DO THE POOR FEEL WELCOME IN OUR CHURCH?

For two years we were poor. In 1979 I tried earning a living as a free-lance writer, a job that yielded high personal rewards, but low and irregular income. As a result, our family entered a period of poverty.

We had just returned to Oklahoma after three years away. We returned to the same middle-class congregation we had attended before, where many of our friends worshiped, and where we had felt at home. But after attending every Sunday for a year, we still didn’t feel a part. We were still outsiders trying to get in.

Why the difference between this time and last?

We were poor. As a poor family attending a middle-class church, we had run into a number of barriers-unintentionally erected-that kept us on the outside looking in.

We had not noticed these barriers in the years we’d been there before. In fact, as we looked back we could see how we ourselves had raised similar obstacles in a youth program we had directed in that church. But however such barriers are erected, they keep the poor from fully participating in the church.

The price tag of Christian fellowship

On the evening of our Sunday school class hayride, Ray Thompson was at our house debating aloud whether his family should go. He wanted desperately to make friends, to feel a part. But the hayride would cost them $4.50-and they had no milk in the house for their three children.

We would have been glad to take them as our guests, of course, but this fell during our “poverty years.” Our family couldn’t consider going, either.

The time for the cars to leave the church came and went, and Ray continued debating. He still had time to drive to the farm and meet the class there, though to go now would cost a couple of dollars more for gas. In the end Ray stayed home and bought milk for his children. The price tag of Christian fellowship was just too high.

The next month, the Sunday school class social took place within walking distance of our home. No gas expense. Admission was just one dollar for the whole family. Maybe this time we could go.

However, our only regular income at the time was $70 a week that my wife earned at a part-time Christmas job. During those six weeks, we had less than $15 a week to spend on groceries. On a budget that tight, one dollar made a critical difference. We stayed home and used the dollar for baby formula.

Thus, after a year back at our old home church, we still felt like outsiders. Though our Sunday school class had frequent socials where we could have renewed our friendships, three-fourths of them cost money for admission, child care, or both. That left us out. Our church didn’t charge admission for worship services or Sunday school. All were welcome, regardless of ability to pay. But when it came to Christian fellowship, to activities designed to promote a sense of family, community, and belonging, those unable to pay were often excluded.

My wife attended a women’s Bible study, however, that found several creative ways to eliminate financial barriers to participation.

To begin with, they don’t charge for child care. The regular church budget picks that up.

Once a month after Bible study, the small groups have lunch together. Brown-bag lunches have replaced the usual restaurant fare.

The only financial barrier remaining is the $10 per semester charge for materials. But the program leaders have announced that if a woman needs help, she need only ask-scholarships are available.

Of course, even requesting a $10 scholarship can humiliate-people just don’t like to ask for help in our culture. Better to pay for materials out of the church budget, or take up a free-will offering. Another possibility is the open-ended registration in which each person, mindful of Acts 2:32-34, is encouraged to pay according to his or her ability: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. … (As a result) there were no needy persons among them” (NIV).

Dressed for less than success

On the Sunday the Thompsons dedicated their baby, we were also dedicating our first child. As I dressed for church that morning, I pondered whether I should wear a coat and tie to fit in with most of the other fathers who would be standing before the congregation that morning. Or should I just wear a sport shirt in case Ray didn’t have a coat and tie? I compromised; I wore a sweater.

Ray showed up without coat and tie. Sandra wore the same dress she had worn the previous six Sundays-her only Sunday dress. They must have felt conspicuous. I hoped my apparel made them feel a little less so. But to make them feel truly comfortable, not just one, but many in the congregation would need to consciously dress not for success, but for comfort-the social comfort of others.

Not that the local banker should be admonished to wear t-shirt and blue jeans to worship. But if both the affluent and the poor are to feel at home in church, the congregation will need to dress in a way that welcomes both.

The custom-ized congregation

Once after a move, our family spent several months looking for a home church. For a while we visited a growing, upper-middle-income congregation.

We began attending shortly before the annual ladies’ luncheon. Judging from the description in the bulletin and the place settings displayed in the church promotions, it was to be quite a formal affair. The price of one ticket was more than I had ever spent on a single meal-more, in fact, than we usually spent for our entire family to eat out.

One woman, trying to make my wife feel welcome, not only invited her to the luncheon, but suggested she decorate one of the tables. To decorate a table required china, crystal, and silver for ten, a round linen tablecloth, and a centerpiece. Of course she didn’t know that our “china” consisted of five mismatched, badly scratched plastic plates, and that our “crystal” consisted of several plastic tumblers, all picked up at the dime store and needed until we could afford to move our household goods. Her attempt to make my wife feel welcome had quite the opposite effect. This custom of the church was just too rich for our blood.

Prescription glasses for the poor

For a middle-class congregation to reach out to lower-income families is to engage in cross-cultural ministry. Cross-cultural ministry is tricky. It is demanding. But it is rewarding. We gain a fuller understanding of the body of Christ, a greater appreciation of God himself, and we offer an irrefutable witness to the world of the gospel’s power to overcome sociological barriers.

And it is possible-if we can see through the eyes of those of the other culture. The poor can become an integral part of a multi-class congregation. But first we have to see those barriers that keep some members from freely participating in our Christian community.

– Eddy Hall

Goessel, Kansas