People here call our church Graffiti. The official name is East Seventh Baptist Church, but we don’t use the name much. The story goes that a group of college students from Alabama on a summer mission trip were bothered by the graffiti on the mission’s storefront. So, they painted over it. The next day, the graffiti was back. They painted over it again, and again the graffiti returned.
This happened several times, until one person in the group said, “Why fight it? Jesus Christ can be a message written on the wall, too. Let’s call the place Graffiti, and put our own message on the neighborhood.”
So, they did. Bright, clean, colorful, jazzy.
One of the neighbors wrote in the corner: “The world is coming to a new beginning.” Perhaps it was, but it was a long time coming.
When I moved into this neighborhood with my wife and two toddlers fifteen years ago, life was about one thing: survival. The drama included two characters: homelessness and drugs. Today, life on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, at least in the blocks surrounding my church, is about hope.
My neighborhood looks a little like Sesame Street-gray stone-faced buildings with narrow stoops above concrete steps and sidewalks. But the people in my neighborhood are not Big Bird, Elmo, and Oscar the Grouch. Seventh Street is home to Big Jane, homeless Tommy, and Luis the pusher.
They live in cramped apartments, in abandoned buildings, and in the park across the street—until the police closed it down. They wage a constant battle with alcohol and hunger, drugs, addicts and drug lords, and rats.
Catholic social worker Dorothy Day worked here forty years, starting in the 1930s. Ministering to the poverty and addictions of the time, she said, “We need to practice the duty of delight.” Many times I have wondered how she could say that. And many times I have renewed it as my pledge.
For me, the “duty of delight” has meant raising my two sons in an environment some people would flee if they had the money. This duty has meant confronting the dealers, embracing the users, feeding the homeless by the hundreds, and growing to call a small church of the poverty stricken, who are often angry and sometimes violent, family—all in the name of Christ. I’ve grown accustomed to the variety of smells that come with the neighborhood. It says “church” to me.
I didn’t always feel that way.
Pepto-pink and lily-whites
The Southern Baptist Convention had planted a mission on New York’s Lower East Side in 1974. By the time we called in 1986, the people were ready to build a local congregation there to strengthen the mission’s many programs of Bible study, meals for the homeless, and children’s ministry. When we found that the pastor/director position was open, both Susan and I had a sense of “oughtness” about it; we simply ought to be here. We applied.
Susan laughed when she saw the apartment I rented for us a few blocks from the mission. The walls were Pepto-Bismol pink and the street noise was almost unbearable, but I had signed a one-year lease. She ignored the crack house next door. We made a commitment going in that we were here for the long term, but looking back, it’s a wonder that we survived those first few years.
The local activist told me I wouldn’t last. “You’re a wimp,” he said—New Yorkers are very honest—but as it turns out, I’ve been here longer than he was or the priest at the Catholic church down the street. For several years, we met for lunch once a month. The support system we developed was important to me, especially in the beginning. With neighborhood tension rising over the homeless and rampant drug traffic, I had two showdowns coming: with the police and with Luis.
The King of Seventh Street
In our neighborhood, grandmothers encouraged their grandchildren to sell drugs. Dealers could make more money than working at McDonalds. That meant working for Luis. He ran our block.
Luis was polite, proud, and in control. He wore khaki pants and tight white T-shirts that showed off his muscles. He taught karate lessons to neighborhood kids, put them to work, and supplied their parents with crack. There was little street crime on our block. Luis and his men wouldn’t tolerate assault, purse snatching, or petty theft—only the big deals they made.
Everyone knew Luis, and most everyone respected him. Even the people who attended Graffiti church. Luis made life on the block predictable and safe, compared to the surrounding blocks. His men hustled the street people along to make room for the addicts desperate to buy another hit of cocaine or heroine.
In a sense, Luis was the engine in our economy. He sold drugs, provided employment for the teenagers, and gave our church’s feeding programs a steady supply of hungry people, because they had spent their grocery money on drugs. And Luis rewarded their patronage with a big block party every summer, with all the hot dogs and steaks they could eat.
“I want to talk to you,” Luis said to me one night on the street. That day I had witnessed Luis roughing up a man who had yelled at him.
I swallowed; he cleared his throat.
“Listen, I’m going to be gone this summer, and I’m not going to be able to have my party for the block. I want to give you the money I usually spend on the block party and have you do it up right. Buy steaks, get a band—whatever you need for your meal.”
I refused to answer then, but said, “We have to talk.” Luis agreed to meet me the next evening in the empty lot beside the mission.
At twilight I ventured outside. The lot was flanked by abandoned cars, and I wondered if Luis’s men were hanging out there in case I started some trouble.
I heard the gravel crunch, and in a moment Luis was staring at me.
“Look, Luis,” I said, suddenly brave. “Would the money you give us come from dealing drugs?”
“You know it does.”
“I appreciate your offer,” I responded, “but it just doesn’t make sense for us to be funded by the biggest drug dealer in the neighborhood.” Then I waited.
In a moment, Luis leaned forward and whispered in a more serious tone, “You know, when I was in Vietnam, I told God that I’d give him my life if he would just get me out of there. God did get me out of there, but when I got back to New York, well, I couldn’t find a job. This is the only thing that worked out for me.”
I nodded while Luis told me what he would do instead of giving money for the block party. He would support our boys’ club and give them tickets for the World Series.
Finally, I stopped him. “Luis, God doesn’t need that. All he wants is your heart.”
In a moment, he said, “In a year’s time, I’m going to give my life to Christ. I’m going to stand before this neighborhood and tell everyone. It will change the neighborhood.”
We talked well past dark, but I couldn’t convince Luis to make a commitment that night.
Tent city showdown
On my daily walk from our apartment to the mission, there were times when no fewer that thirty people stopped me to ask for money or help. Rents were unbelievably high, and landlords who could find reasons were evicting poorer tenants from their rent-controlled apartments so they could charge rents many times higher.
Tompkins Square Park was called “Dog Doo Park” by residents when we moved to New York. Five years later, many were calling it home. Tompkins Square was a tent city. And the police threatened to close it down.
Many of those who lived there were long-time homeless people and mentally ill; others were local people who had simply fallen on hard times. Many we knew by name: Martha and Junior, two of our Bible study attenders who had given up drugs and were planning to marry, Tommy in the wheelchair, and Luigi the bongo player. They had no place to go. The city’s shelters were already full and dangerous.
The ministers in the area, including my lunch-partners from the Lutheran and Catholic churches, petitioned the mayor for reconsideration of the plan to close the park entirely. “They’re playing politics with people’s lives,” the priest said to me.
The community board had floated a plan to renovate the park in stages, giving the squatters time to find housing. All the clergy and our local council member opposed closing the park, but it appeared that real estate developers, who were interested in a development on the other side of the park, had the mayor’s ear. I attended a public meeting that quickly degenerated into a shouting match. It was clear we would have to take a stand.
The police arrived at dawn. They were met by ministers, tent-dwellers, and vehement anti-government protesters who had taken up the cause. I stood beside Tommy and his dog.
“Are you going to resist arrest?” a police officer asked me.
I told him no and went quietly. My wrists were cuffed, and I was put in the paddy wagon. In the darkness, I heard Luis describing booking procedures, and in a few minutes, the doors swung open and officers lifted Tommy in. A friend took his dog.
I was released soon, but it was several weeks before I saw Tommy again. “I want to rededicate my life,” he said to me on the street outside the park. “I’ll be at your place Sunday.”
Police built a ten-foot fence around the park, except for the dog run on the side by the expensive apartments. We changed the name of our sandwich distribution from FLIP (Free Lunch In the Park) to FLOP (Free Lunch Outside the Park). And I found I had a new acceptance among the people of our neighborhood. Since I was arrested for standing with them, I had become one of them.
Soon after that I also discovered I had a growing resentment to our ministry.
When duty isn’t enough
Some monks pledge themselves to poverty, chastity, and obedience. For some clerics there is an additional pledge—the pledge of stability. A friend in a similar ministry once refused a man who wanted to volunteer with them for two months. “Why not?” the man asked.
“Because these people have a whole history of broken relationships. If you come and grow close to some of them and then leave, that’s just one more broken relationship.”
We came with plans to stay. We unpacked our bags, so to speak. We found a better apartment, and our sons have thrived in their schools. When my son Freeman was five, I told my brother that he was the only child in his kindergarten who could read. My brother replied, “If you keep him in public school, when he’s sixteen, he’ll still be the only kid who can read.” But, in fact, both boys are now teenagers and are in better high schools than the one I attended.
Susan copes well. It was difficult, at first, when we would visit relatives and see their homes and their lives. But we’ve learned that we’re poor only when we compare ourselves to people who have money. We didn’t feel poor in seminary, because nobody has money when they’re in seminary. The same is true on the Lower East Side. No one owns a house or car or has cherry trees or a yard. We fit right in.
My main adjustment has been one of attitude. After the raid on the park, ministry seemed to get tougher. We had a leadership conflict at church. While distributing sandwiches, I was confronted by a man with a knife. I refereed a domestic dispute, wedged between an irate boyfriend and the door to his estranged girlfriend’s apartment. My health declined, and finally I was diagnosed with pneumonia.
During that illness, the Lord confronted me. My whole world was angry. I had taken the hurt to heart, and with it, grievances against those who had hurt me. My life was all about duty, and not at all about delight.
Luis’s new deal
Several months passed. I was beginning to recover physically when an unexpected event signaled a spiritual breakthrough for our community.
“They got them all last night, Pastor,” a woman at the deli told me. “At least fifty federal agents came in. They got Luis, too.”
The King of Seventh Street had been arrested along with his knights and horsemen. Even the paper called him the “king” when it reported his trial.
I knew God was doing something important in our community, but my neighbors were not so pleased. The economy would suffer, they said. And who would keep the streets “safe”?
“This block’s going downhill,” one said.
He was wrong.
Before Luis’s arrest, we saw perhaps one teenager a year come to faith in Christ. The first one who accepted Christ wanted to quit after six months because of pressure from his drug-dealing friends. In the two years after Luis’s drug operation was shut down, we saw 60 teenagers accept Christ. Many regularly attend our Thursday night youth Bible study.
I saw some kids hustling on the street last year, but this time they weren’t dealing drugs as they would have been five years ago. They were raising money for a mission trip to help a home for unwed mothers in Kentucky.
It’s almost cool now to carry a Bible and attend church. Even in that, Luis is setting an example.
After Luis’s arrest, I received a letter from him. “Dear Pastor, Well, I have finally done what we talked about. I have accepted the Lord and become a Christian. Please come to visit me. Can you baptize me?”
I visited Luis, and it was true. It was all true.
Luis was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Today he continues to write me regularly to tell me about his spiritual growth. I write back and share what’s happening here, but I’m not sure he’ll recognize the neighborhood when he is released.
It’s changing. There are no tents in Tompkins Square Park and no drug deals on the streets. A few of the abandoned buildings have been torn down, replaced by condominiums. And we’re building a new church in the next block.
When we first arrived in Manhattan, I read about the dependency the people had on Moses. They whined and complained, and those people never reached the Promised Land. But their children did.
That convinced me that there are some kinds of ministry and evangelism that are generational. It requires a commitment of more than a year or two. We reach 600 people per week through our 26 ministries, the same people with the same problems week after week. But, eventually, we see lives transformed.
Dorothy Day would be pleased. Our duty has become delight.
Taylor Field is the author of A Church Called Graffiti (with Jo Kadlecek, Broadman and Holman, 2001).
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
