March 31, 2005

CityVoices readers,

This month’s CityVoices newsletter continues (see January’s part 1) to describe the present state of Christian community development in America ’s cities. And with this edition, we take the theoretical and move to the practical. Our articles focus on:

•  The Christian Community Development Association in Chicago

•  The ministry of Urban Concern in Columbus , Ohio

•  Faith Christian Fellowship in Baltimore , Maryland

•  The National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise in Washington , DC

•  The joint SCUPE / North Park University MACD Program and

•  This spring’s Leadership Institute for Christian Community Development in Chicago

Again, we hope to describe Christian community development (and community organizing), inspire you with these real life examples of where and how development is at work, and lead you to believe that community development may have an important place in your ministry agenda. Read on and discover where you and your church should take up the challenge in your own city.

Remember that we offer some of the best in urban ministry literature available. In addition to all titles by Ray Bakke and Robert Linthicum, we are currently featuring:

•  “Can This Church Live” by Donald H. Matthews ($12)

•  “Churches, Cities, and the Human Community” edited by Clifford J. Green ($15)

•  “Congregations in Transition: A Guide for Analyzing, Assessing, and Adapting in Changing Communities,” by Carl Dudley and Nancy Ammerman ($17) and

•  “Starting a Nonprofit at Your Church” by Joy Skjegstad ($14)

All of these books are filled with creative ideas for making urban ministry happen with strength and power. To purchase single editions (or multiple copies) contact the CityVoices office at (312) 726-1200, or roger@cityvoices.com . (VISA and MC are accepted.)

Roger Johnson, CityVoices / SCUPE

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Christian Community Development Association: It All Began at Lawndale

In 1975 a fresh-out-of-college Wayne Gordon moved into Chicago ’s North Lawndale community. His reason for coming there was to teach and coach football at the local high school. (A previous coach had been shot by gang members, the job was open.) North Lawndale was then a community, typical of most inner city neighborhoods with a high crime rate, inferior education, and civic abandonment by government neglect and white flight. There is no question that Wayne Gordon’s relocation to the Lawndale community was the linchpin in a few initial development efforts, the founding of the Lawndale Community Church and later the Christian Community Development Association.

The story began, and remains, an intensely practical example of what can be done when a few Christians decide to relocate, team up with local believers, and together pool their gifts and energies in the work of community development. Wayne Gordon explains it all with another practical example. “This philosophy is known as Christian Community Development, which is not a concept that was developed in a classroom, nor formulated by people foreign to the poor community. These are Biblical, practical principles evolved from years of living and working among the poor. John Perkins in Mississippi first developed this philosophy. John and Vera Mae Perkins moved back to their homeland of Mississippi from California in 1960 to help alleviate poverty and oppression. Through their work and ministry, Christian Community Development was conceived.”

What started out in North Lawndale as a weight-training program for football players, soon became a much-needed laundromat for their families, then a Bible study and church, for youth, children and adults. On into the 1980s, it was only natural to pray over community needs and swiftly take action. A housing ministry was born, the beginnings of Lawndale Community Health Center established, and a first-class gym built from an abandoned car dealership. As momentum grew, assistance from outside the community followed. Students came to volunteer, some spending lengthy internships in the community. Doctors, nurses, youth workers and development experts followed. Lawndale Community Development Association was even able to begin creating jobs for its people with the establishment of a Lou Malnati’s Pizza Restaurant on a busy neighborhood corner.

While momentum and growth always seemed to be there, Gordon knew there had to be more to Lawndale ’s version of community development. John Perkins had taught him that r econciliation is at the heart of the gospel. Jesus said that the essence of Christianity could be summed up in two inseparable commandments: Love God, and love thy neighbor. First, Christian Community Development is concerned with reconciling people to God and bringing them into a church fellowship where they can be discipled in their faith.

But the gospel, rightly understood, is wholistic. It responds to people as whole people; it does not single out just spiritual or just physical needs. Christian Community Development begins with people transformed by the love of God, who then respond to God's call to share the gospel with others through evangelism, social action, economic development, and justice.

Gordon knew that churches were rarely integrated and hence, the gospel witness vastly weakened in America ’s cities. Christian Community Development recognizes that the task of loving the poor is shared by the entire body of Christ, black, white, brown, rich, poor; urban and suburban. The Bible transcends culture and race, while the church is still having a hard time with these essentials. Christian Community Development is intentional about reconciliation and works hard to bring people of all races and cultures into the one worshipping body of Christ.

Lawndale Community Church and its emerging Christian Community Developing Association soon developed even more working and transferable, principles. Each could be translated into a theme in and of itself: redistribution of skills and resources, leadership development, starting with felt needs, keeping it all church-based, understanding development in the context of a wholistic approach, and empowering people as community developers in their own right.

In focusing on development being church based, Wayne Gordon maintains, “ nothing other than the community of God's people is capable of affirming the dignity of the poor and enabling them to meet their own needs. It is practically impossible to do effective wholistic ministry apart from the local church. One problem today is that the church has not involved itself in developing its communities. Often, the church has even been an unfriendly neighbor in communities, almost irrelevant to the needs of the people around them. Because of this, many parachurch organizations have started to do the work of loving their neighbor that the church has neglected.”

While good work continues to expand around the efforts of the Lawndale Community Church and its separate 501(c)(3) agencies, there are clearly many remaining needs within the North Lawndale community. For one, Wayne Gordon sees a lack of leadership, and sees it as essential that new leadership be developed from among the community’s own people. Crime, political corruption, sub-standard housing, and in some cases the double-edged sword of gentrification and displacement hangs over many households. These all remain as challenges to the work of Lawndale Community Church and as well as many other development organizations working within the larger neighborhood.

Contact: Wayne Gordon, Christian Community Development Association, 3555 W. Ogden Avenue
Chicago , IL 60623 , (773) 762-0994, gocoach@aol.com

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Jim Swearingen: Staying Concerned for Columbus

(Jim Swearingen leads the work of Urban Concern -- a Christian community development agency in Columbus, Ohio . Back in 1988, he was commissioned by his home church, Xenos Christian Fellowship, to start a social service ministry that would focus on meeting the spiritual and physical needs of those outside of the church. Urban Concern is a ministry of Xenos Christian Fellowship. Urban Concern’s work continues to expand, now with the help of more than 300 active volunteers.)

When it comes to Christian community development, Columbus , Ohio ’s Urban Concern operates by the “4-D Strategy.”

1. Define the geographic boundaries of an economically disadvantaged community to serve. Target your resources to a specific area. Designate names of streets that border the area. Urban Concern has chosen the South Linden community, slightly more than one square mile in size, including a government housing project called Rosewind.

2. Describe the needs of the community, giving special consideration to the felt needs of the people living there. Study the area's demographics and life situation. Determine the food, housing, clothing, education, safety, job training, counseling and spiritual needs. Identify which people to serve. Survey the community and determine other programs serving area residents.

3. Distribute resources and services to the community through relationships with the people. Share resources, skills, and services to match the described needs. Develop programs that allow people to build relationships. Establish criteria for interacting with other agencies and churches. Initiate relationships with other churches and agencies that wish to participate.

4. Develop responsibility among people in the community, especially the youth, for its continuing development. Target the young children to prevent damage from gang involvement, lack of education, and drug addiction. Use programs that develop Christian community leaders.

Recently, CityVoices spoke with Urban Concern director Jim Swearingen, asking a couple questions about the focus of Christian community development in Columbus. 

Jim, how has Urban Concern focused its own ministry toward communities, people groups, societal and/or spiritual needs in Columbus ?

The first “D” of our urban strategy is to “define” a geographical area. I also had a burden for racial reconciliation, and then also to try and figure out how our church could help the poor. We looked at the demographics of our city and picked out one of the highest poverty, high crime areas that was also African American. That’s the largest minority group in Columbus and we wanted to reach across racial lines. Columbus is about 40 percent African American, and our target area for ministry – within the South Linden community – is about 98 percent African American.

Human needs have remained pretty much the same since we started ministry back around 1990, but we’ve begun some new ways of addressing those needs. We started meeting spiritual needs through Bible studies attracting hundreds of kids. Weekly attendance is about 150, but throughout the school year we’ll have upwards of 400 different kids attending.

We saw a need to break the cycle of poverty so we started a job club for young teens. By the time someone is 14, they will have an understanding of the work culture and some experience through the job club. When we first started work in South Linden , most of the kids were dropping out of school, selling drugs and ending up in jail. Now, most of the kids do graduate from high school and get a job. So, we’ve effectively seen a trend towards breaking the cycle of poverty.

What does Urban Concern’s present work tell you about all of Columbus, and perhaps your future role in the greater community?

Frankly, I have a vision that we actually can turn around, to a big extent, the poverty and crime in our city. Education is one of the big issues. As more manufacturing jobs leave Columbus , the entry-level jobs are not paying a livable wage. You need an education in order to make enough money to support a family. We’re trying to challenge the Columbus educational system by starting a private Christian school here in our neighborhood. We’re trying to dispel the myth that low-income, African American kids can’t learn. You hear teachers offering up a lot of excuses in urban school systems. Not to downplay the challenges teachers face, but the large school systems don’t seem to work for the poor, and that’s pretty well demonstrated. Our Christian school has been up and running for six years now, growing by one grade each year.

No one has strategically looked at Columbus from a whole church perspective. We’re beginning to gather statistics on where the highest poverty, highest crime areas are located, and then organize urban ministries throughout our city to teach one another (kind of like a mini-CCDA convention). And then we’re going to start bringing in resources from suburban churches and other places to be directed by the people in the urban neighborhoods. We need to strategically look at our city, its needs and all its opportunities.

Contact: Jim Swearingen, Urban Concern, 1478 Cleveland Avenue , Columbus , OH 43211 , (614) 580-1769, swearingenj@xenos.org , http://www.xenos.org/ministries/urbanconcern/index.htm

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Faith Christian Fellowship: Reversing Trends in Baltimore

In 1983 God led a diverse group of believers (with meager financial resources) to a spacious facility on East 42nd Street in Baltimore , Maryland . Over the past 22 years, Faith Christian Fellowship, led by Pastor Craig Garriott, has grown, worshiped, done justice and pursued unity in the city’s Pen Lucy community. God has used Faith Christian Fellowship to reconcile lost sons and daughters and to build them up in Christ.

Faith Fellowship’s vision is to see God's grace carried to ever more people in the Pen Lucy neighborhood, its surrounding communities and all of Baltimore City . With that in mind, the members of Faith Fellowship are now building a gymnasium / multipurpose center to carry out God's call to serve their community. Other community development ministries of the fellowship include:

• Baltimore Christian School , providing Pen Lucy’s families with an excellent Christian education regardless of economic means. It presently serves 80 children in grades K-5. The dream is to expand the school to accommodate grades K-8 and serve up to 200 children with a new gymnasium and classrooms.
• Pen Lucy Youth Partnership provides recreational and educational support opportunities for the outh of Pen Lucy through sports leagues and tutorial services. The dream is to expand these ministries to neighborhood children through the proposed gymnasium / multipurpose facility and an expanded after-school facility.
• Summer Youth Ministries has served the Pen Lucy Community for over a decade through a summer camp program including recreation, sports, music, computer instruction, field trips, Bible instruction and service projects. The dream is to enhance the learning and recreational opportunities and extend them to more children.

(Excerpted from “God and the City,” by Joel Kotkin and Karen Speicher, The American Enterprise, Oct.-Nov. 2003)

In a city known for its strictly racially segregated neighborhoods, Penn-Lucy’s non-denominational Faith Christian Fellowship is a remarkably mixed congregation, equally divided between black and white worshippers, with a sprinkling of Asians. Pastor Craig Garriott conducts the services, his sermons interrupted by brisk affirmations from the pews. Inside the old brick church there is a remarkable sense of fellowship and purpose. It’s a spirit that is sorely needed in Penn-Lucy and adjacent neighborhoods in Baltimore . At a time when crime has dropped in most cities, this area has long been plagued by violence. Property values remain depressed, as both black and white middle-class families sell their homes in hopes of a better life in the suburbs.

For Garriott, who grew up in the rolling hills of suburban Baltimore County, reversing this flow to once again root middle-class people in the city is one critical mission of the church. “Nobody likes poverty and crime, and if you have the option to go somewhere else you do it, whether you are white or African American,” he says. “Our vision is to create a context where folks can continue to stay here, to make this a place that people do not want to leave.”

The Fellowship and its 200 members make strong contributions by offering a series of vocational, recreational, and family counseling services. Although seemingly small, efforts such as those by this single church may prove more important to the fate of Penn-Lucy, and the city itself, than the billions of dollars that have gone into downtown redevelopment to promote Baltimore as a tourist destination. None of Baltimore ’s much-ballyhooed developments, Garriott points out, have prevented the city’s residential neighborhoods from slowly dying, as their best families and businesses leak away.

The key to reversing urban decline, Garriott suggests, is to first and foremost rekindle the spirit of involvement and human connectedness. “God created us as social creatures, with a need for faith and love and social relationships. We are not just machines creating things for consumption. We are physical, emotional beings,” he explains. “The whole question of creating community is paramount today. We live in such a fragmented society. To preserve a city or neighborhood, you need to create places, institutions where people can be called by their first names and feel safe to relate.” Which is something churches do better than most any other urban organization.

Contact: Rev. Craig Garriott, Faith Christian Fellowship, 505 East 42nd Street , Baltimore MD 21218 , (410) 323-0202, fcf.church@verizon.net

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Carol Ann McGibbon: Training Leaders for Community Development

(Carol Ann McGibbon is Co-director of the Master of Arts in Community Development program at North Park University, and also Executive Vice-President of the Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral Education, both in Chicago.)

Carol Ann, give us a rationale for the MACD program. Why is it important to earn a degree in community development, rather than simply gain proficiency in the field?

I’d give the same response that I would to a person wanting to enter ministry. Perhaps they have been a active layperson in the church all their life. They’ve listened to sermons, engaged in Bible studies and acquired a set of good ministry skills. Yet many people interested in pastoral ministry agree that there are foundational skills sets that seminary education offers. They may wish to gain proficiency in pastoral care, theological and biblical studies, urban ministry studies, and mission. Seminary would provide them the opportunity to work with peers regarding practical strategies for ministry.

The genesis of the MACD program came from Christian community development practitioners. We had people like Mary Nelson (Bethel New Life) and Wayne Gordon (CCDA) telling us that SCUPE was doing great work in preparing students for urban ministry. But they asked: What are you doing for people who are on the cutting edge of Christian community development? Could you develop an educational program that would help young leaders hit the ground running?

I talked to many people who were doing great work in running community development organizations and asked, “If you were to design a curriculum for a young person coming into your organization, what would you say they needed to learn?” Grant writing topped the list as a needed skill. Other skills included: knowledge of the city’s systems and how they work, understanding urban policy and its impact on neighborhoods and community analysis. Everyone agreed that it would take a couple of years to understand these things if a person were trying to figure them out all by themselves. A program that could assist people in learning both the foundational theory and the practical skills of resident-based community development would be of immense value.

Contact: Carol Ann McGibbon, SCUPE / MACD, 3225 W. Foster Avenue , Chicago , IL 60625 , (773) 244-5643, cmcgibbon@northpark.edu .

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Leadership Institute for Christian Community Development

A ground-breaking collaboration between Christian educational institutions and the Christian Community Development Association, takes place May 16 to June 5 in Chicago . Six courses will be offered, each aimed at strengthening the capacities of Christian community development organizations through graduate courses and noncredit certificates. Courses will be held at North Park University , 3225 W. Foster Avenue , Chicago IL 60625 , and on site in Chicago neighborhoods, hosted by Christian community development organizations (check specific course descriptions for locations).

Partners include: Christian Community Development Association, Campolo School for Social Change at Eastern University , Evangelical Covenant Church , North Park Theological Seminary, Master of Arts in Community Development at North Park University , Northwest Graduate School and SCUPE. Faculty members include: Wayne Gordon, John Perkins, Mary Nelson, Vivian Nix-Early, J. Nathan Corbitt, Mary Chase-Ziolek, David Frenchak, and Helene Slessarev-Jamir.

The Institute brings together respected educational institutions and nationally recognized practitioners of Christian community development to discover biblical and theological resources for the work of the church in community transformation, map community assets, build existing social capital and learn some of the best practices in Christian community development.

Courses:

CD 5340 Foundations for Arts-Based Community Mission and Development -- 3 semester hours, Dr. J. Nathan Corbitt and Dr. Vivian Nix-Early, The Campolo School for Social Change, Eastern University, May 17-21, 2005. This course presents foundational theory and theology for faith-based approaches to artistic expression in community mission and development within urban contexts. Location: North Park University .

CD 5320 Holistic Strategies for Christian Community Development -- 3 semester hours, Dr. Wayne L. Gordon and Dr. John M. Perkins, Christian Community Development Association, May 23-27, 2005. This course provides a theological foundation for engagement in holistic community development. Participants will be introduced to the principles and strategies of community organizing, the role of the church in community transformation and community capacity building. Location: Lawndale Community Church , 3827 West Ogden Avenue in Chicago.

CD 5510 Christian Traditions and Community Development -- 3 semester hours, Dr. David J. Frenchak, North Park University / SCUPE, May 23-27, 2005. This course is designed to give participants an appreciation of the rich resources within a variety of Christian traditions that can form a biblical foundation and rational for community revitalization. Location: North Park University .

CD 5330 Christian Community Economic Development -- 3 semester hours, Dr. Mary Nelson, Bethel New Life May 23-27, 2005. This course covers the essentials of Christian community economic development: the process by which residents of a low-income community, working together through the church and other supporters, can improve the economic well-being of their community. Location: Bethel New Life, 4950 West Thomas Street in Chicago .

CD 5110 Faith and Politics: Understanding Christian Engagement in Politics -- 3 semester hours, Dr. Helene Slessarev-Jamir, Wheaton College, May 31-June 4, 2005. This course will integrate the study of the “powers and principalities” with an examination of how contemporary American political institutions function. The course will also focus on a number of key public policy areas that are of particular importance to urban communities. Location: North Park University.

MNST 5137 Faith, Health and Community Development -- 1-3 semester hours, Dr. Mary Chase-Ziolek, R.N., North Park Theological Seminary June 3-5, 2005. There is a great deal that churches can do to improve the health of their communities when they work with other organizations. This course will explore the trends, models and concepts in the contemporary faith and health movement. Location: North Park University .

Registration: These courses are offered for graduate credit and for non credit continuing education. Noncredit fees: $250 per course (CCDA members eligible for scholarship), Graduate fees: $1,275 per course for North Park and Wheaton credit. Call for Eastern and Northwest Graduate School costs. Registration deadline: May 1, 2005

Note: We do require a minimum of 10 students to offer each course. Please call or email before making travel arrangements and after the registration deadline to ensure course is being offered. Housing options for out of town participants will be provided by North Park University and nearby hotel venues. Please contact us for options and rates. Housing reservation deadline is May 1, 2005

To register (or for further information) contact: Carol Ann McGibbon, North Park University / SCUPE, Box 07, 3225 W. Foster Avenue, Chicago, IL 60625, (773) 244-5643, cmcgibbon@northpark.edu

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Organizing as Community Development

Over a thousand people had gathered into a small Baptist church, and they were angry. It was July 31, 2000 in North Philadelphia , and a presidential campaign was just heating up. The people in the church, however, hadn’t gathered to support a candidate. They had gathered because of the failure of both political parties.

“Our homes are not fit for human life!” one woman at the church cried, motioning to the neighborhood around her. The crowd of 1,000, most of them poor minorities, sang together and prayed together. Then they stood up and chanted questions aloud to Governor Bush, whose presidential convention was beginning just a few miles away. Governor Bush, they cried, will you help restore our neighborhoods? Will you pay attention to the poor? A few weeks earlier, this group -- the East Coast branch of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) -- had literally stopped traffic in New York City with another attempt to highlight the crisis they see in low-income housing: placing a full-sized house in the street near Al Gore’s campaign office.

Being so confrontational hasn’t exactly made the IAF the darling of the political establishment. Even the Democratic Party, whose left wing probably agrees with the IAF more than it disagrees, has been slow to embrace it. The IAF and similar “faith-based community organizing groups” are grassroots, religious, and urban. They have remarkable potential to build urban power bases and strip conservatives of their monopoly over religion -- but so far, that potential is only partly fulfilled.

What faith-based community organizing groups understand, and liberals often do not, is that bringing faith and politics together at the grassroots level helps people find meaning in both. In his book “Race Matters,” Cornel West argues that liberals ignore the greatest problem facing Black America -- a nihilistic sense of worthlessness and despair -- because liberals are too afraid to talk about values and meaning in life. “If there is a hidden taboo among liberals,” he writes, “it is to resist talking too much about values because such discussions remove the focus from structures and especially because they obscure the positive role of government.”

Faith-based community organizing groups take traditionally conservative language of “values” and “personal responsibility” and use it to enact real change in communities that the Right ignores and the Left takes for granted. One of Saul Alinsky’s greatest legacies is the “Iron” -- not “Golden” -- rule: “Don’t do for others what they could do for themselves.” Rather than just providing services for the poor, the groups provide a mechanism for individuals to hold systems accountable and confront the forces that create despair.

The IAF and its peers don’t just make for fascinating theory -- they actually succeed. The living wage campaign, which has raised the salaries of many workers around the country, originated with the IAF’s Baltimore affiliate, Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD). A New York IAF group, East Brooklyn Congregations, started building homes for low-income people (“Nehemiah homes”) using a method that has since been adopted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And Gamaliel’s Gary, Indiana-area affiliate, the Northwest Indiana Federation of Interfaith Organizations, sponsored a land use and transportation plan that helped inspire the national smart growth movement.

For all of its success, faith-based community organizing is still not as powerful as it could be. It does not attract ready media attention; it is not nearly as influential as the labor movement; it has not matched the Christian Coalition’s use of religion for political purposes. Faith-based community organizing has a general problem dealing with the media and explaining itself to the outside world. The IAF, despite being the most established network, is surprisingly difficult to contact or understand structurally.

The grassroots nature of community organizing presents its own set of difficulties. While organizing groups try very hard to take their cue from members, this process can become problematic when the groups tackle problems caused by broader forces outside of their communities. The more complex the problem that groups undertake, the more likely the organizer will become the principal strategist of the organization.

A similar problem of self-definition has plagued faith-based community organizing groups’ attempts to determine what role they want to play in politics beyond the local level. All four of the groups are still better categorized as national networks than national organizations. PICO is tentatively exploring national strategies and Gamaliel recently decided to take a first step onto the national stage with an immigrant civil rights campaign. The IAF, in contrast, has explicitly not moved beyond regional-level organizing.

The major non-faith-based community organizing group, ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now), provides a contrasting model. Founded in 1970, ACORN now involves over 150,000 families, who are organized into chapters. Yet ACORN, despite its similarity to faith-based community organizing, has decided that national campaigns and strategy can complement and serve its grassroots model. While ACORN’s national projects originate from grassroots concerns, it tries to address issues that lie beyond city and state control. It has played a major advocacy role during Congressional debates on welfare reform reauthorization, founded a labor union for low-wage service workers and helped found the progressive Working Families Party.

People who worry about the declining power of faith, urban communities, and the progressive movement would do well to look at faith-based community organizing. Its power as a model comes from reclaiming religious rhetoric from the Right and restoring meaning to people’s lives while making real changes in people’s streets and communities.

Excerpted from The Next American City , (Religion & Cities - October 2003), “Organizing Like Jesus: The Politics of Faith-Based Community Organizing,” by Shayna Strom

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Thanks for Reading CityVoices!

Next month CityVoices takes on an always lively subject – Urban Evangelism. With so many lost people at our doorsteps, shouldn’t city churches be the “experts” when it comes to proclaiming the live-giving gospel of Jesus? Yet, with so many hurting people in our communities, why shouldn’t city churches be the most compassionate and caring voices as they meet human needs? Is it really a matter of “either / or” in effective urban ministry? In April we begin a provocative search.

Remember to call CityVoices at (312) 726-1200, to order any of the following books:

•  “Can This Church Live?” by Donald H. Matthews ($12)

•  “Churches, Cities, and Human Community” edited by Clifford J. Green ($15)

•  “Congregations in Transition: A Guide for Analyzing, Assessing, and Adapting in Changing Communities,” by Carl Dudley and Nancy Ammerman ($17)

•  “Starting a Nonprofit at Your Church” by Joy Skjegstad ($14)

We look forward to hearing from you and meeting any of your ministry needs,

Roger Johnson – CityVoices / SCUPE (Chicago)

(312) 726-1200