed to be here, there was good that we could do here.

Unfortunately, we didn't do a very good job of reaching those in our neighborhood. I think we had forgotten how. Now this isn't a just a Levy problem, I think it's a problem with most U.S. churches in our situation. As society had changed, churches had become mini fortresses insulating us from the world, effective evangelism became focused on friends and people you knew. We no longer knew the people in our area; we were in the community but not really a part of it. I truly believe that God decided to give us a little help. If we couldn't figure out how to go to the people of our community then He'd just bring them to us. And boy did He!

I don't remember the exact order of the following events, but I believe God used these to open a door of opportunity and then shoved us through it. We had started having Wednesday night meals in our family center behind our church building. This was started as a convenience for working families and as a way to increase Wednesday night attendance. There are some apartment complexes that back up to our property behind the family center, at some point a big portion of these became government assisted apartments. This brought in an influx of single parent households. And we built a new education wing on our church building (more on the importance of this later). Also there was a basketball goal by the family center. Things started simply. A few kids from the apartments playing basketball; Wednesday meals; a few members noticed the kids, began interacting with them, invited them to the meals; numbers started to grow, tensions began to rise. A door of opportunity was opened.

I was oblivious to most of this beginning stage. But I had also come to a crossroads, I was tired of doing church, I wanted to be church (if that makes sense). It felt like something was missing. Be careful what you ask for, you never know what God's answer is going to be. One Sunday morning I was in the church office working on the powerpoint slides for the morning worship service, when a couple of friends who had gotten involved with these kids (I'll call them Doug and George) came in and began discussing the situation, I said I wanted to be involved. Gone was my safe, comfortable predictable Christian life, nothing has been the same since.

The number of kids coming down from the apartments and now the surrounding area continued to grow. Then it was like a shade had been pulled and they saw the rest of the church and the new education building, they were curious, they wanted to start coming to Wednesday night Bible class. Chaos ensued!

Over the next weeks, months, years, decades (I've lost all concept of time) we've stumbled and struggled to minister to these kids. I'd like to say that the church fell in love with these funny, smart, wild, unruly, ungrateful, sweet, rude, broken children and joyfully opened its arms and embraced them, but that didn't happen. I overheard too many of the comments and saw the looks on too many people's faces to believe that. But there were enough that did fall in love with these kids and enough that thought it was the right thing to do to keep things going.

Numbers grew along with tensions over the kid's behavior. A variety of classroom strategies were discussed and tried, unfortunately most resulted in creating separate classes for these kids (a solution George and I never liked but often reluctantly had to go along with). We had numerous discussions and meetings to find ways to deal with the problems (most of which left me frustrated and sad).

Then if Wednesday’s weren’t challenging enough, seemingly overnight most of the kids moved from the apartments. By then we had a connection with these kids, there was something at Levy that they were drawn to, and so they called. Now our neighborhood community ministry had morphed into a bus ministry also (actually a van ministry). Do you know how many kids you can stuff into 12 passenger vans? I’m not going to tell you, but it’s a whole lot more than 12.

One of the dangers that you have to deal with both as someone involved with these kids and the congregation as a whole is getting bogged down in the negative. When most of your efforts seem to be spent dealing with crowd control issues, classroom discipline, inappropriate language, transportation, and just trying to be a buffer between the kids and members that don’t seem to want them here anyway, then you add in the occasional fun of theft, a kid urinating in the stairwell, writing profanities on the mirrors in the bathrooms, a food fight at the meal and 3 fights breaking out on your overstuffed van the first time an elder rides with you, it’s easy to miss the good that’s going on around you. You don't notice how many of the kids are doing well at the meals and in class, soaking up the Bible lessons. You miss the smiles, the hugs, and the sparkle in their eye when they've done well. You miss the small steps forward, the slow lowering of walls. You miss seeing God working.

Two of my favorite moments:
Overheard comment by one of our regular van riders to a friend that she'd invited telling her much she was going to like coming to HER church.
One of our favorite kids had gotten in trouble in class one Wednesday (actually
he got in trouble most Wednesday's) and we'd told him we weren't going to pick him up the following week (we didn't tell him he couldn't come). The next Wednesday, about half and hour after starting the meal, we look up and here he comes pedaling his bike up to the pavilion and sheepishly asking if it was alright that he came. This was a 5th or 6th grade boy who had ridden his bike at least 2 miles (I think it was probably more like 4 or 5, if he lived where I think he did at the time) not knowing if once he got here we'd even let him stay.

Unfortunately,
We failed, I failed, the church failed. While we spent time trying to figure out the best way to fit them into our classes with the least amount of change or discomfort to ourselves, or how far we should drive to pick kids up, or discussing the need for structure and discipline, we forgot something. We failed to show them Jesus.

But God doesn't give up on us just because we fail.

We fell from averaging 40 - 60 kids down to about 7.

Before going on, I want to spend a little time looking at why I think we lost these kids.

Some of it was just the transitory nature of people living in poverty. They move around a lot. Phone numbers changed or disconnected, contact was lost.

Some were lost because we discontinued the Wednesday meals for a while. The meals are where we made our first connections with the kids and the foundation of our relationship with them. For us the meals are just a nice convenience but for these kids it's much more, it contributed to their sense of belonging, of acceptance. When we stopped the meals we took some of that away. Look at Jesus, why did so much of his teaching take place at meals, why did He eat with the poor and the outcasts, why did He use the imagery of feasts and banquets so much? I asked my wife (Dianna) what she thought about the meals and the kids, here's her response:

John 21:
15When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon son of John, do you
truly love me more than these?"
"Yes, Lord," he said, "you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my lambs."
16Again Jesus said, "Simon son of John, do you truly love me?"
He answered, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Take care of my sheep."
17 The third time he said to him, "Simon son of John, do you love me?"
Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, "Do you love me?" He said, "Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you."
Jesus said, "Feed my sheep.
We know He isn't speaking only of food to eat, but also spiritual food. Where better to feed our souls and spirit than at a meal? Where do families and friends gather in their homes? How many relationships are strengthened during our conversations and sharing at meal times?
When loved ones are sick, one of the first things we do is take food. We have a whole ministry of organizing meals for Levy families during times of sickness, death, and also when new babies are born. We aren't just assuring they have food, but comforting them, mourning with them, and celebrating with them. We show our love for them by feeding them.
Those of us who never have to worry about our next meal, don't have a clue what it's like to be hungry. Our main concern is what we're hungry for -- which meal to cook or which restaurant to go to. We have plenty and don't give it much thought. There are those who don't have that luxury. They are hungry. They do worry about what their next meal will be, and they especially worry about how they will get it.
"These Kids" on Wednesday nights are kids. They have no control over their background. They don't act the way we think they should because they have not been taught the way we have and they don't have the ability to change their lifestyles yet. We can show them a better future and hope by accepting them, feeding them, and showing them Jesus' love.

Some were lost because even though our heads told us this was the right thing to do, our hearts hadn't quite caught up yet. We couldn't be like Paul and "become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." This is something that we as people are not usually good at. We tend to associate with and seek out people that are like us. Churches are like this also, we set them up to meet the needs of its existing members. Local evangelism efforts are usually aimed at bringing in other people like us. Levy found itself in a unique position - a large number of people coming to us without us really even trying but the problem is that they don't look like us, act like us, or have the same religious background as us. Our initial response has been to try to force square pegs into round holes. We've tried to fit them into a system that wasn't designed for them. Clashes and failure were inevitable. Can we change; can we find a way to work thru these cultural, racial, economic issues? I don't know, the jury is still out, but I do see some encouraging signs. And if we do fail again it won't be because we didn't try.

Ok, back to the history. We're down to 7 kids, we continue to pick them up every Wednesday, eventually a few that we lost because of moves contact us and we start picking them up, then they invite friends. We gradually build back up to 15 - 20.

Things change again. The new Ministry Center has been finished for awhile, the Wednesday meals get reorganized and restarted. I'm not sure how the kids in the apartments rediscovered us, but suddenly we went from 15-20 to 30-40 and then it exploded. This started last spring, I'm not going to write about what has happened between then and now and how we are handling the situation (I'll let some of the others tell you that story).

But to give you an idea of where we are today -

We've been averaging 80 - 90 kids every Wednesday (we had 103 a couple of weeks ago).

We recently hosted a seminar on "What Every Church Member Should Know About Poverty", led by Bill Ehlig, and had about 90 of our members attend. (This has been in the works for several years. Our efforts to get this scheduled failed several times. Apparently, God knew the time wasn't right, until now.)

We just had our first Community Day. As part of our efforts to reach the parents of these kids and other adults in the area, this was done in conjunction with a door to door campaign and gospel meeting conducted by a group from Harding University. We had over 200 people from the community visit. We had games for the kids, information about the church, we had some health information from a few state and local agencies, we served a hot meal, we had the clothing bus from Sylvan Hills Church of Christ, we even had a fire truck. It was a big success. We met a lot of new people, a bunch of Bible Studies were conducted and quite a few baptisms occurred, people were put in contact with agencies to provide help, and a large number of our members (over 100 volunteers) got to mingle and get to know our neighbors a little better.

None of this has been easy; it's been a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows. Each Wednesday is a challenge. There are myriad of problems to be solved and opportunities to be explored. Each week we sit at a tipping point between semi-controlled chaos and total out of control mayhem. But it's worth it.

Mark