The advent of year 2000 is causing unprecedented evaluations of our past, present, and future. Prophecies and predictions already abound and more will follow in the months ahead. These examinations and forecasting are also helping churches to look within at who they are and where they are going. But beyond our casual self-studies, a disciplined church study is needed. Until we seriously look at who we are, we cannot gain adequate honesty and courage to face what we wish was not there or admit what we wish was not.

According to futurist Tom Sine, the number one problem of our churches is a “crisis of vision.” In the face of so many urban and moral dilemmas, the church has retreated to a “fortress mentality.” Instead of seeing the problems of our decaying neighborhoods and communities as challenges, many have accepted status quo as normative. Maintaining membership and budgets have replaced the aggressive call of declaring war on the sins of the city. Fear of crime, drugs, and poverty have been hidden by a safe theology of privatization and protection of self and family.

But the church is our only real hope for the city. “Churches with vision and tenacity are reversing the trend toward urban decay and social disintegration. Even non-Christian community developers admit that now. “There is no substitute for the resources of energy, enthusiasm, political clout.” Corporate leaders and government officials are enlisting religious institutions more than ever, primarily because the statistics show that churches are the most powerful agents of change in decaying areas. “The National Institute of Health shows that teenage students who attend religious services at least once a month are about half as likely as other teenagers to participate in socially destructive behaviors. Richard Freeman of Harvard University shows that among black males, church attendance is a better predictor of who will escape the destructive cycle of poverty, drugs, and crime than any other variable-including income, sports, and family structure.” (Signs of Hope In the City, p. 6) Catherine Hess, director of New York’s first methadone program for drug addicts, concluded that Christian drug rehabilitation programs which emphasize prayer, conversion, and the Holy Spirit are much more effective than secular programs. Even community and economic development that is grounded in the church has a higher success rate. “I will never again attempt to help people with economic revitalization unless it is under the umbrella of a church” said a well known developer in New York. “It makes no sense to leave the church out. It is the most important institution we have.” (p. 8)

Yet the church is still mostly uninvolved. A Lilly Foundation-funded survey on “church and family life” showed that among the churches that identified crime, drugs, unemployment, and AIDS as major problems they faced, only five percent have programs that directly addressed these problems. Single or disconnected programs are not enough because they are not mutually reinforcing. “Community revitalization is not achieved through a housing project here, a new school there, a job program somewhere else. It begins to look like a circle of things.” (Churches, Cities, and Human Communities, p. 286) Groups like Mission Waco, Lawndale Community Church in Chicago, Bethel New Life, Inc. in Chicago, the Nehemiah Project of East Brooklyn, and others have discovered the “circle of mutuality.” At Mission Waco and Jubilee Center, job and computer training, children’s programs, youth development, G.E.D. classes, alcohol and drug rehabilitation, Church Under the Bridge, small groups, and other programs all feed each other. Community problems are “systemic”, i.e., they are tied to other issues and realities that must be examined from a holistic view. For example, a group of gang-related teens in one city agreed to turn in their guns in exchange for jobs. Getting to the root causes requires sacrificial commitment and resources. Token band-aid ministries or an occasional mission trip will do little to offer real hope. It takes church leaders from various denominations to struggle and pray together at the same table. It takes leadership skills from various walks of live including religious, social service, city planning, political, and neighborhoods to acknowledge, then overcome their differences to bring healing and hope back to the decaying neighborhoods. It calls for a renewed biblical theology that sees the city from God’s compassionate eyes.

by Jimmy Dorrell

The night lasted forever. Traffic zoomed by amid occasional sirens, honks and backfires. The rocks underneath the sleeping bag seemed to grow larger through the evening. In and out of sleep, rolling over and over in an attempt at a short-term comfortable position. The hours of darkness dripped away so slowly. Finally morning.

The annual “sleep out under the bridge” is a harsh reminder of just a few hours in the life of the homeless. It is a night when those of us who normally sleep in comfort are profoundly reminded of those in our own city, state and nation who have no place to call home.

In a nation of plenty, over 2 million men, women and children sleep each night under bridges, in shelters, on friends’ couches, or in the back seats of cars.

Who are they? Why are there so many more today? Though the myths of poverty and homelessness abound in the midst of a love-hate relationship with the general public, the truths are clear to anyone who really wants to know. They are more than people without homes. They are disaffiliated and caught in a cycle that is difficult to overcome. Unlike the stereotypical skid-row bum, only about 5 percent are really “lazy and shiftless.”

Instead, today’s homeless are baby boomers or younger. They are not transients, but mostly local residents. Most are single men with significant problems. One-third of all homeless are mentally ill, outside the institutions available two decades ago. Forty percent are alcoholics.

WIDE SPECTRUM
Most of the chronic homeless are usually dual-diagnosed with alcoholism and mental illness. Forty percent suffer from disabling physical disorders. Ten percent use drugs. One third are veterans. Women and children are the fastest growing group. Most get little or no public assistance. Almost all lack support systems.

Yet with all the media and public attention that goes to them and with more people than ever standing on street corners with their sins, homelessness is still mostly misunderstood and untreated. Because of the pervasiveness of the issue, which won’t seem to go away, most Americans have grown weary of the problem. They waffle between “compassion fatigue” and blaming the victim. The 1990s are now being characterized as a decade of “anti-homelessness.”

Alice Baum and Donald Burnes, in A Nation in Denial: The Truth About Homelessness, write that denial is the state of the art when it comes to policy about this problem. “In the face of compelling evidence, the primary issue is not the lack of homes for the homeless; the homeless need access to treatment and medical help for the conditions that prevent them from being able to maintain themselves independently in jobs and housing.” Alcoholism, drug addiction and mental illness are national health problems among all socio-economic groups, yet particularly hard on the poor. The cost of alcoholism alone accounts for an estimated $85.8 billion a year in reduced or lost productivity, not to mention the 300 people who die each day from alcohol-related causes.

Yet small group homes like Mission Waco’s Manna House, which offer free alcohol-drug treatment in a Christian atmosphere for homeless or poor men, struggle for funding because of the denial of the real issues. Often, helpers would rather provide blankets or soup kitchens instead of attack the more difficult root problems, solutions to which are more costly and do not provide immediate results.

Support for Compassion Ministries, Salvation Army, Mission Waco, Caritas, and other providers which help the poor, is important. But new programs and initiatives which target the most vulnerable people of our society are critical.