The SOS Academy Urban Reflections

"Ministry of Reconciliation" by Ashley Leary

2009-07-14T06:29:00.001-07:00

After living in the inner city for almost a year, God has taught me many lessons through new experiences and people. One way God has been growing me is through giving me a broadened understanding of the ministry of reconciliation. Previous to living here, I understood that Christ gave me the ministry of leading others to be reconciliation with God through Christ as he has reconciled me to God through His blood. I have also understood that He has called me to be a reconciler in the sense of being a peacemaker between people. Today I believe that these are very important things that I am called to do, but in addition, I now understand that I should be working to reconcile people to each other. More specifically, I should be working to fight the pain and disconnect between races and social economic classes.

Even though I grew up in a pretty homogenous suburb of Chicago and went to a private college in Holland, Michigan, I have been blessed with good friendships of people of different races and have had rich cross-cultural experiences. However, with a new awareness and understanding of racism and class divides I realize that I don’t really know much and that no longer can I claim innocence and ignore the realities of the seriousness of these issues in our society. I believe that it is very easy for people of all races and classes to live segregated lives if they choose, but especially easy for white, upper and middle classes to do so. Interestingly, even though I live in Binghampton where race related hatred is very prevalent and sometimes acted out in violence, being a displaced white person in the community, I could still choose to ignore a lot of the deep race issues happening around me if I wanted to.

I think that the Bible has a lot to say about reconciliation between people and about loving people who are different from you. Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount is a great overview of things close to His heart and shows the way people should live. In it Jesus says that He doesn’t want people’s offerings unless they have been reconciled to their brother. Therefore, the reconciliation of mankind to one another must happen in addition to reconciliation between God and mankind. Jesus commands us to love one another and says that the world will recognize that we are His disciples by the love we have for one another. Jesus also always seems to break the racial and social divides that exist between people, as He does in telling of the Good Samaritan.

I don’t believe that the racial tensions I see in Binghampton and the clashes between social economic groups are a result of any personal fault of mine. However, I still have a personal need for reconciling these things and it is also right for me to intentionally embrace Binghampton’s problems as my own. Jesus wasn’t responsible for my sin yet He chose to get involved personally by dying on the cross so that I could be reconciled through Him. Therefore, like Christ, I must work for reconciliation. I must no longer live for myself and live for others by embracing the opportunity that God has given me to do His work of fighting for justice.

Understanding conflicts in Binghamton requires understanding racial, social, and economic issues that exist between the many different cultures. The divides are much more complicated than black and white, nor are the problems solely limited to blacks and whites. The tensions that exist here have deep histories rooted not only in the United States but abroad as well because there are people from many nations in our community. Choosing to live here in the middle of messy prejudices and multi-culturalism, I become a part of the history and, therefore, become able to join the messy task of reconciliation. It is a personal sacrifice to get involved with the mess but it is a great joy to be able to sacrifice in this way, as reconciling people to each other is a Kingdom task.

Practically, I think that understanding is a vital key to the beginning of reconciliation. Thus, it is important for me to learn about the cultures around me in the hope of learning as much as I can about how different people think and why they think the way they do. I personally know from my experiences of studying Spanish and Spanish culture that many misunderstandings can be eliminated before they happen if you are culturally aware, especially if you know the language. Another practical thing for me to do is to make friends with people that have different backgrounds than my own. Friendship offers a way to learn about each other especially through vulnerability and commitment that non-friends typically do not share.

Once Again, I believe that Christ’s lives serves as a model for us and that the Prince of Peace seemed to constantly break barriers that led to disunity. Working at reconciliation is a hard thing because it is difficult to love people and live in community with people who might not want to love you back or share your views but “if you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that?” (Matthew 5:46-47)

April, 2009

"What the Neighborhood Has Taught Me" by Kyle Story

2009-07-01T11:09:00.000-07:00

Living and working in the neighborhood has been a time of real growth. I imagine the time as time spent at a table eating rich, filling food for some reason. But when I sit and think about this year, it becomes clear to me that there are things I have learned from being in a Christian community and then there are lessons learned from the neighborhood itself. The lessons have often been hard and at times discouraging, and I don't think I would see the silver lining in either without Scriptural encouragement to trust in.

I suppose one of the lessons that the neighborhood has taught me would be that a very real, tangible kind of racism still exists in our society today. This racism still manifests itself in the form of segregation. Physical, cultural, spiritual, and economic walls have been thrown up all around inner city communities like Binghampton and Orange Mound. As several authors of the books we have read mentioned, the goal of church culture is seldom to lift these communities out of exile, but instead to sit back and welcome anyone worthy to join them after they have made it out of the ghetto. I think that the term exile is really effectively to describe the situation of people living in the inner city neighborhoods of the world. Technically, exile is a noun meaning "the state or period of forced absence from one's country or home." Residents of America's inner cities have, as a result of several forces like racism and classism, ended up in a state of forced absence from the rest of society. People, who were originally created to live in right relationships with each other, have been separated and are now hostile towards each other. Blighted inner city communities consist of the kind of people with which the "healthy" world does not want to interact with. People with means have moved away into homogeneous suburbs with homogeneous school districts. Businesses have followed people in this flight and have left inner city communities underserved. Private school systems have popped up creating a segregated educational system. People left in the inner city have been forcibly exiled from the functioning world. They are the product of the selfishness and ignorance of people who are intended to be in community together. Now, the affluent world has not so much denied this responsibility as it has conveniently forgotten it.

I say all this, I suppose, because seeing the result of this exile is pretty powerful. The neighborhood has taught me that only Christ is capable of truly bringing about spiritual and physical change here. Without an understanding of Christ's call to go to places like Binghampton and make disciples, people would really have no reason to interact with this community at all. The neighborhood has taught me that Christians have to take responsibility and once again return to places and people previously exiled and so as to be salt and light. It’s a tremendous call and I have only recently heard it.

What has made this particular lesson so poignant has been the times that I have gone out to big, affluent suburban churches to speak about the work SOS is doing. The times I have gone to these churches with Big Dog have been even more interesting. These trips stand out to me for a few reasons. The first reason is that although what I have to say about SOS is almost always well received, I have never heard someone indicate that they desire to do anything more than perhaps write a check or volunteer once and a while with us. Perhaps I have just missed it, but it appears that most people are very willing to see us as uniquely equipped missionaries rather than regular people. We get patted on the back just for doing what we are clearly called to do by Jesus himself. I think looking for easy ways to volunteer a few times or writing checks have just become ways church folks assuage guilt. I have yet to see someone compelled to be involved with the ministry that is going on in Binghampton with any depth. I assume a great deal that perhaps I'm not in position to assume, but I know that for the most part the church in America has failed our inner cities. We refuse to acknowledge that our desire for comforts and the pursuit of the American dream has left our brothers and sisters in the inner cities to fend for themselves and wallow in the situation our flight from responsibility has created. Rather than jump alongside those serving in the inner city, most are comfortable offering prayers cheapened by an unwillingness to make personal sacrifices in the name of service.

Another thing that has become painfully obvious to me as a result of my time sharing about SOS in suburban churches is that we are still a society full of prejudices and racism. Folks at the largely white churches leap at the chance to interact with Big Dog, a very large black brother. Yes, he is a charming man with an incredible testimony, but there is no way I could be convinced that they would treat him the way they do if he was white. At one church in particular, after being introduced to a man Marlon had just met, the man I shook hands with moments before acted as if I had turned and walked away. Shortly thereafter a circle of middle-aged white guys formed around Big Dog. Despite his attempts to include me in the conversation, attention remained focused exclusively on Marlon. I simply was not interesting enough to merit even a second look. I am sure that it was because these guys, despite being decent people, rarely interact with an African-American in their daily lives. When the opportunity does present itself they leap at the opportunity, almost as if it was a way of assuring themselves that they are accepting and not in any way racist after all. The slow developing exile that has so clearly divided class lines here in the South has created to different worlds, a white world and a black world.

For all the despair and darkness I know see around me, and for all the problems I have been exposed to living here in Memphis, I still have not resigned myself to real frustration. It’s because I trust that Jesus Christ will continue to work and will continue to push people towards true reconciliation and true Kingdom work. There is so much good being done here and it’s been an incredible blessing to be a part of it all. After all, I keep reminding myself that the greater the problems here in this world, the more glorious New Jerusalem will be when Christ comes back and sets things right.

April, 2009

"Lessons from the Hood" by Lacie Schultz

2009-06-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

In a word, the neighborhood has taught me humility. Lesson after lesson can be boiled down to God humbling me. These lessons have been difficult, but essential. I came to the neighborhood thinking I had something worthwhile to offer. I thought making friends with neighbors would be easy and come naturally. I heard people say that it would be harder than I thought, but I didn’t believe them. And yet here I am, eating my words.

My first month was the most difficult. I called my parents crying one night. I was interning at Christ Community Health Services and I felt unneeded and more of a hindrance than a help. It didn’t seem like I was having any sort of impact on any of my neighbors – in fact I barely knew their names. I had believed the lies Satan was telling me about who I was to God. Worse than purposelessness, he was hitting me with feeling expendable and lacking value. But the Lord spoke to me through friends and Scripture. He told me I was valuable and more priceless than gold. Isaiah 29:11-13 promises that not only does God have a perfect plan for my life, but also that when I seek him with all my heart, I will find him. He told me in Colossians 3:17 that everything I do should be for God and that it should be done with my whole heart, regardless of circumstances. I was reassured that I have eternal worth in his eyes and that I need to be okay with seasons where I am the one learning rather than the one teaching.

The neighborhood has taught me that being a neighbor is really very simple. A friend of mine that lives down the street once told me, “To learn to be a neighbor, you just have to go outside.” I think there is wisdom in her words. Being a neighbor is as easy as sitting on your porch and talking to your neighbors. It’s as simple as going to the park and playing with kids. You listen to people’s lives, learn their needs, and seek to meet them. It’s that basic. And yet it has been so hard for me. My flesh wars against it every day. All I want to do is go home and relax. If I do go out, I want to spend time with friends who are easy to be with, not work to make new friends with people next door who are literally from different cultures. It boils down to a choice: I have a choice to go outside and spend some extra effort knowing people or to stay in. It’s a choice I have to make every day.

Living here, I’ve also learned that I am very interested in other cultures. I genuinely enjoy learning about them and relish the moments that cross-cultural connections are made. I don’t mind spending the time it takes to attempt to communicate with people who don’t speak my language. If anything it just makes me appreciate understanding even more. I love talking to the refugee students at tutoring about life outside their school work and learning that we have things in common with each other. Even simple things like directing an Afghani man where to get his food stamps are fulfilling to me. This realization about myself makes me feel more confident about the heart God has given me for overseas medical mission work.

I’m feeling tired of this “learning” stage of life where I am surrounded by spiritual mentors whose lives I want to emulate and am ready to start emulating them already! But God keeps using this neighborhood and the people in it to humble me. I think it is a good place for me to be. Until I am able to realize my complete inadequacy and embrace the Lord’s perfect provision, I am in no condition to set out on my own to emulate anyone. In a nutshell, the neighborhood has taught me that I have a lot to learn.

April, 2009

"The Unseen Community" by John Geiger

2009-05-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

So far this year has been a year of reflecting on all the things I thought I knew. I have lived in low income neighborhoods, dealt with people in these same desperate situations and personally lived on the same side of the despair. This has given me a sort of arrogance and pride that says, “I know how to relate better than most Christians”. I have learned that this is not the case. Just because I can use some familiar slang (in its proper context) and say, “Yeah, I been locked up”, does not give me any leverage with the kids in the Bing.

I can sit on my porch and chat with some neighborhood boys and rough house with them a little, but this shallow relationship has me nowhere near their hearts. I can give kids rides, provide for some minor physical needs, but I still have not heard one word about what their lives are like at home. I am closer now than I was a month ago, but I am nowhere near being trusted by them. How could I even consider leaving in August and think I have had an impact? If I leave in August I will leave a changed person, but I would not have changed Binghampton, I will be another passerby who tried to do a little good while I was here.

I have also learned that my wife and I are not perceived by residents here as a sign of relief, or of much needed help. We are seen as middle class white people who are a threat because we will buy up land, build a nice house, and clean up the street, raising property values and cut the thread that so many people hang from. It will take more than a year or two for a family to take our kind gestures for what they are and know that we are here to live this life, just as they are.

We desire to be part of the Binghampton community. That is why we came. But there is a community here that we can’t even see because we are too wrapped up in trying to make a community. We as middle class white people need to understand that we are not here in hopes that people will learn to live like us, but that neighbors will plainly see that we love them and we love Christ and our hope is that they may do the same. Binghampton is a strong and tight knit community with a rich history. We are just outsiders that (with pure hearts) have moved in here and ruffled some feathers, put a few smiles on faces and hoped for the best. It is going to take a lot more effort and a lot more time to really become part of Binghampton.

I am not sure how this life is supposed to play out but I do know that we start by building relationships. Once a solid relationship is built, reconciliation might begin. Once reconciliation begins we might be accepted by some as part of the community. Progress can and will happen but it is going to take much more effort than I have been willing to give. I have not yet laid down my life for this community. There are few people here whom I believe have embraced this calling. I hope and pray that in time I will have the courage to do the same. Until that time comes I can only look up to those who are doing it, sacrificing of themselves as they try to figure this thing out. I do know that there will be failures and successes, but if I learn from them and continue to focus on the One who has called me here, He will be the one who changes Binghampton and I will learn it has nothing to do with me.

April, 2009

"The People In My Neighborhood" by Melissa Geiger

2009-05-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

I’ve learned I have no strength on my own
I’ve learned black and white mean more than I’ve ever known
I’ve learned there’s despair in feeling alone
I’ve learned I can’t expect people to live how they’ve never been shown

Door bell rings… during naps, and talks, kids have such timing
Hey coach take us here, give me a dollar, can I sit in your chair
Finding the balance between sucker and sharing
Can be quite exhausting when you are “this far” from caring

Potentials unreached and skills not taught
Make tragic lives when different avenues are sought
Young men in the streets with guns in their hands
Looking down upon futures and dreams bleeding in the sand

Kind wave, and a smile, a morning hello
Is the time that I give you, when my day’s on the go
I baked you bread once and when the grass gets long we pay kids to mow
But I’ve never been in your house and your last name I don’t know

Loving people is hard and I get sick of trying
I’m pushed to my limits with frustration and fear
But I always find Jesus upon ending up there
And He reminds that I was once in need of His love and saving

Death, Drugs, and Despair in these streets can be bought
But Strength, Service and a Savior can be found on the corner where Your word is taught
There are some, that are drawing a line in the sand
To show that the our only hope is lying in Your hands

Being a neighbor is more than going with the flow
It’s letting people in, instead of putting on a good show
Jesus please forgive for turning to love so slow
And help me to see that my neighbor is anyone who is feeling low

I’ve learned I have no strength on my own
I’ve learned black and white mean more than I’ve ever known
I’ve learned there’s despair in feeling alone
I’ve learned I can’t expect people to live how they’ve never been shown

April, 2009

"Community from the Perspective of an Isolationist" by Emily Howell

2009-04-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

On the street behind ours live two young girls, sisters, who attend the neighborhood girls club. They are both a little older and tend to be quiet (at least compared to the other girls). When girls club began in August and they found out that we were close neighbors, they would be waiting with their bicycles at the end of the street to follow my car home. We would then have a little conversation in the driveway about school or girls club and I would politely say that I needed to get inside. It did not take long for them to stop waiting for me and stop coming by the house.

You see, I live like an isolationist in a group-oriented community. I value my time, my food, my swing, my clothes, my sleep, my job, and my commitments above the relationships physically surrounding me. These girls were teaching me how to neighbor (as a verb), and I was showing them how to selfishly take care of my personal business without care for neighbors. Since then, I have realized that there is much to learn from these sisters, as well as a few lessons to learn from other neighbors.

Last weekend, my Hispanic neighbors hosted a bash of a birthday party. There were a few things I picked up on throughout the day. First, everyone was involved. Men were moving chairs, children swept the porch, and women blew up balloons and made other colorful decorations. It took a full community effort for adequate preparation. Second, they held the party on the front porch. Where my natural inclination would have certainly been to host a gathering in the controlled environment of my living room, the neighbors willingly shared the joy of their party with everyone who passed by. They were vulnerable to the neighborhood and I know what was going on in their lives because they made their lives available to the community. Third, they dressed up. Everyone had on his or her best to celebrate the occasion. I am often tempted to just adapt my dress to my environment, and not to what my environment should be. For instance, I wear professional clothing to work, but feel comfortable in outdated, ill-matched clothing at home. This is not to say that my clothing matters, but it can be an indicator of the heart. If I want to show the neighborhood that I care about them, I need to dress in such a way that says I have a hope to celebrate and they are worth the effort.

I have also learned the value of honest conversation. One day in passing an elderly lady flagged me down an asked me if I knew of anyone who might want to buy a DVD player. She had an appointment the next day and knew she was going to need to fill a prescription, but did not have the cash or credit. This woman could have asked me for money, she could have petitioned me to buy her probably broken DVD player, but instead she just put it out there that she had something of value that someone else might need. I told her I would keep my ears open and went on my way. This woman knew the value of dignity. She knew the value of my dignity when she did not ask for a pay out in the form of straight cash. She knew the value of her own dignity when she followed the rules of supply and demand and made her offer to society. I doubt that she received money for her DVD player that day, but she did retain some honor and taught me how to have honest conversation.

As spring is beginning to show us that it is here to stay, people in the neighborhood are coming back to their porches and evening neighborhood walks. They are a little more willing to try speaking up and are still willing to make new friends. It has been almost eight months since the sisters followed me home from work and talked to me about my day. In that time I have learned many lessons, the most pronounced being that time and location are gifts for which we have the honor of being responsible. Proverbs 6:6-11 teaches us about the ant, who “without having any chief, officer, or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest.” I hope that in the same way I can be trusted to use my time in community for the utmost glory and honor to God.

April, 2009

"The Day of an Anomaly" by Melissa Geiger

2009-02-24T12:34:00.000-08:00

I am a twenty five year old whitewoman. I am married with no children and I have a college degree. I live in an inner city neighborhood called Binghampton, fondly known as “The Bing.” I am an anomaly in my neighborhood. This is a day in the life of an anomaly.

I wake up and roam around my 800 square foot house, the standard size for most houses on our street and begin to get ready for my day. As I leave my house I double check to make sure my doors are locked and I wave to my neighbor Huah who is cycling on a stationary bike located on the front porch. He is Vietnamese and we mostly communicate through hi’s and the exchange of food (he makes amazing egg rolls). I pull out of the driveway and wave to Sondra my other neighbor who is standing on the corner of our block greeting passing cars with a smile and a wave. This is her corner and she greets people every morning and afternoon. It is her way to reclaim the streets, to renew them from the prostitution she once used to sell. God changed her and now she uses her corner to spread the love of Jesus instead of sex.

I drive one mile to the high school where I volunteer, passing many people walking or waiting at the bus stop. Poplar is a main drag through “The Bing” and to other parts of Memphis. Even though public transportation is new to me it is not at all new to the people who use these buses to get where they need to go everyday.

At the high school I am greeted by a random metal detector check and uniformed high school students going from class to class. I arrive during their fourth period. I make my way through the kids, down the stairs to the art room. I get a lot of stares and many students ask if I am a student or a teacher. I volunteer by assisting the art teacher in her art 1 and 2 classes, which usually have twenty four to twenty seven students in them. I try to be an extra pair of hands and eyes to her and the kids. I also spend this time trying to engage the kids to get to know them on a personal level. In my first class there are two white kids, one is in foster care is dearly in need of acceptance, and looks a lot to me for affirmation. Thomas is habitually absent, and since the schools only attendance policy is that a child cannot miss more than ten consecutive days of school.

Half way through the day I need to use the rest room, but to do this I must run up the stairs to the bathroom that is in the main office. This is because due to smoking, sex and other things all the restrooms in the building are locked. The teacher I work with does not have a key so kids who need to use the restroom must get a hall pass, interrupt the class down the hall to get the key, return the key and come back to class. This process overwhelms me, so I usually try and hold it till I get home.

Many students in the class struggle with basics like grammar, using rulers, and writing skills, but they excel in the art program. They feel they have a freedom here that they do not get in any of their other classes. They all aspire to go to college, Deon wants to become an architect and Brahiem wants to become a pharmacist. They dream of studying abroad and owning homes outside of Binghampton. On the other side of this coin there are two girls in this same class who are pregnant at sixteen and seventeen. There is another girl who usually gives up on herself before she even gets started. Most have little self confidence. They all have big dreams but they cannot get the education necessary to equip them for those dreams.

In the next class I work mostly with a girl one on one. Bianca is a quiet girl, very sweet; she hates art and would rather be playing basketball. She rarely says more than two words to me the entire class. My goal is to pry through her shell and get her to speak full sentences to me. This class period is split, with lunch in between and sometimes we have trouble with students not coming back after lunch. There are a lot of bright kids in this class: Corey, a football player who writes beautiful poetry and Terello is a self taught fashion designer who with the right help could really go places. On the other hand there is one girl in particular who sticks out to me and struggles constantly with her self worth. She believes she never does anything worth complimenting and puts herself down a lot. She has made great strides in her work though, and she is a very beautiful girl.

As the third class rolls around the end of the day draws near. This means the students are easily distracted and a little rowdy; they are also the largest class which only adds to the chaos. This class also has the tendency to blow off their work. They have trouble focusing and want to tease me about how to use the word “crunk” in a sentence. I laugh and have fun with them.

As I leave school I stop quickly at the grocery store. This store is a central location for a lot of people because it caters to all types: my neighborhood, many college kids, and a fairly nice suburb that is near by. This store is about two miles from my home and considering the next one is about five miles further, I shop here. Due to the fact this is the only grocery store central to these three areas, it is constantly packed. This tends to irritate me. Even going there at one pm in the middle of the week, like I am now, you can expect five lanes to be open and each line to be about four people deep. The aisles are hard to maneuver with so many people and I usually leave the grocery store quite frustrated.

I pull into my driveway and look across the street to the neighborhood park. It is flourishing with activity; there is a Latino soccer game going, throngs of kids playing unaccompanied on the play ground, and women walking laps on the sidewalk. It is a nice day so I grab my book and sit on the porch swing and wave at some neighbors. Huah is cutting his grass up to an imaginary line in the exact middle of the front yard. This is where his yard ends and the yard of his duplex neighbor begins. This makes me smile because the neighbor’s grass is already very long and this makes it appear even more so. This also makes our yard look bad and in need of a mow.

When John gets home we eat dinner and decide to take a walk around the community. We stop and play around with some young boys who call John, “coach.” My husband helped coach a flag football league with some boys in the neighborhood and the name stuck. The boys look up to him. I expect this is because they do not receive much male attention at home. We continue walking, saying “hi” to people sitting on their porches and offer help to a couple loading things into their car. We meet another couple and chat for a second. We begin to wander home as it gets darker; we walk in the street to avoid broken sidewalks. When we get home John makes sure the tool box on his truck is locked (an unlocked tool box is merely an invitation to steal). We sit on the porch swing and enjoy the night like the rest of the community. Later we head inside, lock the door, spend the rest of the evening together, and get ready to begin again tomorrow.

December, 2008

"A Lesson in Humility" by Lacie Schultz

2009-02-11T06:06:00.000-08:00

For one reason or another, I seem to have grown up thinking that I have something valuable to offer to the world. I’m not arrogant; I don’t treat others with contempt. But I seem to have been under the impression that people should be glad to have me around, at least I hoped (sometimes above all else) that they were. Moving into the “hood” has rightly challenged this assumption. It has begun to teach me humility. The Lord reminds me daily that my value is not wrapped up in how highly people regard me. My value comes solely from the fact that I am a daughter of the King of the Universe who loves me. That is more than sufficient. God graciously sends me small reminders of my significance in His eyes, small reminders that I probably wouldn’t acknowledge if I thought I was something special.

The day I moved into Binghampton and met my Spanish-speaking neighbors, I thought to myself, “This is perfect! You know some Spanish. You grew up in a city that’s over fifty percent Hispanic, so you’re familiar with the culture. You were made for this!” I knew that it wouldn’t be easy, but I was optimistic. I’ve since learned that it takes a lot more than basic Spanish and a relative familiarity with the Latino culture to develop relationships with my neighbors. My first problem is that I am naturally an introvert and have a hard time getting excited about the work it takes to meet and develop relationships with new people. Additionally, I was raised in a culture that instilled in me a disposition to always be busy and fill the day with activities. This culture also tells me that I am entitled to some down time each day. Consequently, if I’m not running from one thing to the next, I’m relishing some “well-deserved” time to myself. Nowhere in my mindset is there room for “getting to know neighbor time.” God is reminding me, even as I write this, that I am entitled to nothing. I haven’t earned anything. My time is the Lord’s. He could end it at any moment He pleases! My daily activities are his to orchestrate. He could change my circumstances at the drop of a hat! If I try to take over, no amount of “me time” will rejuvenate and no number of worthy activities will fulfill. Thus far, the only person who has succeeded at being a neighbor is a four year old from next door named Jennifer. Recently, I was sitting out on the porch reading. She came out and started talking to me from her porch. Then she scooped up some toys and headed over to mine. We sat on my porch for no less than thirty minutes playing. No wonder Jesus told us to be like little children! Until now it seems my bad Spanish and good intentions haven’t gotten me past the occasional greeting and a package of homemade tamales. I am praying that the Lord would give me a true burden for the needs and hearts of my neighbors—that they would become a priority above time to myself and a day filled with errands and plans.

My internship is with Christ Community Health Services and shadowing health care providers is part of what I get to do. About a month ago, a fifteen-year-old girl came in to the health center. Her father had been murdered a year before and she had dropped out of school to be with her family. She had high blood pressure, diabetes, no insurance, and a positive pregnancy test. My heart broke for her. The tragic thing is that she is not an exception. She represents the medical problems of most of the population of inner city Memphis. It is patients like her, the ones no one else wants to treat, that I’m committed to serving. Though I experience many such valuable things at my internship, sometimes I get frustrated. Since I haven’t had any real medical training, I don’t have much to contribute medically. Additionally, in my part-time job at the administrative office, I often feel like my contributions are small and unessential. I get discouraged when I feel like I am not contributing something worthwhile. Yet, I am confident that through this, the Lord is speaking. Though I prefer to be the one who is serving and accomplishing and succeeding, I think right now God wants me to be the one learning, reflecting and humbling myself before Him. More and more I hear Him whisper to me in His reassuring voice that the King of the universe values me; that is enough. It seems I listen best when the world has failed to let me know that.

Still, God is faithful. I prayed that He would speak to me in the small things to remind me that He is using me. I help tutor refugee students of all ages on Wednesday evenings. A few weeks ago I was helping a young Burundi girl make a model computer out of a cardboard box for her school project. Her brother, David, approached me and asked if I had a box he could use because he needed to make one for class as well. I made him promise to wait there for me then drove back to my house and returned with shoebox in hand. David’s eyes lit up when I walked in and he asked if I would help him too. We sat there and made his computer together for the next half hour. He’s only eight or nine so he needed some help with the glue and tape. Once we were done and it was time to go he hugged my waist, thanked me, and asked if he would see me next week. Being able to meet his need was the highlight of my week. David needed a box and I had a box. It was that simple. I thanked God for allowing me to love David in this way. God affirmed that I was significant to Him.

I know that I’m only just scratching the surface of humility and that I still have much to learn. But living and learning in Binghampton gives me a perspective I’m confident I wouldn’t be able to gain otherwise. I’m the one who should be glad to be here, not the other way around. And through it all, Abba continues to provide small reminders that I am of eternal significance in His eyes.

December, 2008

"Time in the Inner City" by Kyle Story

2009-01-28T06:05:00.000-08:00

My time living and working in the inner city has been a tremendous blessing. While I have gained so much by being in this environment, the larger lessons that I will take away from this time have not so much to do with where I was for this year, but where I came from. I would say that living in this community has taught me more about contemporary American Christian culture and myself than it has taught me about the inner city. I do not wish to present myself as being anything greater than a sinner, and I hope I do not presume too much, but I think my general impressions of the neighborhood going into this year were largely correct. The inner city is an incredibly broken place. There is significant hurt here. It stems solely from sin. Homes are broken, torn apart by drugs, alcohol, violence, and lust. Yet, despite all the negativity that exists here, I knew that there was hope. Christ was already here. No intentional neighbor or missionary brought Christ into Binghampton. There is hope here. There is an incredible community here, striving to glorify God by being good neighbors, helping the poor and marginalized, and telling others about the work that is to be done. I was excited to be a part of what was going on here.

What I did not expect though, was how God would use my time in the inner city to teach me about the culture from where I had come from, the suburbs. Being taken out of the suburbs and out of a culture where American cultural Christianity is prevalent has afforded me the opportunity to reflect on what it means to be a Christian in affluent places. Numerous books that we have read talked about the way the inner city is viewed. If the inner city is broken, sinful places then we presuppose that affluent areas are not broken, do not need to be fixed, and not in dire need of God’s redeeming love.

This year has been a time when God has really made the sins of pride and selfishness obvious to me. I have had the opportunity to go to several different large churches to speak about the work that SOS does and represent this ministry at mission fairs. These churches have all been extremely affluent, huge and are filled with decent people. These churches are by most standards good churches. They are involved with various ministries locally, nationally, and internationally. But these churches also represent American cultural Christianity to me. The whole time I’m at these places I cannot seem to shake the impression that missions and service are perceived as part time activities. Serving others has a start time and a stop time. You go to volunteer at this place for “x” number of hours. You give “x” number of dollars. But there is always a limit placed on service. The time to serve always ends, and when you serve for the “x” amount of hours you can go home. Once you have given your “x” amount of dollars you have contributed enough. I have not once heard the call to daily pick up one’s cross and die to one’s self clearly issued. I guess this call has been mentioned, but never has the true weight of this call been clearly communicated. It is a heavy statement. It has been sad to see how incredibly selfish by nature we really are. We want God to be part of our life, but not the whole thing, and then we want to feel good because we have the sense and decency to allow God that small portion of ourselves that we have allotted him. Even the motive to serve has been perverted. We do not love others because we were first loved by God, but because it makes us feel good. When we give it is perhaps out of a sense of pity, as if we are in a superior position because we are not poor, tired, and dirty. I do not know why I think like this in these church settings. But the brokenness of the “righteous” really seems apparent to me. It really seems to me that the affluent American Christian has truly separated himself from his less fortunate brother, and truly believes that he has gained what he has gained because he is somehow better. The only people really served by these huge affluent churches are the people that go there, not the people they claim to desire to help.

I really believe that the reason I see the sin in the affluent Church so clearly is because being in the wealthy contemporary American Christian Church has forced me to recognize that what I see as their sin also my own sin. I know that being here has made me prideful; as if I really have anything to offer that the Lord himself has not given me. It has shown me that I’m incredibly selfish. There are times when I don’t want to be the neighbor that Christ calls me to be because it demands time that could be spent on myself. Every sin I see in the affluent church is sin that I also I wrestle with. I think it took God bringing me outside my old environment to see this truth. It has made me realize how sinful I, the “missionary to the inner city,” really am. I am really challenged to evaluate my motive for being here. Do I really desire to serve others or to serve myself?

I suppose the best way to describe my time here thus far is humbling. It is humbling to be a part of the work that the Lord is doing here. It’s humbling to see my sin so clearly in the places I visit. It is humbling to think that God would allow a broken sinner like myself to see his own sin. It is also kind of funny to think that God used this time to teach me more about places where I currently do not even live.

December, 2008

"War Everywhere" by Ashley Leary

2009-01-12T12:08:00.000-08:00

Despite my conversion to saying y’all and maybe a few more words native to the South, as soon as I open my mouth in most normal conversations people recognize that I am not from Memphis. Thus they are very curious as to why someone would move to Memphis, which usually gives me an opportunity to explain in 30 seconds what I am doing and what SOS is. One of the more interesting remarks to my explanation happened in a shoe store in East Memphis where the sales guy, through sarcasm, compared my coming to Memphis to serve in Binghampton to people going to Baghdad to fight in the war.

In thinking about this I do believe there is truth in what the guy at the store said but I think that the war I am fighting in is a different type of war beyond the violence of the streets that is not always visible. This different war is not only prevalent in the Middle East and on the streets in Binghampton but all over the world: in our American suburbs, on the French Riviera and even in our churches. This type of war is “our struggle [that] is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms” (Ephesians 6:12). The spiritual forces of evil plant lies in our world by leading people to distort and not believe in the Word of God. This works well for Satan because the root of everyone’s darkness is a lack of understanding of whom God is and their connection to Him. In my life I am seeing this played out in Binghampton because everything around me is the result of spiritual things; the poverty and the hopelessness is a result of not knowing the truth of Jesus Christ.

One struggle I see in Binghampton is a struggle against materialism. People do not know what true treasure is. One hero of our faith, Moses, “regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward” which tells us that his treasure was not in this world. (Hebrews 11:26). Again comparing worldly treasure to The Everlasting Kingdom, Jesus teaches us in the Parable of the Hidden Treasure and Pearl that “the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field” (Mathew 13:44). Many people living in Binghampton desire a lot of unnecessary things such as the latest Nike shoes or flat screen TV because they want to gain respect through the things that they have but they don’t really have the money to afford it so they will buy it on credit or sacrifice other things, such as good food, to get it. If people would treasure the kingdom of heaven so much that they would count their possessions as nothing against it, like the man in the parable, then they would not so easily fall into the trap of materialism.

I know a young widow living on one of the worst streets in Binghampton who treasures the Kingdom of Heaven. She has no idea why her husband was shot outside of their home after he opened his door to some strangers who said their car broke down with young children in it. Instead of being completely dependent on the system, she uses her house as a daycare for her grandchildren and other children including one severely disabled child. Most of everything that she has in her house is for the children, even her own bedroom is used as a computer room for the children rather than a storage space for her small wardrobe. Also, the few times that I have gone to visit her she has picked something up from her home and placed it in my hands as I leave; be it some chapstick, pens and pencils, or a random figurine I believe that her disregard for her possessions demonstrates her desire to store up her treasures in heaven “where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves will not break in and steal” (Matthew 6:20).

Love is a precious gift from God that is absent in the lives of many, causing their hearts to be hardened and absent. The Bible says “beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love” (1 John 4:7-8). There is a little boy at The Neighborhood School who I will call Johnny. Johnny is shuffled around from place to place by his mother who doesn’t have the means to provide a consistent place for the family to live, thus Johnny is often neglected and left in the care of others. When he first came to the school he was absent minded and threw tantrums. However, I have noticed a positive correlation between the amount of attention and love given to Johnny and his responsiveness. If you hug Johnny, smile at him and encourage him he is more likely to smile back and want to show you with pride the work that he does. God is Love and the presence of Love can make us “more than conquerors through him who loved us”(Romans 8:37b).

Prostitution is a dark thing that I have encountered in Binghampton that affects not only women, but the rest of the community as well. The few prostitutes that I have met know that what they are doing is wrong and wouldn’t suggest to any young lady to prostitute themselves. However, they don’t necessarily want to stop as they see prostitution as their identity. In a discussion about sexual immortality and men being joined with prostitutes Paul says, “or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own. For you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). I know that there are other underlying spiritual battles besides identity, but if these women knew and accepted the extent to which their lives have been purchased, maybe they would value themselves in a different way. In fact, they are valued so much that The King of the entire world died on their behalf to give them life, yet they choose to remain controlled by their sinful nature rejecting the possibility of having a changed identity as a daughter of the Most High God (Romans 8).

I know a young teenage boy who is a leader at his school, a good athlete, a good student, goes to church, and will pray sincere prayers whenever called upon to do so. From, this description one would probably not guess that he is the son of a prostitute. Why is he not a gang member or drug dealer as statistics would predict him to be given his circumstances? “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (John 8:12). Christ broke through to him by means of the teachings and guidance of people that spent themselves on showing him The Light and now he has become a new creation in Christ!
There are numerous other struggles I could mention that would reveal how the world around me is a spiritual battlefield and how redemption and victory only come through Jesus Christ. I have not even touched on such things as racism, teenage pregnancy, drugs, and AIDS. As Christians we are in a battlefield wherever we are at because we are soldiers of Jesus Christ (2 Timothy 2). However, the good news about our war is that we already know the outcome and can rejoice and live in it today. “For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith” (1 John 5:4). “It is done! I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son” (Revelation 21:6-7).

December, 2008

"A Second Grade Perspective" by Emily Howell

2009-01-07T06:45:00.000-08:00

*This essay is written from the possible perspective of our former neighbor, Noemi, a 2^nd grader at Brewster Elementary.

Three or four months ago one Asian and four white girls moved into the house next door. The Asian with the sweet smile is gone now (they said she is traveling), but the other four are still around. When they first arrived they came with lots of furniture and boxes of stuff. Some were labeled “kitchen” and others “bathroom”. There were trash bags protecting piles of clothes to fill their closets. My whole family lives in a house half their size. I sometimes wonder what it feels like to have all that space. In the beginning they waved at us a lot, and most of the time I waved back. Then they came to my front porch and brought cupcakes with sprinkles on the icing and in the cake. My mom let me have hers and mine.

Since that day I have gotten to know some of the big girls who live next door. It started when two of them came over and invited me to come with them to Girls Club. At first I didn’t know what they meant, and neither did Mama. They said there would be other young girls who I went to school with there too, so Mama said I could go. I was surprised when they came and knocked on the door the first day. I don’t think I believed they would really come for me. They let me ride in their car with them and we picked up four other girls who live just a few streets over. We stopped at a big house in the front of the neighborhood and I saw my best friend from school. She was excited to see me. That night we played a game like tag in the back yard and then sang songs. I didn’t know any of the songs, but the other girls did and it was easy to catch on quickly. Most of the songs had motions and that really helped. Then we divided into “big girls” and “little girls”. I went with the “little girls” and we split into even smaller groups where our teacher told us the story of God creating the world. I already knew this story, but some of the other girls in my group heard it for the first time. At the end we played until everyone else was finished, then headed home with a snack for the evening. I decided that I like Girls Club.

I have also noticed that every morning the neighbors go to work. Some leave around the same time I am leaving for school, but I know the others leave too, because their cars are gone when I get home in the afternoon. I see them get home in the evening and can tell they have been at work because they are dressed like they have a job. A lot of times they look tired, but usually they look satisfied and happy to be home to Princeton Avenue. My friend, who lives on the other side of their house and is in high school, said one of them works at a middle school over on Summer Avenue. She said she usually doesn’t teach, but sometimes she teaches as a substitute. It is strange - she said her school only has the seventh grade. I think she must really like her job to work at a school that isn’t really a school yet. One of the neighborhood boys who I’ve seen at Caritas Village, the coffee shop just around the corner, said he goes to her school. He said it is fun and the building is really nice, but they have a lot of homework because they want all the students to be prepared for college.

One time I saw one of the girls reading on their front porch. They had been living next door for a while, so I went over and asked what she was doing - that’s how I know she was reading. She said that they have a “reading group” on Monday afternoons where they discuss the book that they read the week before. The one she was reading that day was yellow and kind of skinny. She told me it was about living in community, like with a family, a neighborhood, or people from church. Though she liked the reading, she said she had to get it done early because she also had to write about what she was reading. I don’t think she likes writing as much as reading. She told me her favorite subject is math, just like me.

My friend said they go to church in the neighborhood too. When my family goes to church we have to drive down Sam Cooper and Summer Avenue and sit in a big sanctuary where we listen to the pastor and sing from a hymnal. They told my friend that they walk to church just a couple of blocks away from our house. The church meets in a house rather than sanctuary and there isn’t any Sunday School. They sing songs from the TV rather than out of the hymnal. I asked my friend if they have a pastor, and she said just a normal guy teaches them on Sunday mornings; but it is a guy who likes to learn about God and reads his Bible every day. I’m not sure if what they do counts as church, but I would like to try it sometime.

All in all, I like our new neighbors. I wish they played outside more so that I could get to know them better. Sometimes they seem so busy they don’t even want to know us! Maybe one day they will invite me inside and let me see their house full of furniture and closets full of clothes. I would really like that.

Noemi

2^nd grade

Brewster Elementary

December 2008

"What to Do?" by John Geiger

2008-12-29T11:28:00.000-08:00

When my cell phone alarm wakes me, I think over what all I need to do to get ready this morning, I also try to decide if I have time for a snooze or two. After my snooze I stumble into the kitchen and start to boil water for my French press. I hear cars honking, which tells me Sondra is out on our busy corner waving at motorists, hoping to make their morning a little brighter. Sondra has led a very rough life and has, in the past few years, found love, joy, and freedom in Christ. She has made it her mission to take back her corner for Christ from the drugs and prostitution she once used it for.

While I grab my pocket contents I look at my phone and realize it is 8:28. I have to be at work at 8:30… no problem. I rush out the door and shout "good morning" to Sondra. As I drive past, she always tells me to have a blessed day. I pull into the parking lot at the Binghampton Development Corporation at 8:30 and open our office door by 8:32. I am the first one here, besides our director Robert, who most likely gets to work at the same time that I am in my fourth hour of sleep. As I wait for my dinosaur computer to boot up I hear footsteps coming…in long strides. I turn around to see my boss duck his head under the doorway. He is VERY tall with a smile to match. He tells me good morning in his booming voice and lets me know he is taking an early lunch today because of a meeting. He asks what I have planned for the day. Just as I am telling him what is on my to-do list, I hear much quicker footsteps. Steve walks in with his phone to his ear telling the person on the other end that he'll be right over. He hangs up with news about a furnace that he has to go re-light for the third time this week and a plumbing problem which I need to get materials for. Robert just smiles knowing that anything we had planned that day just got scratched. It did not take me long to realize our "to-do" lists are nothing more than "what we hope to do in the next month" lists.

Steve sets off to handle a few problems at the apartments, a newly renovated apartment complex for seniors. It is a nice complex that the BDC purchased from a slum-lord, evicted the drug dealers and prostitutes, and turned into The Hope Apartments which is rented to senior citizens.

I leave the office and drive a short distance to Hull Street, where our Job Trainees are working, to grab a couple of tools. The job training program is designed for young guys from the neighborhood to learn the construction skills needed to get a job in the industry. I always get caught up talking at this point. Chris and Gill, who teach the program, are always in the middle of a quick lesson so I stick around to gain knowledge from these guys who really know a lot about construction. We then always chat for bit. Just as I am pulling away from "the Hull House", Steve calls wondering where I am (though he knows why it is taking so long).

After I drop the tools off he sends me to one of the properties to do a couple repairs. The lady who lives there is very nice and talkative, which I enjoy. She talks to me about all sorts of things. She even tells me about some issues she is having with bills and living arrangements. It is so hard because I feel like it could be a great time to witness, but there is no way to do it without being blunt. I don't want this poor woman to think that if she needs repairs done; it has to include a presentation of the Gospel.

As I finish up the job we are talking about my past and how I dealt with my drug addiction. She tells me about a family member who is a user and needs help. I share briefly my freedom through Christ and how I could not have made it without Him. She does not really seem open to my thoughts. Oh well, seed sown. I break for lunch and go home for about forty five minutes.

After lunch I go to "the container", BDC's storage tank located at The Hope Apartments, and pick up Terrance, (our small tractor with a mower deck). I set out to mow some of our lots. I mow a small jungle in the middle of our neighborhood and move on to a rental property next to the highway. As I mow, I hit a large rock hidden in the semi-long grass. On my next past I notice one of the mower blades in the grass. FAIL! I call Steve and tell him about it and he says he will look at it later. By the time I get back and drop Terrance off, it is four o'clock, time for football practice.

I rush home, kiss my wife, change my shoes, grab the water cooler and walk across the street. I get there in time to hear the guys grumbling because they were late and now have to run. Practice starts out fine, Kyle and I have the boys run some pass routes. (Kyle is another academy member who is also heading up the new SOS114 in Orange Mound). The frustration comes when we try to teach them something new and they just want to goof off. Some days are worse than others. One day we canceled practice midway through because we couldn't get control of the guys. Today, Kyle tells them he is ready to cancel it again. He gives them the option stay or leave, but if they stay they need to get their act together. Some leave. The ones who stay are much more focused and understand what happened. The rest of practice is quiet and solemn but good.

The sun is going down when we call the guys in. We share a little scripture and discuss the problems of that day. As they walk off they start to mess with each other, goof off and get back to normal; I turn the other direction and walk home. As I get inside, my senses are overwhelmed. It is warm in the house and it smells great. Melissa (as if she knew it was a rough day) has dinner ready. We sit down and pop in a movie. We both realize we are putting off writing our academy assignment for another day and we spend the rest of our evening together.

December, 2008

"God, the Poor, the Church and You" by Ashley Leary

2008-12-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

God’s heart for the poor is revealed throughout the entire Old and New Testament in many ways. I will choose a few of the numerous passages that stick out to me that best reveal God’s heart for the poor. First of all, I think that the psalms reveal much of God’s heart and as they are covered with laments on behalf of the poor. Psalm 40:17 says, “I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinks upon me. You are my help and my deliverer.” Psalm 41 calls the person who considers the poor to be blessed. Psalm 69:33 says, “For the Lord hears the poor, and does not despise His prisoners.” Also Psalm 140:12 states, “I know that the Lord will maintain the cause of the afflicted, and justice for the poor.” In proverbs 14 it is expressed that if someone oppresses the poor they will reproach their Maker (vs. 31). Moving away from the psalms and proverbs into the New Testament, much of the ministry of Jesus surrounded the poor as he always sought to heal the crippled and spend time with the lowly. God’s love for the poor is revealed in the parable of the great supper in Luke 14 as he invites the poor to the supper and denounces the rich for not coming because they had other more important obligations. A constant theme through Jesus’ teachings is a backwards reasoning in that the least shall be the greatest. In Luke chapter 9 Jesus takes a little child and says that, “For he who is least among you all will be great.”

God’s heart for the poor is also revealed in how much scripture is devoted to His methodology concerning serving the poor. He loves the poor so much that He set up laws to make sure that the poor would not be overlooked, such as the law of the Sabbath in Exodus chapter 23 where the servants get rest and the strangers get refreshed. And of course the year of jubilee as explained in Leviticus 25 where debts are forgiven and property is returned. Also in Leviticus 25 a law was set up that if a brother becomes poor you shall take him in to live with you and not charge him interest. Going back a few chapters to Leviticus chapter 19, God shows one method of serving the poor by telling the people to not keep all of their crops for themselves. Instead He asks the people to leave some of the harvest in the fields for the poor to harvest. I like this method because it moves the rich away from hoarding while also giving the poor a way to work the fields themselves.

Going away from the Levitical laws I believe that God’s greatest methodology for serving the poor is through God’s people. God values the poor enough that He calls God’s people to fast for the poor as recorded in Isaiah 58: “Is this not the fast that I have chosen; to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and that you break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and that you bring to your house the poor that are caste out; when you see the naked, that you cover him, and not hide yourselves from your own flesh?” A great Old Testament example of someone serving the poor occurs in the book of Ruth. Ruth was a widow and Boaz protected Ruth from the young men, took her in and fed her, and finally took her to be his wife. Finally, there are many New Testament examples of God using His people to serve the poor, many of which are intertwined with what was and is to be the church’s responsibility to the poor. One individual example that I will highlight is the parable of the Good Samaritan. A wounded man stripped of his clothes was lying half naked on the road when the Good Samaritan came by and took care of the man by treating him like a brother without regards to his own needs. Jesus says that the Samaritan had mercy on the man and commands his disciples to, “Go and do likewise.” Luke 10:37.

The church obviously has a role in transformational development among the poor. There are many charges in the Bible for the church to take care of the poor. One example is the Acts 2 church as there were no poor among them because the believers shared all that they had with one another. Another example of a New Testament church taking care of the poor is in Romans 15 when the churches of Macedonia and Achaia take up an offering for the church in Jerusalem. This is a good example showing that all of God’s people are one and that we are to care for the church in other parts of the world, not just the needy in our own gatherings. Paul says in Galatians 2:10 when charged to go to the gentiles that “they desired only that we should remember the poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do.”

When talking about the church’s response to poverty I would agree with the book (“Walking with the Poor” by Myers) that poverty is a spiritual matter and that true transformation needs to come in word and deed like James calls us to do. Obviously, from Biblical examples and from examples that we can see today in our world, God is working among the poor and we need to be obedient to join Him there. He came that the gospel might be preached to the poor.

I believe that my role in ministry among the poor is to be a part of the Church’s role of ministry among the poor as I am a part of the church. Therefore, I must preach the good news, the gospel of the kingdom to the poor as I believe that true transformation is only going to come through Jesus Christ because He is the Redeemer. I also believe that I need to live a life of simplicity so that I can give to those in need around me. I must act for justice and mercy for all so that I will not become spiritually impoverished by having too much or being too selfish. In Micah 6:8 God tells His people that He requires them to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with their God, which I believe is also a call for my life. Therefore, the call for us to walk humbly with God is also a call to act justly and to love mercy as God acts justly and loves mercy. So I think that as I try to walk humbly with God, search His Word, and pray to be changed by it, that I will hopefully have more of God’s heart which is a heart full of love for the poor and I pray that the Holy Spirit will guide me in how to serve and love the poor better.

November, 2008

"God, the Poor, the Church and You" by Emily Howell

2008-11-24T06:09:00.000-08:00

As people of God, we are called to emulate His character. To know His character is certainly a prerequisite for this task. His mysterious character is clearly articulated through His Word. Of interest to us now is our holy God who is just and a provider. First, our Lord is just. In Micah 6:8 we are required to “do justice, and to love kindness.” But God was the first to pursue just relationships. “He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty” (Luke 1:52-53). His example of right relationship is a guide to what we are to love and hate. Second, God is a provider. Isaiah 58:11 says “that the LORD will guide you continually and satisfy your desire in scorched places and make your bones strong; and you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.” Faithfully, He satisfies our needs. He “will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19). We can count on God to be just and know that He will certainly provide in His divine knowledge.

We must also be a people who pursue God’s heart. Jesus speaks often of the kingdom of God and begins the Sermon on the Mount with “blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:3). Why are the poor blessed? John 6:35 says that “whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” He longs for His people to draw near to Him; it is the person who most deeply understands his need who will be most willing to draw near. The presumably poor widow gave a more acceptable offering than the rich when she gave “all she had to live on” (Luke 21:4) Christ calls for our all and knowingly says that “only with difficulty will a rich person enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:23). God’s heart is for the estranged poor as well. As an alien and widow Ruth was considered faithful to be part of the lineage of Jesus. God believes in the poor, and we should too.

To honor His heart for the poor, God also set in place certain provision for the poor throughout the Bible. In Deuteronomy 15:1-11 we read about the year of jubilee. Every seventh year was to be a time of rest and redistribution such that “there will be no poor among you”, because the Lord is blessing the land that the Israelites were to inherit (Deuteronomy 15:4). In the story of Ruth we see the practice of gleaning in action. Righteous Boaz allowed Ruth, as a poor, widowed alien, to gather the fruit of his field that was not easily gathered in the harvest. He also was a kinsman redeemer to Ruth, transforming her from a poor, widowed alien to one of God’s chosen people. Furthermore, Isaiah speaks of fasting as a means of serving the poor.

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness,
to undo the straps of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (Isaiah 58:6-7)

In harmony with the mandate for the poor in the Old Testament, the New Testament Church was “selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:45). They were also taking their food together and enjoying it with “generous hearts” (2:46). In Hebrews 13:2 we are commanded to “not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” At all time we are to love those we are receiving- whatever their status.

Our clear call is to look out for and support the poor. As a church, there are some specific ways we can be part of transformational development among the poor. 1 Corinthians 12:28 says that one of the gifts of the spirit is helping. One way we help is by living lives that do not exploit the poor. Amos 5:11 says “hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gate.” Earlier in the chapter we are told that this is the way to life, to not turn the needy away or to take bribes against their best interest. Practically, in Matthew 25:35-36 we are told to see to physical needs of people around us. Ultimately, Jesus says “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:30). We are called to see to the needs of those around us with that with which we have been blessed. Many economist and development agencies would caution that the poor may become dependent or, more seriously, confuse our role with that of God. Thus, it is important that we do whatever possible to restore the true identity and vocation of the poor (Myers).

Personally, I also have an individual role to play in honoring the poor God has called among us. James 2 warns us to not become judges of those around us, for God has “chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom, which he has promised to those who love him?” What an honor to be considered poor in this life! Paul says that “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body- Jews or Greeks, slaves or free- and all were made to drink of one Spirit.” It is my responsibility to not look down on the poor or retain an image that treats them as less worthy or redeemed than myself. Life is short, and while we are called to pull our weight we are not called to live in a lifestyle that worships upward mobility rather than Christ and the kingdom to come. My mindset and understanding of this concept will be reflected in the way I choose to live my life. “You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way” says Paul in 2 Corinthians 9:11. God will be faithful to provide and I have the responsibility to faithfully distribute what is His.

November, 2008

"Knowing 'The Mound'" by Peter VanWylen

2008-10-23T05:51:00.000-07:00

Moths were flocking around the halogen lights in the parking lot, and people too were streaming through the darkness towards the light. On this muggy August night in Memphis, I was one of those pilgrims leaving my locked car and heading towards the brightly illuminated green grass and white lines. I had already been to a Saturday afternoon game a few weeks earlier—but then I had brought friends with me who actually cared about football and were willing to explain the details of the positions and strategy to me. Now, however, I brought only myself and a hunch that somehow this was the right thing to do. As a new teacher at an urban and mostly African-American high school, my white skin and my Northern accent automatically made me outsider. I knew that I had to understand Melrose football if I was going to really become a part of the community.

After paying for my ticket, I made my way through the crowds towards the stands. I remember laughing on the inside when someone rather loudly swore and then exclaimed, “There goes a white boy in a Melrose shirt.” I managed to find an open seat and sat down to pretend that I was riveted by the game and was following each play and strategy decision carefully. Instead, I was really just enjoying being in another culture and trying to understand more the community I was in.

For most of the game, I couldn’t get any conversation going with any of my neighbors, but I didn’t really mind much. I was shocked by the alcohol everywhere—at a high school sporting event—and I wasn’t sure what to think of the fact that people seemed to hide their smuggled concoctions once I sat down (perhaps they thought I was a cop). I was pleasantly surprised, however, by the quality and enthusiasm of the pep band and the folks in the stands who knew when and how to shout “Orange Mound!” at certain points in certain songs.

At the end of the night, I did meet a friendly man whose kids go to Melrose and he gave me his business card (he runs a pressure-washing service) and I enjoyed talking with him for a short while. Despite the fact that I learned a lot about the school culture, I didn’t feel like I really crossed any bridges and made much progress towards being more of a part of the school community: I didn’t see many students and didn’t see any other teachers.

The students, however, did see me. On arriving at school the next Monday, more than a few students commented that they saw me at the game and others asked me if I enjoyed it. Not a single person ridiculed me for being there, and some seemed somewhat better behaved after having seen me outside of an educational context. Perhaps my night was more fruitful than I had thought.

Since then, I’ve made it to a handful of other games and even worked in the concession stand for two games. I’ve met several very friendly alumni, fans and parents and I continue to see smiles on students faces when they see me there (they are still generally surprised to see me, but they always seem to appreciate it)—and some students have taken to loudly greeting me and hollering my name from a distance. I have even begun to enjoy football to some extent!

Who knew that being a community member was as easy as “watching” football on Friday nights!

November 2007

"Hope" by Steve Houlihan

2008-10-23T05:48:00.001-07:00

There is one thing that really stands out in my mind after spending a year living in the inner-city: people need hope. I know it is a simple statement and probably something that we all know, or at least think we know, but it is definitely something we too often forget.

Hope is something that most of us take for granted. I know that before moving to Yale Avenue I never thought twice about hope or recognized the role that it plays in my life. I would consider myself a self-motivated person, one who doesn’t need to be pushed to exert effort. A year ago I would have mistakenly told you that this is something I was born with or that my parents instilled it in me, but now I have learned that, like all “self-motivated” people, I am dependant on hope for my motivation. The reason I have the perseverance to push through tough times is because I have hope for something better on the other side. And the reason I have hope for something better is because I see and have seen the better times. The reason I am motivated to work hard is because I have hope that my situation will improve because of my work. I anticipate promotions in the future, promotions that I will likely receive.

A similar train of thought can be applied to eternity, I have hope that heaven is a great place—as it most certainly is—because I know that my God is an awesome God. I pursue a righteous relationship with Him because I have an assured hope that He is great and loving. There is tangible evidence in my life that God is merciful, compassionate, and loving. But what about someone who has not seen, or at least recognized, God’s loving hand in their life. Or, how about someone who has been continually let down by the school system, teachers, parents, and employers? Should I expect the same level of motivation, work ethic, and hope?

I am often guilty of casting judgment on people without jobs, without dignity, without motivation. I forget that there are millions of people living in inner-city America who live without hope. This is something I can never fully understand because I have come from a background filled with opportunity, choices and success. Hopelessness is a product of circumstance; insufficient education, poverty, want, a lack of opportunity, success and role models. However, a lack of worldly hope can have eternal implications. God manifests Himself through the hands, feet and mouths of His children, those who are called to bring hope, both earthly and heavenly, to our neighbors in need. Serving the poor for the purpose of the gospel brings them earthly hope and opens the door to a relationship with an eternal focus. Our Lord wants all people to know Him and thereby have an assured hope in the treasures of heaven. In Luke 4:18 Jesus says, “The spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” Now that the same Spirit that gave Christ His power dwells within us, we are to continue His work among the poor, the oppressed, and the captives. Jesus didn’t just walk around preaching salvation; he healed people, lived among them, and served them with His life. He brought not only eternal hope to the blind beggar, but also the opportunity to make a living, hope that he could have a better life here on earth. As Christ’s followers we are in the process of sanctification—becoming more Christ-like—and if Christ served, loved, healed and helped the poor than we must do the same.

During my time in Binghampton I have learned something else about hope, something encouraging, that hope is contagious. Taking small steps to bring about change in a neighborhood will lead to others, with newly aroused hope, to do the same. We have the opportunity to be involved in God’s eternal plan of bringing hope and salvation to the poor of this world. How is God urging you to take part in His plan?

May 2007

"The Root of the Matter" by Leigh Tatum

2008-09-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

About one year ago I prayed that God would present me with a job opportunity in the inner city with a non-profit organization where I would have a chance to work with people. He answered that prayer and today I work in an inner city health clinic as a Case Manager to patients living with HIV. In this role, I am responsible to be an advocate, health educator and social services connector for the patients. Each of the patients I meet has a different story. Some have urgent physical needs with things like rent, food and prescriptions; others need a support group or counselor to talk about their feelings. Many of these needs can commonly be met through a network of social services throughout agencies in the city.

However, practical and social services don’t even begin to touch their deepest needs and feelings. The more I talk with my patients the more I hear about their life experiences. Kevin will start telling me about how he and his partner, Jim, got in a fight and can’t seem to resolve it. Tonya tells me how she performs as an exotic dancer and can’t imagine doing anything else for a living. Marcus dresses, talks, and identifies himself as female but he is a man. Jill is engaged to Curtis, but still married to Chris, who is now dating Laura; and all four of them live together! These relational and sexual problems are complex and confusing as they collide with my paradigm of healthy, Biblical design for sexual relationships. I have had to reexamine what I believe and why. I still believe that God intended for each man and woman to grow into mature heterosexuality. I believe that He intended sex to be only between one man and one woman inside a marriage relationship. However, I have also realized that these patients’ deepest need is not for a redeemed sexuality. No person becomes complete by committing to being a heterosexual who only practices sex with their spouse inside the marriage relationship.

Each person that comes through my door has one ultimate need: to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ. While I would love to see these patients adopt God’s unique and holy standard for sexuality, I am far more concerned that they see their need for a Savior. Now when people come through my door, I make it my goal to ask them about their physical, emotional and spiritual health. In addition to connecting each person with the food pantry or a support group, I hope to love and serve them with kindness and compassion that will open doors for me to be able to share with them the One who can meet their ultimate need, Jesus Christ.

"Something Significant" by Dan Kruger

2008-09-24T07:16:00.000-07:00

There is something significant happening here. Society as a whole has given up on them. However there is one thing that keeps them alive. Hope. Different than the rest of the world, the hope is not for a better day, but for a new tomorrow. Hope for a change to happen, not to better themselves, but to impact others. Money, programs, and correction centers all fall short of the one thing that makes the difference, relationships filled with love, concern, discipline, and growth. There is something far greater than people moving into the inner-city. There is a movement beyond people moving into Binghampton. There is a movement of love and serving others that you rarely receive outside of the closeness of an urban community. Where else can you sit on your front porch and see generations and generations of family come only to sit and talk to their Auntie? Where else does your physically stricken neighbor come to you and offer you a flower out of her garden as a mother's day present? Where else does your neighbor come over to build you up when everything is going down and tell you that she will bake you a cake for the open house party when it finally happens? There is something special when desire, love, and compassion are put together to build and make a difference in a community.

While each relationship impacts the community, I have come to understand this past year that the most pressing need in our neighborhood is the need for more godly men to mentor young boys. Our neighborhood is driven by pride, selfishness, arrogance, fear; all aspects that only cripple a community. The biggest problem is that in our society today young black males rarely get to share in the hope that everyone else has. The collaboration of lifestyle, image, and pressures has molded inner-city males into a robotic organism programmed for failure. This molding needs to be stopped. Until they are able to see a reachable goal modeled to them, with different alternatives to their lifestyle than living a thuggish-hustling lifestyle, there will be no change. Yet, there is hope, but we have to show them at hope is real and possible to reach. It won’t happen easily, which is why a relationship is needed to walk alongside them as they struggle and stumble, eventually, into a hope they can grasp in their own lives.

May 2008

"Through the Eyes of Children" by Lisa Pollock

2008-09-11T05:28:00.001-07:00

I teach instructional resource at Douglass Elementary School in Memphis City Schools. Douglass is your pretty typical urban city school. A lot of great things happen within the school walls, but all in opposition to a ton of forces working against that greatness. The kids that I teach come from broken-families, live as victims of abuse, neglect, and drugs, and deal everyday with violence, hunger, and alcohol. It’s a far world from the sheltered, affluent, opportunity-filled town that I grew up in. I wonder a lot of days as I straighten my long, light brown hair in the morning how it is possible that a 22 year old white female from Midland, Michigan wound up teaching a class of all black students from inner-city Memphis, Tennessee. The variables certainly don’t stack up. We are crossing geographic, economic, and racial lines everywhere. Fairly apparent to see the way I look at it.

It was the last hour of the day and I was reviewing vocabulary with my 6th graders. We had already made the flash cards, looked up the definitions, and created illustrations to go with each term so it was time to create examples. One of our weekly words was the word shocked, so I called on one of my students, Arrius.

“Arrius, give me an example of something that would shock you,” I requested.
He paused for a moment with a look of deep consideration and then looked up at me slightly discouraged, “Miss Pollock, I can’t think of anything that would shock me,” and then in an instant the discouragement faded as he interjected, “but I can think of something that would shock you.”

Smiling to myself, only imagining what was going to follow I inquired, “Oh yeah, what’s that?”

He smiled too…”I bet you would be shocked if you learned that you were my mother!”

I laughed, mentally noting all of the reasons why that was an absolute impossibility, perhaps at the forefront of my mind the fact that Arrius was one of the darkest black students in my class and I have been described before as a white, white girl! “You’re right Arrius, that would shock me.” I looked over to see another one of my students, Taviyon, one of my brightest and most capable students, with his hand raised.

“Yes Taviyon.” I called on him.

“Miss Pollock, there is no way that you could be Arrius’ mom.” Taviyon called out.

I breathed a slight sigh of relief happy to know that someone else had noticed the apparent impossibility of Arrius’ statement. “Well, why not?” I questioned him.

“Miss Pollock- Arrius has braces and you do not!”

The honest, innocence, and absolute confidence of that observation still rings in my ears. To Taviyon’s eyes this was our greatest difference- I lacked the necessary braces to be Arrius’ mother. And it makes me wonder what we see and why we see it. As white families from the suburbs, white young adults who just graduated from college begin to move into this urban neighborhood in Memphis, a neighborhood populated primarily by black families, what makes us different? But more importantly what do we see as our differences? Taviyon’s response reminds me that I cannot count on all people to see the same thing, even those things which appear so obvious and apparent to me. And so I think it begs us ask ourselves the question as we seek to live in reconciliation, and community, and fellowship with our neighbors- whose eyes see the differences to be overcome and what do those eyes see?

May 2006

"Who Needs Who?" by Tasha Houlihan

2008-09-11T05:27:00.000-07:00

Almost one year ago, my husband and I moved into Binghampton. We had spent several months preparing for the move from Missouri and even longer deciding whether we should move to the inner city of Memphis. We graduated from college and four days later we were on the road, toting everything we owned behind us in a giant U-Haul. Not only did we carry with us all of our material possessions, we also carried in our hearts and minds many ideas about what the inner city life and serving the poor would look like.

We came to Memphis because God had led us to turn away from what many of our graduating friends were pursuing: great jobs, nice apartments, and well-situated suburban families. We had decided to start our post-college life pursuing and serving God, and in order to do that, we were going to serve the poor of Memphis. I planned to teach children who are consistently slighted by the education system while Steve would work with young men in the neighborhood, giving them important job and life skills. Not only would we have these serving, sacrificial jobs, but we were going to get to know our neighbors, love them, and share the love of Christ with them. It was going to be difficult, and maybe even scary, because after all, this was an inner city neighborhood.

Over the course of our time here, God has given us a much different picture of life here in the city. We thought Binghampton was a place full of two kinds of people: criminals and those who fell prey to their crime. We wanted to serve the innocents who were affected by the choices of a few and the injustice of our society. While these situations do exist, I no longer characterize our neighborhood this way. We have found it to be a place of greater community than I have ever seen in a picturesque suburban neighborhood. One can’t walk down our street without being greeted by several porch-sitters or kids playing in yards. Resources are slim, thus, neighbors and families must rely one another for support and news.

We came to serve our neighbors as if within ourselves we had so much to offer them. Without realizing this, we came with the attitude of would-be heroes. Surely these people needed us, and others like us. God has shown us our true place here and where the real need lies. Recently we have had some problems with small thefts on our street. Steve and I are not often home because of our jobs and internships, so our house is left empty most of the day. Every afternoon when I come home from school, our next door neighbor Rilla is out on her porch and Cal is on her porch across the street. They both wave, say hello, and perhaps make a comment about the weather or their yard work. I continue inside to put my things down. They seem to be insignificant interactions, but they have been the building blocks of great, interdependent relationships. Most days it’s just a hello exchanged between us, but occasionally Rilla will say, “The mailman left that package out for you…I’ve been watching it all day to make sure nobody run off with it.” Or she will fill us in on the activity of a few neighborhood boys who have been messing with a vacant home. She understands much better than I do the necessity of having good neighbors because she has lived here much longer. We have needed our neighbors to watch our mail, keep our house when we’re out of town, and now they’re helping us with landscaping and gardening.

We were wrong about what it would look like to live in this neighborhood and love our neighbors, but God has given us the opportunity to serve them in small ways. One evening we were sitting in our living room waiting for friends to come over when we heard a loud man’s voice. We have only one male neighbor, and he is far from loud, so we took interest in what might be going on. The night was dark and standing on Rilla’s porch was a man talking to her through her screen door. In our neighborhood, it is not unusual for people to prey on the elderly and uneducated for their money, so Steve went over to try to help. The man was trying to sell her some kind of phone service and wouldn’t leave despite her explanations that she wouldn’t open the door after dark. After Steve came over, the situation was quickly settled and the man left her alone.

We have come to this neighborhood expecting to serve, and we have done that, but even more than this, we have been served. I am humbled when I think about all of the things our neighbors have done for us and the great sense of community they have between each other. I believe this is the way God desires it for everyone. We have needed our neighbors as much, or even more, than they have needed us. It is not for one group to come in and do the ‘serving’, as if we had so much to offer others that they don’t already possess, but it is a series of interdependent relationships in which we must rely on and care for one another.

May 2007

"Experience with Race" by Steve Houlihan

2008-09-11T05:26:00.000-07:00

Jerome, a twenty-five year old African-American man, grew up in Binghampton in rather common yet unfortunate circumstances. Without a father in his life he quickly got involved in gang activity and became a Vice Lord gang member long before he could even drive a car. Jerome was imprisoned at the age of sixteen and did not take a step as a free man until seven years had passed. At twenty-three Jerome returned home and started to put the tattered pieces of his life back together. But what was he to do with the GED he received in prison and no other marketable employment skills? Jerome chose to apply for the Binghampton Development Corporation’s job training program to learn construction and life skills.

Steven Houlihan, a twenty-three year old Caucasian grew up in Chesterfield, a wealthy suburb of Saint Louis, in common yet rather unfortunate circumstances. The Houlihan’s were an average middle-class family living in an all white community. The public schools were exemplary; Steven received a great education and went to college to study business and real estate. Unintentionally, he had been completely sheltered from any culture other than his own; he became a racist not by direct indoctrination but through a lack of exposure and believing the skewed perceptions of his culture. Upon graduation Steven had plenty of marketable skills to find a job of choice or take his fathers successful fence business. God sent Steven to live in Binghampton to work for the Binghampton Development Corporation training local men in construction and life skills.

Two entirely different cultures collide. Steven and Jerome are now working together through the job training program. They speak so differently that although they are both speaking a dialect of English, they cannot always understand what the other is saying. Even if they do hear the right words, the meaning behind those words will not always be communicated as intended. Both Steven and Jerome get frustrated with each other because of perceived mistreatment when no harm was intended. On one such occasion, Steven and Jerome are in Bible study. Steve is listening to Jerome and watching him attentively with the purpose of fully understanding what he is saying and meaning. Jerome perceives this as critical examination and speaks up about it. “I seen you studyin’ me, lookin’ at me like I’m a lab rat all morning. Like I’m doing something I shouldn’t be.” What is commonplace and even respectful for Steve is perceived as malicious and scheming by Jerome.

Reconciliation has come. The men eventually have a conversation about the tension that has been building over time. Steve explains that he doesn’t always understand what Jerome means when he is asking questions or making comment in Bible study. He doesn’t understand because his perception of reality is so different than Jerome’s. Neither perception is wrong; their lives have just been so different. Jerome apologizes for getting defensive. They talk and understand now that they are going to have to learn how to communicate with each other and give the other the benefit of the doubt, being patient with the other’s lack of understanding. Trust can now grow. A Kingdom building relationship will cultivate. He is beginning to realize that Christ is not adequately portrayed in white middle-class culture, but that every culture has God’s character woven into its fabric. Steven may be the job trainer, but he has just as much to learn as he has to teach.

January 2007

"Gettin' Schlapped" by Brian Purdy

2008-08-27T09:50:00.000-07:00

It was a relatively cool spring evening on Hollins Street. In light of an upcoming deadline for the SOS Academy Reading Forum, Lisa, Kim, Blair, and I had decided to sit on the porch and finish our reading assignment. We thought it would be a good way to put our newly installed porch swing to use and at the same time take advantage of an opportunity to foster community and productivity. In any case, it was an exceptionally nice evening.

Our neighbor and boss, Eric, stopped by on the way to his car to say hello as he and his wife Shelly were going out to spend the evening with some friends. As he made his way to the car, which was parked across the street, after our short exchange, a beat-up looking Dodge sedan came tearing down the street, tires squealing and engine raging, Eric, being the safety conscious, authoritative, protective person that he is, stood in the road to block the only path that the car could take so that he might inform the driver of his error in driving recklessly on Hollins Street. Forced to stop as a result of Eric’s presence on one side of the road and a barrier set in place to protect a recently repaired section of asphalt in front of our house on the other, a confrontation ensued. Eric informed the driver that he was not to speed down our street and that reckless driving would not be tolerated because of the frequent foot traffic of children and other pedestrians that might be endangered as a result, not to mention that the driver had broken the law. Seeing that his pathway was no longer obstructed by Eric, as he had moved to the driver’s side window to speak, the driver, a young male that smelled of alcohol and cigarettes, revved his engine once again and tore down the street and around the corner out of sight at the urging of his passengers. Eric shrugged his shoulders and shook his head, and he and Shelly proceeded to their car and drove away.

Continuing to read and discussing the event as an unfortunate idiosyncrasy of inner-city life, we thought little more about it and went about our business. I remember having a short discussion about method and whether or not reading the first and last sentence of every paragraph actually qualified as reading the assignment. Rich Christians In an Age of Hunger, an excellent commentary on the proper treatment of affluence from a biblical perspective, had had its high points, but I was feeling somewhat unmotivated to finish reading it on that particular evening.

As we read on, a pair of young men passed by our porch and took a seat on the steps next door at Kim and Lisa’s house, which is not an unusual occurrence in the neighborhood of Binghamton. As I said earlier, foot traffic on Hollins Street is very frequent, especially in front of our houses. Furthermore, there is among the residents of Binghamton a certain boldness that would not prevent the average foot traveler from taking a short rest on a neighbor’s front steps in the midst of a lengthy walk. For these reasons, we, again, dismissed the event and continued to read.

Shortly thereafter, the two men arose from their rest and began to walk in the opposite direction, passing by our porch a second time. One of them shirtless and the other in a white baseball cap and white hooded sweatshirt, they seemed to be examining us with some sort of intent.

“You look real pretty in that green shirt tonight,” said the shirtless one as he turned to face the four of us.

“Thank you,” replied Lisa hesitantly as we all looked at him blankly. Suddenly, his demeanor shifted from a mildly inappropriate advance to a full-fledged aggression.

“What are you looking at?!?” he said to me as he continued in a stream of spewed profanity and vulgar epithets. Obviously drunk, he moved from the sidewalk to the front walkway, proceeding finally to the porch and stopping a few inches away from me. He continued to spew insults and provocations as the stench of alcohol filled the space around us. He then moved in front of Blair and began laying into him as he had me. When he seemed to run out of words, he tore the book from Blair’s hands and exclaimed, “Rich Christmas? You read this so you can talk down to white trash like me? Is that why you’re reading this?” He flung the book aside as he grabbed mine and did the same with it. He somehow found more verbal abuse within him and as it spewed forth, he smacked me across the face, sending my glasses into the yard. He did the same to Blair.

It seemed as though these events were taking place in slow motion, and during the verbal onslaught that culminated in a drunken, shirtless man smacking both my roommate and I across the face, I knew that if I had fought him, I would have torn him apart. He was the same size as me and visibly drunk, and I was confident that I would bury him if he had tried to hurt me or any of my companions. On any other occasion, I would have broken his nose right there. Why I did not hit the man in the face is, I am convinced, a miracle of God. Despite the man’s aggression, God granted me with an unusual calmness, and I began to think of how often I had preached to the boys on my basketball team to turn the other cheek. Convicted that the right thing to do was to suck it up, unless he turned to the women, I did just that. The man turned to leave, kicking a candle off our porch and smashing a flower pot on the sidewalk as he left, still spewing verbal threats.

My roommate promptly called our friend Marlon, known affectionately as the “Big Dog,” and explained the situation. He came to our house and launched a manhunt after an attempt at getting the police involved proved less than hopeful. As we drove around in search of the two men, I was dumbfounded at how the Lord had calmed me. I thanked him that my pride, which had reared its ugly head on previous occasions, was held in check and that I did not retaliate physically. I would like to say that it’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but I cannot truthfully say that. God’s intervention was evident to me, and things that would normally have set me off seemed like nothing at all.

After knocking on a few doors, it seemed as though we weren’t going to be able to find the two men. Just as we were about to give up, though, I spotted one of them in the backseat of a car that had stopped in front of a drug house. The driver got out to talk to someone in another car, and I quickly identified him as our shirtless assailant. Marlon and I got out of the car, and Marlon approached the man from behind to ask if he knew who I was. After a quick denial, I confronted him point blank.

“Yes, you do know me. You came up on our porch a half hour ago and hit me and my roommate in the face.” He seemed stunned that I had said anything at all, and he began to mumble something about us instigating the action. Then, after I asked why he thought it was ok to come onto a neighbor’s porch and cause trouble, his countenance changed from combative to shocked. A look of realization crept into his face as he said, “He was wearing an orange shirt. You’re shirt is white. He was wearing an orange one.”

I was confused by his comment, and I was even more confused when he began crying. Only after a few minutes of reflection did I realize that he had thought I was Eric all along. He apologized profusely, and I asked if he would come and apologize to Blair, Kim, and Lisa as well. He got into the Jeep, and we drove around the corner to our houses. Mike got out of the car, still crying , and apologized to Blair while I knocked on the girls’ door to see if they would come outside to receive an apology. He apologized to the two girls as well, all the while urging us to return his misdeed and hit him in the face to “make things even.” We politely explained that we would not hit him and that the Bible teaches us to turn the other cheek when someone wrongs you. Dumbfounded and still crying, Mike turned to walk home. Realizing that an opportunity was about to pass, I asked if I could walk with him, and, doing so, shared the Gospel with him before we reached the street corner. Shocked, but not at the point where he was willing to receive it, Mike asked when and where I attended church. Crying even more than before, he promised to come by the house at 4:30 on Sunday afternoon to attend church with me.

I decided that, in spite of the evening’s excitement, I would try to accomplish the task that I had set out to conquer nearly three hours prior. Sitting on the porch reading, I had trouble concentrating, and in the midst of a daydream, I glanced down the street and noticed three men walking towards the porch, one of whom was Mike. He and two of his friends had come to sit on the porch and talk. More than anything, they could not understand why neither Blair nor I had returned Mike’s blows with our own. They seemed intrigued but, at the same time, disengaged by the explanation. Mike, still drunk, offered me a job spraying acoustical ceilings. He said, “I’ll pay you twelve dollars an hour, and you don’t even have to preach.”

I tried to explain to him that we don’t do it because we have to, and he seemed satisfied with the response. He and his tow friends, Justin and Ryan, got up to leave. I reminded him to meet me at 4:30 on Sunday afternoon to go to church , and he assured me that he would be there. The three men left, offering Blair and I a beer and a valium before walking away. That was the last time I ever saw Mike.
I am, to this day, conflicted about the actions that we took on that evening. Mike, a drunk and disorderly man, physically assaulted us without any real punishment. But was the demonstration of grace and restraint that he witnessed more powerful than a night in jail? Will the fact that the Gospel was shared in love somehow play a role in Christ’s plan for redeeming him from a life devoted to drugs and alcohol? I wish I knew the answers to those questions, but I do not and cannot. There have been many situations, though not quite as intense as this one, where I have felt conflict and even discouragement because of a lack of born fruit. I have come to know, however, that it is not my job to judge impact, especially not by my own standards. It is merely my responsibility to remain faithful and obedient to the Lord’s call on my life. If that means sharing the Gospel at the expense of my pride and taking a few slaps to the face, I will gladly do so.

I hope and pray that the Lord will use the events of that evening, somehow, for His glory and the advancement of His kingdom in Binghamton. I hope and pray that someday Mike will be ready to receive God’s gift of salvation, and perhaps one Sunday afternoon, he might, again, agree to meet me on the porch at 4:30.

April 2006

"Cultural Differences" by Kristin Veach

2008-08-27T09:49:00.001-07:00

Before moving here, I had always heard that moving into the inner-city would prepare me for overseas missions. I even offered this as one of the reasons I was considering to move into the inner-city. People talked about how it would place me in a different culture while still remaining in country where I know the language and share some similarities. I heard all of these things and even claimed to subscribe to the same ideas, but I did not come close to understanding what this would mean for me now.

I am the type of person who needs to understand people in order to interact with them. For my first few encounters with a person I read them, trying to figure out what they need and how to best interact with them so that they will also accept me. As a result of this, I get very frustrated when I cannot figure out how a person would react to this or that, or their thoughts on this matter or another. Living in the inner-city and working with the people that live here has been hard for me. I usually gage how people will react based on my prior knowledge and interactions with people. This year I found myself interacting with people who are nothing like those I usually encounter, therefore, I have had very little to base how I should interact with them. I don't know how they will react because I don't understand them or where they are coming from. Oh, how I want to understand and I try to understand, but I just don't.

For a while I blamed the differences on race and began drawing the lines based solely on skin color. After a while, though, I began to realize that it has nothing to do with race. Yes, the lines may appear to be as simple as the color of our skin, but they are really much deeper and stem from the cultures in which we grew up. I was astonished at how such different cultures with such different ideals and goals could live next door to each other and not understand one another at all!

There are many examples from my year of working with parents, students, and fellow teachers from inner-city culture. Some were very trivial things, such as what words were appropriate for children to say, but some are much deeper, like disciplining children and the role of parents in a child's life. I found myself thinking that my way was superior and conversely that their views were wrong.

I teach kindergarten. In my kindergarten class we have the same discipline problems as any school (inner-city or suburban). Once during the year, I noticed that my students were having a lot of trouble telling the truth and that they were flat-out lying. It was such a problem that I felt compelled to discuss this issue with the entire class, talk about what lying is and how to deal with it. When I began to share with my students, they began to say things like, "Miss Kristin, we don't say that word," or "Ummm, Miss Kristin said the 'L' word." This confused me. I later found out that in many of the homes of our community the word lie or lying is considered a bad word and children are not supposed to say it. Rather, the way to address the problem of untruthfulness is to say, "They told a story." When I first heard this I was really bothered. I didn't want to say that the student told a story because in my mind it wasn’t a story at all. They were simply lying and lying is wrong. I wanted them to understand the seriousness of this issue. For a while I resented using the community terminology but I tried not to say lie for the sake of my student's parents.

I began to notice other things too. For example, students in this community would say the word “butt”. When I was a child I was not allowed to say that word. There really is no real reason why “butt” would be a bad thing to say, but that was just the way it is, so it was accepted. I realized that I don’t always have things right and that there are just as many things in my culture that are as messed up (in my mind) as in theirs. I’m just used to mine so I don’t always see them. I have to understand that we are equal, even if our “cultures” are not the same. I am better than no one else just because of the way in which I was raised or the priorities and ideals I have come to hold. I now know that the only way to face this is to just admit the differences and try to see the other side of things, admit that I don't understand, ask someone to help me and just go with it. It is still very hard and I daily get frustrated with things that I don't understand about my student's lives, but the only way to understand is to stick with it and try to learn.

May 2007

"Opening the Door" by Dan Kruger

2008-08-27T09:47:00.000-07:00

What I have witnessed going on in Memphis is different than any other urban area I have worked with in the past. Two years ago, I reluctantly came to Memphis with a campus ministry to work at Service Over Self. My stream was dry and I had not seen God work in someone’s life in my prior four years of college. While serving down here those four days, my mindset of God, how to live my life, what it means to be a servant and to have a servant’s heart all changed. Convicted and challenged, and not liking it at the time, this week served as the catapult that led me to move into Memphis and change my goals for life.

It was not the construction, or the staff, but the people that we worked with that I was able to see how God was changing their lives through what God did through us. The poor, a group of people I knew needed help but never knew how to impact was now in reach and I could do something about it. Too often I and others live in a secluded world of safety. We turn from the problems and if it does not directly impact us then we tend not to worry about it. After being convicted of this I knew that I had to change my views and lifestyle. There are truly great people who are living in this neighborhood who I never would have met or given a chance to before I moved to Memphis.

This past summer I was blessed to work on Mrs. Shirley’s house. The first few weeks were awkward in having to go into an all black household with groups that were almost always white. Over the summer barriers were broken and we opened up to each other. By the end of the summer, they had become part of my family and I had become part of theirs. I never thought I would have a cross cultural family, but now I can say that I have another grandma, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and so much more just around the corner. I was truly blessed by the household I was able to serve.

I have recently purchased a home on the other side of Binghampton. Currently I am renovating it with hopes that I can move in during the spring. The purpose for buying the home was so that I could take direct ownership in part of the neighborhood and put myself in a place where I could be in contact with those around me and build relationships with neighbors outside of SOS’ summer work. I look forward to being able to become neighbors and friends with those around me, along with growing from the situations and struggles that living in the neighborhood bring. I have never really known my neighbors in the past, but now I cherish the different personalities, cultures, and experiences I face daily right outside my front door. The people who live around me have been the greatest part about being here in Memphis. I can now say that I have seen how God has changed many lives by the work he has done in this neighborhood, through the hands of servants at SOS and the other ministries working in Binghampton.

January 2007

"Using His Gifts in the Inner City" by Clifton Bryant

2008-08-19T12:31:00.001-07:00

Ever since I became involved with SOS four and a half years ago, I have been in love with the vision it presents of living and working among the urban poor. I have been in love with the city of Memphis and the neighborhood of Binghampton, and I have longed to come alongside the ministries in this neighborhood to see lives transformed for the glory of Jesus Christ. But I do not have the personality usually associated with urban ministry. I am extremely shy and reserved. I have no administrative talent whatsoever. I have a hard time paying attention to what’s going on around me and sometimes create more confusion than clarity when I speak. This doesn’t seem like a very promising personality type for a job that involves forming relationships, organizing and deploying resources, and communicating. So as much as I loved this neighborhood, I always wondered if I really had anything to offer it.
I have always been at home as a student. I love ideas and arguments, and have a gift for understanding them and expressing them in writing. For years I’ve felt a call to use these gifts and passions to serve Christ in academia, and it seemed odd to take a detour from that goal to work in a field of ministry for which I seem to have no natural gifting. But I strongly felt that God wanted me to give a year of my life to Memphis.
So I came here. I came planning to spend my time doing a needs-assessment survey of the nearby neighborhood of Orange Mound. I was to gather demographic information on the neighborhood, and identify its areas of need and the resources available to it. This information was to be used by local ministries that are considering expanding their operations into Orange Mound.
The work got off to a bad start. The method I had for getting and organizing the census data I needed was a very tedious one. Attempts to get the data in a more user-friendly format hit technical roadblocks. It was unclear whether I would be able to get access to the mapping software I would need to do the project in the way my supervisor and I envisioned. I had a hard time focusing spending hours at a time staring at numbers. Weeks passed, and there was little indication that the project was coming together in any kind of useful form. I felt frustrated and useless. I began to wonder if I had made a mistake in coming here.
Perhaps sensing my frustration, or perhaps simply deciding that he would rather me be do something else, my supervisor began to ease me into a different task – that of articulating the biblical vision that inspires the work we do here in Memphis. For the last few months I’ve been writing a series of devotional essays designed to take people through Scripture and help them discern and respond to God’s call. They will be used to help those who will come join us in the work we do here and to recruit others to live their lives sacrificially for the sake of serving the poor in the name of Jesus Christ and for the sake of seeing the Gospel preached to the nations. This work is going well, and I feel that it is of real value to this community.
This isn’t really traditional urban ministry, but God has provided a way for me to support the ministries that serve this neighborhood by communicating the vision that drives us and recruiting more workers to the field. God has given me a way to serve this neighborhood that feeds directly into my personality, gifts, and interests – reading and analyzing Scripture, thinking about how the truths of Scripture apply to the work we do here, and communicating those thoughts in writing. He has also used this experience to give me a better sense of how I can use my gifts in the future to serve and build up the Church. I praise God for helping me overcome my ideas about what my gifts are and are not useful for and for allowing me to use them to serve the city he has led me to love.

November 2007

"If I Ever Get Out of Here" by Liska Shilling

2008-08-19T12:29:00.000-07:00

It seems like everyone has at least one semi-realistic fear which at the same time is completely irrational. I, for instance, have a fear of mascots left over from a childhood trauma which is clearly irrational. My best friend’s fear is that one day she will be left completely paralyzed and unable to communicate with the world while still in full possession of her mental abilities. This may seem like a weird fear to many. Yet, in my mind, her fear is actually just a specific form of a more generalized concern for many: the fear of being trapped.

In my experience thus far in the inner city, I have realized that many people struggle with a reality of entrapment that greatly resembles my friend’s fear. I teach mostly upper-classmen students at a public high school that is on the watch list for the No Child Left Behind Act. These students are older and in many ways do not possess the malleable, open to change attitude that might be wished for or expected in younger students. They have established their reputations and associations by this point with peers, the community, and some faculty as well.

As I watch my students, I see the reason why the thought of being rendered a prisoner in your own body with a mind that works is such a terrifying prospect. One of my students, “Leonardo,” presents a perfect example. His first few days in class went very well and then he seemingly dropped off the planet. On the days that he would attend, he’d often refuse to do work and instead ask to leave to go “holla” at another member of the staff who was trying to help him. He then let me know that part of his distraction came from trying to deal with his parole and avoiding jail. On a regular basis I’d talk to him during the day, implore him to come to class and do work, plead with him to not waste his mind and life by making bad decisions. Yet day after day he failed to come to class. One time after letting him leave my class in order to settle some grade issues so that he could meet his parole officer the next day, he proceeded to jump in on a fight that broke out rather than come back to my class. He went on suspension, came back, didn’t go to class, and has now been expelled. Leonardo lives a trapped life. Though he has them, circumstances beyond his control and his own bad decisions have hidden all of his options and the power to choose his own life from his view.

I have seen this tendency to live life as though trapped in many of my students and the communities in which we live. I can easily be overwhelmed when looking at some of the things that keep my students trapped. Many of my guy students are in gangs and would probably proudly admit this association if not for the immediate expulsion that comes with doing so at school. Responsibility still falls on them for their individual choices; however, these boys are being “jumped in” around the age of 11 and have been socialized to act for the group. It breaks my heart to watch these guys try to do school while poisoning their lives and minds with drugs and violence. A good number of female students are also involved with gangs and drugs but more often the issue that traps many of them cries at night and requires diaper changes and constant attention. Many times these problems arise from students seeking identity and acceptance in the wrong places: gangs, violence, and sexual activity. In most of these situations, a self-perpetuated, vicious cycle “traps” these students who have never been given a window to a better way.

It is sometimes easy for me to become frustrated and fail to see the point of teaching at an inner city school. I look at my students and feel a sense of hopeless and powerless of my own that comes from my inability to change things. I cannot give back their innocence to them or help them understand why their brother or sister or mother or cousin died from violence. I get angry at a society that allows conditions to exist that create “inner city schools” in the first place. At the same time, I feel a sense of purpose in pouring my life out into these students. I have not achieved any great successes worthy of the mantel quite yet; however, I firmly believe that God has used me and will continue to do so even though I might not have the privilege of seeing the fruit.

November 2007

"Seeing Shades of Gray in a Black and White World" by Candace Todd

2008-08-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

Yes, I admit it. I am a racist. Although I am not a blatant racist that speaks openly about the superiority of my race and I do not commit hate crimes against blacks, I have learned from my time of living in the inner city that I hold onto a subtle form of racism. Let me explain.

I was born and raised here in Memphis; a city that I believe is extremely racist. There are the white parts of town such as Germantown, Cordova, and Bartlett, and then there are the black parts of town such as Orange Mound, Frayser, and Binghampton. The racial lines that have been drawn in this city are strong and few dare to cross them. I believe the racism of Memphis exists within both the white and black communities. The whites are terrified of the blacks. They see them as gang-bangers who drink away their lives while robbing and killing others. The whites will go out of their way to drive around the black parts of Memphis. On the other hand, the blacks are also racist. They believe that the whites have mistreated them and that they cannot be trusted. Most of them will never vote for a white person to be an elected official, even if the black candidates are corrupt. Evidence of both of these types of racism can be seen on a daily basis on the local news.

During middle school one of my teachers told my class about the dangers of racism. I remember her very clearly telling us that racism is not biblical and that blacks and whites are equal and should be treated as such. This was the first time that I realized that the world around me was very racist and that I was going to have to fight against the racism in my life. I made a conscious effort to tell anyone who made a negative comment about blacks that I would not tolerate such remarks. I did a fairly good job of not allowing racist talk to go on around me, and I began to see myself as someone who stood up for blacks. I believed then, and still do, that blacks and whites must be treated equally and that both races are equally valuable. Due to all of this, I never would have considered myself to be racist until I moved into the inner city.

Before I moved into Binghampton I began to get nervous about my safety. I knew that I was moving into a primarily black neighborhood and that the crime rate was much higher than the crime rate in the suburb in which I was living. I continued to be concerned after I moved into the neighborhood. During the first few days of living here my car was broken into and my radio was stolen. When I pictured the thief in my mind it was always a young black man. Every time I would drive down the street I would look at the black men and wonder which one of them had stolen my radio. After this incident I became much more cautious about the people who I saw walking down my street. A lot of black people walk down Hollins during the day, and I always used to watch them as they came near to my house to make sure they were not going to try and break in. I also got nervous when I pulled into my driveway at night and saw several black teenagers hanging out around the basketball goal near my house. I was terrified that they were going to try and either hurt or rob me.

Not only was I scared of the blacks that lived in my neighborhood, but I also criticized them for the way that they lived and interacted in the community. I thought that they were stupid for always walking down the middle of the street, and I condemned them for skipping school and being involved in gangs. I could not believe that they did not realize that the way they were living was killing them and was hurting the people around them.

I continued to hold onto these thoughts and fears for a long time. One day I was walking out to my car and I saw a rugged looking white man walking down the street. I was not scared of him, and I did not think that he was going to hurt me or was looking to break into my house. I was then hit hard with the reality that I was a racist. Even though I believed that blacks and whites were equal, I realized that I was holding onto a pre-conceived notion that blacks are dangerous and should be avoided.

This realization saddens me because these feelings have absolutely no merit. For the most part, the blacks in my neighborhood have been friendly and nice to me. They have not given me any reason to distrust or fear them. When I went around my street meeting my neighbors, all of them were so nice to me and welcomed me into the neighborhood with open arms. My neighbor across the street even made homemade Sudanese donuts for all of the interns and brought them to us as a way of welcoming us into the neighborhood.

As I have begun to think about my time here in the inner city, I have learned that there are many similarities between me and the blacks that live in Binghampton. I have realized that we are all a product of our environments and we have learned how to adapt to those environments. The blacks who live in the inner city have learned to adapt to the hardships that they face as a result of living in such a dangerous place, just as I had to learn to adapt to the suburban culture in which I grew up. In the suburbs I learned that you always have to walk on the sidewalks, or at least on the side of the road. If you do not, you will likely get hit by a car. The people who live in Binghampton, though, have learned that if you walk on the sidewalks you will probably stumble over tree roots, step on broken glass and trash, as well as be scared to death by the dogs that rush to the fence and bark at you when you walk by. So, instead of walking on the sidewalks, they walk down the middle of the streets where it seems to be safer.

Another example of how we have adapted to our environments is how we have learned to fit in and be accepted. One common need shared by all of humanity is the need to be accepted and to belong. Everyone, if they are to survive in this world, needs to learn how to fit in with others so that they can have a sense of belonging. I learned that my sense of belonging comes from my family and friends. I did my best to make friends in school and to keep up with what was in style so that I could fit in with others. My family and friends all showed me love and affection so I truly felt like I belonged. I have learned, though, that the people living in the inner city do not always have the types of love and support that I had growing up. Many of the people living in the inner city come from broken homes, and I have heard several people say that their families do not love them. Since their need to belong is not met in the home, they turn to gangs in order to find a sense of belonging. The gangs make these kids feel like they are loved and accepted. I have condemned these people for joining gangs, but now I realize that they are doing the same thing I did when I was growing up, only in a different way.

These are just two of the examples of the similarities I have discovered between me and those who live in Binghampton. All of us are seeking to survive in the environments in which we live. We all want to be loved and accepted and so we look for places where we can fit in. As I continue on my journey of living in the inner city, I am seeking to completely remove these feelings of racism from my heart. I want to continue to look for the similarities between us so that I can better understand and appreciate the blacks who live in my community. As I begin to see shades of gray in this black and white world, I am truly thankful that God has placed me in this situation, and I pray that He will use me in the huge task of racial reconciliation that is so needed in this hurting city.

November 2007

"House Church" by Leigh Tatum

2008-07-31T09:46:00.000-07:00

If someone says, “I’m going to church today,” an image of a large rectangular building with a steeple and a preacher at the front comes to mind. But why does that mental image pop up? Are there any alternatives to this picture? Perhaps, the Christ’s followers should realign their expectations of what a church should look like and focus instead on what God desires His Church to be like. First, each of Christ’s followers, each part of the universal Church, has a calling on his life and God outlines it clearly. He asks his disciples to love Him with all their heart, mind, and strength and to love their neighbors. God also firmly instructs his followers to spread the good news of His love and redemption offered through Jesus Christ to the whole world. Although there is no exact formula for living out this high calling, these decrees should motivate and direct everything the local church does.

In Binghampton, a group of believers has chosen to live out this calling in a different way, by forming a house church made up of those from the community. House Church is small by design, and currently supports about fifty people split between two different homes. The small group dynamic pushes the participants to grow both as individuals seeking to know Jesus and as a body of believers endeavoring to further God’s glory and build each other up. Every person is strongly encouraged to use their gifts in a way that serves the whole and honors God, whether that is through teaching, music, prayer, faith, serving food, or adding wisdom to the discussions of Scripture. In this context, no member is relying on a preacher or various programs to provide spiritual growth to him. Instead, he is spurred on to intimacy with God our Father. Additionally, this model is transferable to all cultures and socio-economic groups because people are the only resources needed, fueled by the Holy Spirit and directed by God’s Word.

Most Americans today have compartmentalized lives; the people they know through their church, work, school, social club, and neighborhood do not typically overlap. This compartmentalization leads either to a host of surface relationships with various individuals or a full devotion to one group at the cost of neglecting all others. However, with the house church model, the people worshiping God together are often neighbors, coworkers and friends. This marvelous overlap encourages authentic, deep relationships by allowing interaction with people in multiple contexts. With church being both smaller in number and less separated from other aspects of life, vulnerability and accountability are facilitated and fellow participants can more easily recognize and act when needs arise.

Furthermore, the Church is not limited to what happens on Sundays. Romans 12:1 says worship occurs when people “offer [their bodies] as living sacrifices… to God.” So, Christians worship God and build each other up through a number of activities, not simply when they gather for a service of songs and Bible teaching. When young women host a weekly Girls Club to show love and share the about Jesus with the young girls in the neighborhood, they are being the Church. When some fellowship over dinner and laugh and share life together, they are being the Church. When others meet to discuss biographies of saints that have gone before them, they are being the Church.

Lastly House Church, like any group, is not filled with perfect people and will always have room for improvement. Conflict and growing pains will surface, but the small, open design gives voice to all participants and the authentic relationships among believers foster honest discussion of challenges as they arise. Additionally, the leaders of house church consistently focus on the highest priorities: the call to die to self for Christ’s sake and the need for all nations to hear the Gospel. House Church upholds these priorities by supporting several who are serving God abroad and praying for them and for those who may go soon. In considering the mission of the universal Church, the unique model and components of House Church have proven to build up Christ’s body in distinct and powerful ways.

January, 2007

"Growing Up in the Inner City" by Tasha Houlihan

2008-07-31T09:45:00.001-07:00

It doesn’t take living in this neighborhood very long to realize how the culture of the inner city affects everyone, particularly those who have grown up in it. This has been more apparent to me as I have worked with preschoolers and their families that live in and around the Binghampton area. “Freddie” is a four-year-old in my class who comes from a family that is not atypical for the neighborhood: four siblings, dad is rarely if ever present, and mom does not work. Fortunately for him and his first grade brother, there is a school where many of their spiritual and emotional needs are met. It is entirely possible for a child to grow up in the inner city and have the love, encouragement, and support from family to develop in a healthy way. Sadly, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule for many kids who are daily affected by the negative choices of parents, family members, and neighbors.

When I first met Freddie, I had heard that although he was four, he had very little supervision at home and was often seen walking around the neighborhood with his six year old brother, “Trey”. I have worked with older children like him, and I expected him to mirror their difficulties with authority and reluctance to participate in school. To my surprise, he was a sweet, kind, and loving little boy who has thrived in the school environment. He greets me each morning with a hug and smile, and rarely complains or utters an unkind word to his friends. The first day of school I let my students paint as a fun, introductory activity. His delight in the paint and what he had created was immeasurable.

As I have gotten to know Freddie, I have also become acquainted with his family, especially his two older brothers. While in some ways they are like him, I can see how even at six and eight years old they have been affected by the culture in which they were born. Trey can be sweet and loving like his younger brother, but at the first sign of confrontation or conflict, his sweet face becomes dark and hard. He goes into a shell that often seems impenetrable. He will refuse to speak with or acknowledge anyone. He has been caught stealing twice since I have known him, both times spurred on by older friends from the neighborhood.

“Tonio” is the oldest of the three brothers at eight. He attends a local public school and spends every afternoon hanging out in our school gym with Memphis Athletic Ministries. He is given the responsibility of picking up and taking care of his brothers after school, and he is only in second grade. He has been banned from every store within walking distance for stealing. He rarely shows emotion, and hangs out with neighborhood kids playing games like drive-by, where they pretend to be apart of a drive-by shooting.

The gradual differences seen in these boys are remarkable to me. Unfortunately, they do not have the protection and shelter from the dangers of the world like I did growing up. Freddie is an innocent little boy, with little understanding of the threats that the world around him holds. Sadly, he will face gangs, drugs, and unspeakable violence anyway, much sooner than he should, and without having the abilities to resist such influences. Observing the progression in just four years from Freddie to Tonio, I wonder how anyone could expect children to succeed in the inner city. By the time these boys realize the truth of death and pain that their culture hides behind myths of glory, it may be too late.

But even in these discouraging circumstances, God offers glimmers of hope. I cannot redeem this neighborhood, or these boys, but He can, and I believe He is. Freddie and Trey have been put into a Christian school with teachers and staff who are bold to speak against the negative influences of their culture, and to protect and care for them when needed. Tonio spends every afternoon with young men who are like him in many ways, but they are also strong Christian men who are deserving of the respect that he gives them, unlike other leaders in the neighborhood.

Several weeks ago I was at school late, and as I was leaving I noticed several children on our playground (which is fenced and locked). Freddie and his brothers were outside the fence, and I asked the kids inside to leave the playground and the parking lot. I asked the boys if they wanted a ride home, to which they said no. They wanted to hang out with their friends. One of the boys I didn’t know said he wanted to go play drive-by. Trey looked up at me and said “I think I want you to take me home.” It was a moment I will never forget, when a connection is made and all of the sudden what you have been teaching a child becomes real, and he responds in a positive way. I think it was a huge step for Trey to say no to his older friends and come with me.

Another day after school I had all three brothers in my room while I was working. They ended up working on puzzles with each other. In my class, we never say “I can’t”, we say “I need help.” Freddie said he couldn’t do a puzzle, to which I responded ‘We never say I can’t.’ Just a few minutes later, he said the same thing again. Before I could respond, I heard Tonio say, “Yes you can Freddie, you can do it. Don’t say you can’t.” This from a boy who has probably heard the message “You can’t” over and over again from his family, peers, and community. But in my room, when I let them play, he gets to be a kid. He’s not there to watch his brothers, and act tough around his friends. He plays with preschool puzzles and dolls, and he loves it.

The illustration here is probably one of hundreds of similar situations. Many children are falling pray to the dangers of inner-city life. It is easy to blame families, neighborhoods, social programs, or schools. It is easy for me to place blame, and it is easy for me to ignore when it is not my fault. I would rather be home with my husband, or getting my errands done, and I am not the reason they have no one to watch them and no where to go after school. It is even easier for me to think that what little things I do for these kids will never make a difference in the long run. They will still join gangs, and steal, and do drugs, so maybe it’s just not worth my time. Looking into the faces of those I work and live with everyday, I see that there is little hope left here. After generations of difficulty and struggle, many believe they will never get out, never amount to anything, and never succeed. But I’ve only been here for five months, and already I see that God is working. I cannot let myself fall prey to the same hopelessness that plagues this culture. My God is a God of hope, and He has called His people to spread that message to the whole earth. Even in the difficult situation of these brothers, I can see the hope that is there for each of them.

January, 2007

"Reflections: Ana" by Kristin Veach

2008-07-31T09:42:00.000-07:00

The first time I met Ana, she was walking into our classroom with an anxious, vulnerable look on her face. As I got to know her over the next days and weeks, I began to realize that my first impression was partially correct. She was anxious because she is so sensitive and unsure of if we would accept her. She is also very vulnerable. Her highly sensitive nature increases her desire to be accepted by everyone, and she desires to do what needs to be done to gain that acceptance. But in getting to know Ana, I also found that she is one of the most sweet, caring little girls you will ever meet. When she knows you care, she greets you with a hug and a smile. If I were allowed to have favorites, she would certainly be one.

Before I ever met Ana, I met her family. Her mother is white, her father is African American, and she has five brothers and sisters. Her mother is good friends with a major local drug dealer who visits her house daily. Her oldest brother belongs to a gang and has been in the hospital multiple times for gunshot wounds related to his gang activity. When Ana was younger, she spent several months with her uncle. She was taken from her mother because of her choice in men. The more I learned about her life experience, the more I began to treasure and appreciate Ana’s sweetness and innocence.

Even knowing all that I did about Ana’s family, I somehow felt that she could not be affected by all that surrounded her. That is until she began coming to school with stories. The one story that sticks out most vividly is one she told when we were talking about what we had done the day before. She raised her hand and I expected an answer about riding her bike or going to the park, but instead she broke into:

“Last night, Big T came over (Big T is my momma’s boyfriend) and he was mad. He threw the TV through the window and broke the TV and he messed up my school clothes and my backpack and he was hitting my momma and so my momma chased him into the road and she was on the porch with a gun and told him she was gonna kill him and then my uncle ran into the road with him and they were fighting and Big T pulled my uncle’s pants down and…”

I was floored. I had no idea how to respond; I just asked her to stop in the middle of the story and tell me about it later. The crazy part was that she had no idea that her story was very different than someone else’s story about going to McDonalds. She was telling it just like she would tell about a trip to the mall.

After a while I realized that these types of stories are somewhat normal for Ana. Sometimes her mother comes in to warn me and tell me her side of the story before Ana shares, because she knows Ana will share. She is so open and so vulnerable.

I drove through a fast-food restaurant the other day and the girl at the window was a bi-racial girl, about 18. She had a face of stone and a dark sadness about her eyes. Her face shape and skin color reminded me of Ana, and I began to wonder when Ana would become this way, hardened by life. It made me long for her to stay six years old forever, or to take her away, away from what she seems destined to become. I wondered what I could do now to preserve her sweet, sensitive personality. Then I realized that there is not much I can do. All I can do is love and treat her as I would any other six year old. I can teach her how to deal with situations and how to distinguish right and wrong. Then all I can do is pray: With all my heart, this is what I hope and pray for Ana: that God will intervene in her life and she will somehow rise above her circumstances and grow up to be a caring, responsible adult.

January, 2007

"Race Stereotypes" by Lisa Pollock

2008-07-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

I didn’t grow up in Memphis. In fact, I’m a northerner. The south is new to me. Collared greens, sweet tea, fried okra, porch culture, and summer heat- it’s all new. And like any visitor in an unfamiliar place I am soaking it all in. I’m trying a wealth of new sounds, sights, tastes, and experiences; particularly experiences. And so I write these next observations with the honest confession that I am no expert in southern culture, no seasoned veteran to the happenings of life below the Mason-Dixon Line. In many ways I write as a foreigner planted in a culture far different from her own. But I write them honestly, and I write them hoping that they might serve to explain a little of the struggle we face.

Memphis is still a segregated city. I’m not sure if the greatest dividing line is race or economics, but in many ways you would find that in our city those two go hand-in-hand. Memphis city and Memphis suburb exist within the same 30 miles but they are not the same places. The housing, lawns, storefronts, and perhaps most importantly, the opportunities, are vastly different despite the closeness of proximity. Perhaps the most evident to my outside eyes, however, is the clear racial divide. Memphis suburb is predominantly white. And Memphis city is predominantly black.

Now, I do not mean to make it seem as though these two worlds never collide or conflict. Or that they are so distinctly separated that a crossover does not exist. But, I have gathered that a great deal of ignorance has led to a great deal of stereotyping. I have a friend who grew up in the Memphis suburbs whose father handed over her driver’s license at 16 with one admonishment, “Whatever you do, do not ever, ever, drive on Tillman.” Tillman happens to be the “main street” of Binghampton. And in the same respect I have had a student at school ask me, “Miss Pollock- are you rich?” and when I asked him what made him think so he responded, “Well, you are white.” These are stereotypes that exist and I think what I love most about our community in Binghampton is that in its core concept it is stereotype defying. It desires to heal misconceptions, seek understanding, and live in reconciliation. So, my heart is always saddened when I witness events that only further perpetuate the longstanding racial stereotypes that exist in Memphis.

One such example took place when I was out to dinner at Central Barbecue on a mild evening in the beginning of March. Central is a favorite Memphis barbecue location that is situated between the downtown and our neighborhood of Binghampton, in an area called Midtown. Midtown has gone through fairly extensive gentrification and is now home to Memphis’ young, professional, artistic class. We had just ordered our food that evening and were walking out to the patio to await our food being brought to us. No sooner had we sat down then we heard a commotion begin to erupt on the other side of the patio. “You stole my purse. You stole my purse!” I looked up to see a woman pointing at a man standing a few feet from her. As soon as she began to shout those things he turned and started to run. A few gentlemen dining with the woman began to chase the man who had turned to flee. He stumbled slightly and I was pretty sure that they were going to catch him. He got up and continued to run, however. He ran towards a car, jumped in, and then started driving towards his pursuers. He squealed his tires, peeled out, and made a turn for the street nearly running into the oncoming traffic as he merged. All in all, it was a fairly exciting and eventful scene. I had just witnessed a purse snatching.

I sat catching fragments of the conversation as the woman began to retell the story to her friends. She was obviously upset and somewhat enraged by what had happened to her. And rightly so; her purse had been stolen. What I noticed, however, through the bits and pieces I was catching of her re-telling was a distinctive emphasis of particular details. You see, the man who had stolen her purse was black. And the group of victimized diners was white. I sat staring at my barbecue nachos in frustration. I was frustrated because I’m sure that this story would be told to all of these woman’s friends as “the time she had her purse stolen by a black man.” I was frustrated because black men were now my neighbors and I knew many of them to be good, decent, hardworking men, but this particular black man had to go and do something stupid that would only further increase the stereotypes I myself had believed a few years ago about “dangerous black men.” I was frustrated because as I sat pondering the issue I realized that it only takes a few isolated incidences to create a stereotype, but it takes a few thousand incidences to erase it. I was frustrated because I know how the Memphis news portrays my neighborhood; how the gangs, and the violence, and the unpleasantries are the only things seen on the television by those snuggled safely in their suburban homes. I was frustrated because I know how the neighborhood boys that I hang out with hate rich, white people who continue to get more and more and not care about anybody else. I was frustrated by a deep yearning to see the Word of God manifest itself in Memphis; “you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

It would ease my mind a little if it were only unbelievers living in segregation. I could understand if the Holy Spirit was not present to do the work described in Galatians of making those who are vastly different one in Christ. But I fear this is not the truth. I fear you might find Sunday mornings one of the most segregated times of the week in our city. My frustration then, is not merely because I long to see the end of years of racism and stereotyping and segregation in our city because I know the damaging economic and social repercussions. My frustration exists because I long to know why I do not see my Christian brothers and sisters of all colors living, laboring, and serving our city together.

May, 2006

"First Impressions" by Brian Purdy

2008-07-22T18:25:00.000-07:00

Pulling up to a white house that matched the address of my map, I got out of the van and approached the gate fixed to the wooden fence that encircled the small corner lot. It was the first of three summers that I had worked at SOS, Service Over Self, Inc., and I was charged with the task of leading groups of high school students in re-roofing the house at which we had just arrived while at the same time challenging them spiritually. Relatively new to the community, I was somewhat unsure of myself in approaching the gate without any warning to the residents of the house beyond. Nevertheless, I distinctly remember a feeling of confidence that had blossomed from a pronounced ignorance to how things worked in Binghamton.

I pushed through the gate and approached the front door. I knocked loudly several times before a young black man answered the door. He struck me as an accommodating individual and re-entered the house to summon the rest of its residents. As he and several others poured through the front door, I noticed that he was the only one that looked “urban” according to American standards. His large t-shirt hid the fact that his dark, baggy jeans hung low on his waist, and his untied sneakers looked new and matched his large fitted baseball cap that still bore several flashy price tags.

The rest of the family, dressed in t-shirts and shorts, had no shoes, except for the mother, whose feet were covered by an old pair of leather sandals. In the ensuing time of greetings and introductions, I learned that the residents were refugees from Sierra Leone, a small country on the West African coast known for its diamond exports, and that they had been living in the United States for approximately five years. A little anxious and somewhat preoccupied with the unfamiliar task of roofing a house, I moved to proceed with taking tool inventory and began work for the day. Things seemed to run smoothly, and I was glad that we were finally underway.

In the weeks that followed, I learned that the young man who had answered the door, Musa, was a cousin of the Sillah family who had moved to Memphis after immigrating to Philadelphia with his mother. Though he had been immersed in the culture of urban America for some time, he did not seem altogether hardened by it, and the rough image that I had perceived upon meeting him faded a little with every toothy African smile that crossed his countenance. I remember several times that summer when we juggled a soccer ball together in the front yard. I was amazed at how well he could perform with both shoelaces untied and the tongues of his sneakers flapping wildly in contrast to his own controlled movements. I remember, also, playing one-on-one with him in the street a few times. I do not, however, remember winning. Needless to say, Musa was a natural athlete. On occasion, when I would see him leave the yard, I would ask where he was going.

“ I’m going to the park to make some money,” he would say with a matter of fact tone, and he would return later having won or lost various amounts of money on the basketball court. Whatever the result, he seemed content and continued to smile.

One day, about two weeks into the three week roofing process, Musa caught me off guard by asking some pointed questions. He had seemed disengaged from our lunchtime devotionals up to this point, and he would often leave whenever we held discussion. The questions that he asked, though, were all the right ones when comes to opportunities for sharing the Gospel. So, I answered them as best I could, and inquired as to the origin of his sudden interest in gaining biblical perspective on life and death. I was surprised to hear that he had been poring over becoming a Christian for some time as a result of meeting with Eric on a regular basis. He was merely inquiring of me in order to compare my answers with those that he had discussed in great detail with Eric. I was glad to hear that he had discovered a mutual consistency in our responses.

It is funny to me to remember when I first encountered Musa, especially in light of how things are now. His story is one of persecution and grace, with many parallels to the Gospel, and I am often left without words when I think of how God has worked in his life through Eric and Shelly.

May, 2006