The secular world supports ministries that help people with their physical and mental needs, especially if the church tackles problems no one else can or will.
— Wayne Gordon
I am the founding pastor of Lawndale Community Church, located on the west side of Chicago in the fifteenth-poorest neighborhood in America. You might guess we’ve had our share of crises.
After meeting in a storefront for several years, we purchased a former factory. It had space adequate for offices, a worship center, classrooms, and community services such as a medical clinic and a gym, but it needed major renovation. In order to have a usable gym, for instance, we needed to excavate six feet of dirt from the basement.
We started with a few strong backs and some picks, shovels, and wheelbarrows. In their spare time, people from our church, of all ages, wheeled one load of dirt after another into our adjoining lot. The pile steadily grew. After nine months, someone donated a bulldozer and driver; we knocked a hole in the side of the building to fit the bulldozer through, and in three days the job was done.
But what to do with that mountain of dirt? When we received our building permit, the city said we could use the dirt for berms around our lot. But we had a lot more dirt than we needed for that. So for over a year, the dirt sat there.
Then trouble struck. One night a man hid behind the dirt pile, jumped out, and mugged a passerby. A short time later, it happened again. One tragic night, someone from behind the dirt pile shot and killed a passerby. Then another person was shot and killed. We had been working to turn our inner-city street into a place of light and peace, but it had turned even darker.
Naturally, we became desperate to move the dirt. The lowest bid from an excavation company to haul it away was $20,000 — way out of our budget. We tried to give the dirt away; we advertised in trade journals for contractors looking for dirt. No response.
The heat went up when I received a phone call from our alderman saying he was coming to my office. He arrived with the president of the neighborhood block club. The block president quickly came to the point:
“It’s your church’s fault we’re having so much violence here!” And his resentment had some racial overtones: “Here you are, a white guy thinking you can come in here and treat us with disrespect. You shouldn’t be here!”
The alderman intervened. “Reverend, we need to get rid of this dirt.”
I explained what we had tried to do and described our plans to use some of the dirt for the eight-foot-high berms.
“We don’t want any berms!” the block president interrupted. “Gangs will hide behind them. There will be more muggings and shootings.”
I felt embattled and defensive. We had been living and working in the neighborhood with good intentions, but some people didn’t see that. All they saw was violence and tragedy as a result of our efforts. Racial tensions, it seemed, were not lowering but rising! And now the political establishment viewed us as a problem.
Though this episode was resolved (as you’ll see), it revealed a common tension. No matter the church setting, hostility against the church is a growing phenomenon in our culture. Whether the source is the local zoning board, the judicial system, the media, or the next door neighbor, churches are having to learn to function in a culture that sometimes views them more as a detriment than a benefit.
Are those outside the church really as hostile as they seem? Is it possible to get them on our side? What should we do when faced with implacable, unmistakable opposition?
Keep It in Perspective
I’ve found that hostility against the church is rarely hostility against the church per se. A lot of it has nothing to do with our faith, and the sooner we put that into perspective, the better.
When I first tried to move into a black Chicago neighborhood, I went from apartment to apartment listed for rent. But for over a month, each landlord would say, “We don’t have anything available.” I didn’t understand what the problem was.
One day I knocked on the door of a manager of a twenty-six-unit complex; I told her I wanted to see the three-room apartment for rent. The manager, Mrs. Washington, said, “We don’t ‘mix’ in this building.” It was my white skin that was the problem.
I persisted, and finally she showed me the apartment. A short time later, I moved in. Though neighbors were friendly enough, I felt they held me at a distance. They could not figure out why a white man would want to live in their neighborhood. I didn’t blame them for their attitude, but I was troubled by it.
That December, after living in the neighborhood for four months, I flew home for Christmas, leaving my locked van parked in front of the apartment. When I returned a week later, I found the driver’s side window of my van broken and my spare tire sitting on the front seat.
At the front door of my apartment, I met Mrs. Washington. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said anxiously. Handing me a sheet of paper, she said, “Call the police and ask for this officer.”
When the police arrived, they were shocked to find I was white.
“You live here?”
“Yes.”
“This is your van?”
“Yes.”
“This is unbelievable,” the policeman said. “Within minutes of the break-in, three people on this street called us.”
The person who had broken into my van was a heroin addict who lived two doors down from me. My black neighbors, who seemed to have been suspicious of me, had called the police on a life-long neighbor. Then, for the next twenty-four hours until I returned home, they set up a neighborhood watch to keep an eye on my van.
I was glad I hadn’t let my false assumptions get the better of me. Furthermore, I began to see things from the landlord’s point of view: There were virtually no white people in North Lawndale; many of these landlords probably suspected I was a drug dealer. I was a potential source of trouble. Why bother?
The same is true of some of the hostile reactions churches get from neighbors. Often their motives have nothing to do with our faith; they are just concerned about property values, flooding, and traffic congestion — things we’re all concerned about in our own neighborhoods.
Sometimes, though, we in the church bring the opposition on ourselves.
After we bought our building in 1983, I went to a neighborhood block club meeting to communicate the vision of our church. During the meeting someone asked, “Why are you here?”
I stood up and said, “God has given me a supernatural love for black people. It’s something spiritual, a calling from God on my life. I’m going to live out my life and faith in the black community.”
Someone interrupted me, “Are you saying that in order to love black people, you need supernatural ability from God?”
“No, no. That’s not what I’m saying,” I replied.
“Are you saying our neighborhood needs you? That we can’t make it unless a white man comes to save us?”
The night ended with hard feelings. I had been culturally insensitive and naive. I look back and realize the hostility that evening was brought on by me.
Finally, we need to see our problems with other people in the largest of perspectives. We may need to remind ourselves that even though we are God’s special people, he’s not necessarily going to treat us specially.
My first two years in the city, no one broke into my home. When I decided to marry, I planned to bring my wife with me to live in North Lawndale. Friends warned, “You can’t do that. You can’t bring your wife into that neighborhood. It’s too rough.” I thought otherwise: we were doing God’s work, sacrificing a great deal to live there. Surely he would protect us.
The night we returned from our honeymoon, Anne and I found that our home had been broken into. We were devastated and hurt.
But that was only the beginning. Regularly for the years since we’ve been here, something troubling happens; my car has been stolen, broken into, and involved in accidents; burglars have broken into our home ten times.
After the tenth break-in, I was irate. “Why are you letting this happen, Lord?”
He communicated something clearly to my spirit. “Wayne, you think you’re pretty great, don’t you?”
“What do you mean, Lord?”
“You think you’re better than the people around you. You have to understand I love the prostitute living next door to you as much as I love you. You have to quit expecting preferential treatment. If it rains in this neighborhood, it’s going to rain on you. If it snows here, it’s going to snow on you. Crime is a part of this community, so you’re going to experience it, too.”
Turning Outsiders into Your-siders
Our ministry regularly sends out a prayer letter. I sign it, “Yours for a better world through Christ, Wayne.” A Jewish man, the ceo of a major corporation, receives that letter and responds each time by sending us a thousand dollars. He is not a messianic Jew.
Why does he support us? And why have so many secular agencies — government and private agencies that you would think would be hostile to us — worked with us? How have we turned potential critics into friends?
In addition to ministering to people’s spirits, we minister to their bodies and minds — and most people, no matter their faith, can support those types of ministries.
• Ministry to the body. At Lawndale Community Church, we run a medical clinic with seventeen doctors and eleven nurses on staff. We have an office in the state welfare building. Previously, a pregnant woman on welfare had to wait up to six weeks before receiving funds for vitamins and prenatal checkups. Since the first six weeks of pregnancy are crucial to a child’s health, we began a program providing care until the state funding kicks in.
We also have a housing development corporation that buys abandoned properties, remodels the buildings, and sells them to people in the church and neighborhood for affordable prices.
• Ministry to the mind. Many are alarmed and critical about what happens in our public schools, and rightfully so. But rather than run from the school system, we thought we should get involved.
Every year we host an appreciation dinner for all the teachers and staff of the three nearby public schools. We award plaques, for instance, for the most creative teacher of the year. Since the meeting is held at our church, we say a prayer and perhaps have special music with a Christian message, but I don’t preach.
Also, when one school couldn’t fund a program, we gave it $500 to do so. And we let these local schools use our basketball court at no charge.
Who, then, do these schools pick for their graduation speaker or assemblies? Often they ask me or my co-pastor, Carey Casey. In a low-key way, we’re able to talk about God and how he helps us in life.
And recently when the administrator of one of these schools was going through a tough time, he started attending our church services; he knew we cared.
The secular world supports ministries that help people with their mental and physical needs, especially if the church tackles problems no one else can or will.
The key steps to meeting those neglected needs are these:
1. Invite the church’s neighbors to discuss neighborhood needs.
2. At the meeting, let them do the talking. Make a note of their suggestions (sidewalks need fixing; moms need a place to drop off their kids once a week; high schoolers need a place for activity; young couples need marriage counseling), no matter your first impression of its feasibility.
3. Determine with your church’s leaders what items on the list are doable.
How much you can realistically accomplish isn’t the issue. Church resources are limited, after all. But even a small start can communicate a big message: the church is there to help. That will get and keep neighbors on your side.
You Can Play By Your Rules
Some churches feel that if they are going to win the approval or support of the neighborhood and local social agencies, they have to alter significantly their ministry. We have not found this to be true. In fact, people respect our distinctives as a Christian church. Usually the only thing they ask for is something we would do anyway.
A secular charitable organization recently arranged a meeting with me and the pastors of two other churches to see if they could support us in some of our social work. They respected how we were getting the job done, and they wanted to funnel their money through a proven organization.
But that posed them some difficulties. “Our by-laws state that we cannot give our money to a church,” they said. “But if you could completely separate your social work from your church, then we could give you some money.”
“The bottom line,” I answered, “is that without our church, our development corporation (which handles all our housing, education, and economic development) would be ineffective. Our Christian faith is the motive for all we do. The church has to remain in control of the development corporation.”
They eventually decided they would bend the rules and give their money to an organization run by a church.
And contrary to what one might think, our health clinic is not required to have a particular abortion policy as a result. Our clinic does not perform abortions, nor does it counsel anyone to have an abortion or make referrals for abortion. Furthermore, this secular charity has not meddled with what I preach or with any policies of the church. They respect the fact that we are a church and have a unique mission.
They did, of course, have two conditions for working with us. But these did not pose a problem.
1. No discrimination. In our prenatal care program, we were required to help anyone, Asian or Hispanic, Muslim or Jew, who came for help. But this was our intent in the first place.
2. No manipulative proselytizing. Our medical care, they said, couldn’t be dependent on people listening to a sermon or reading a piece of literature.
Again, that wasn’t a concern, because we know our ministry will provide plenty of evangelistic opportunities without our initiating evangelistic conversations. We are not prohibited from talking about God or about our church with anyone. Our doctors can ask a patient if he or she would like to pray, but we cannot require a patient to pray.
Whether it’s helping with funding or just respecting what we do, the secular world will more likely be on our side if we maintain such practices, which are, in the end, Christian practices.
Softening Hostility
Sometimes, of course, no matter what we do, no matter how diplomatic and loving we are, we’re going to face stern opposition. That sort of thing happens to people who follow Christ. When it happens, though, I have found a few ways to soften the hostility.
• Get face to face with opponents. One neighborhood block club opposed our church because our development corporation was buying up empty lots and vacant buildings. After the building was gutted and remodeled, people from our church, some of whom were white, were buying them. The block club complained we were taking over the neighborhood, pushing black people out, moving white people in.
When the criticisms became pointed, I asked the club president if I could meet with him and then later speak at a block club meeting. I assured him, “There are no questions you can’t ask me.”
We didn’t resolve all the tensions at those meetings. There are some people who still question our motives. But face-to-face encounters helped.
• Do the little things. One agency that helped fund some of our programs began questioning some of our methods. One afternoon we had a long, sometimes heated, discussion, but we didn’t resolve our disagreements.
After the meeting, though, I sent each member of this funding agency a note saying, “I appreciate your work in this agency, and I’m impressed with the many good things this agency is accomplishing.”
Small acts of kindness like this reduce friction, show goodwill, and “overcome evil with good” (Rom. 12:21).
Another time, neighbors across the street from our church became angry about some of our activities: we were too noisy; too many kids were wandering around the neighborhood. They even complained to the alderman about our “insensitivity.”
A month after they made that call, however, they asked us if we would let them borrow a few folding chairs. It would have been easy to say, “Sorry, our chairs aren’t available.” Instead, we lent them the chairs and by doing so smoothed the relationship.
• Pray not only for but with opponents. Whenever I finish talking with our alderman, whether we are angry with each other or not, whether we’re at City Hall or the local ward office, I ask, “Can we pray?” I have never been refused. If the circumstances seem appropriate, I’ve done the same thing with others. I’ve found that praying together with my opponents keeps our conflict less heated.
• Focus on the opportunity. The school prayer issue doesn’t concern me. Kids can pray in school anytime they want. The only thing prohibited is adults forcing kids to pray. Instead of an obstacle, in fact, I see a tremendous opportunity: for young people to minister at their schools.
Before I started Lawndale Community Church, I taught at Farragut High School, located in the same neighborhood as our church. I also coached the wrestling team. The team prayed before each meet, but it did so at the initiative of the co-captains. One season, nearly every boy had committed his life to Christ. Again, it was the work of the co-captains, whom I had merely discipled. They led the team spiritually.
Often government regulation or neighborhood hostility is simply an opportunity to develop new ministries that involve new people.
Sitting in my office with the alderman and an angry block club president, with a mound of dirt in our parking lot, it seemed there was nothing I could do to turn aside the hostility.
Then our alderman, convinced that our church had exhausted every means to solve the problem, made an offer: “Can we get rid of this dirt for you?”
“Sure!” I said.
“Monday I’m going to have the Chicago streets and sanitation equipment here.”
On Monday morning, two huge front loaders and eight semis showed up, accompanied that first morning by the alderman. Working daily, it took the workers two weeks to remove the dirt.
Like that mountain of dirt, some opposition seems as if it will never go away. But if we face it as Christ commands, loving both friends and opponents, our opponents — and even the alderman! — may eventually be won over to our side.
Copyright ©1994 by Christianity Today
