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Immigration

    I confess that the debate bothers me because I think we end up losing some basic principles in all the rhetoric.  There is something in us that doesn't like "cutting in line."  We Americans really don't like people jumping in front of us, or others.  We can become very legalistic about it.  I can understand that.  Many of us don't like the idea that people might lose jobs because someone slipped into the country illegally, and they might take less money, and not allow economic forces to shape better pay and conditions so settled Americans can and will take those jobs.  It seems to me the debate becomes fixated on certain things we find repugnant to us, and we lose sight of other factors.
   I can't really speak to xenophobia or racism since it is hard to use reason or logic against those emotions.  If someone doesn't want immigrants here because they are black, brown, yellow, etc. then we can't ask them to have a compassionate heart; they already made a choice to be hardhearted.  When you add politics to the hardhearted you get the pig-headed, so reason and argument don't seem to help.
    The discussion has to be with those caught in the middle, and I hope there are more of them than others, just for the sake of votes.  I think we have to call ourselves to our first principles, and then we have to figure out a pragmatic way to implement them so that our principles are preserved and our people protected.  What are those principles?
   Can a people made up of immigrants despise the immigrant?  Can a nation that called on other nations to give us their tired, their poor, their huddled masses yearning to breathe free become infamous around the world for our callousness, our meanness, our obtuse maze and exploitative cost of immigration rules, visas, laws, and penalties?
    Those of us who are Christians have an even greater mandate and conscience than national heritage and legacy of freedom and hope for the desperate.  We have a word from God that we must care for the stranger, the alien, the person displaced.
    We need to stop using the word amnesty as if it were a dirty word.  We need to combine our principles with some desperately needed practical application to get some sense into our disgraceful national practice of dealing with immigration.  That won't happen as long as partisans are allowed to use fear and stake out extreme positions so lawmakers remain paralyzed in taking remedial action.  Our government has done some amazingly stupid things to people as if we were a people who didn't know the difference between hospitality and hostility.
   People who want to move here are not our enemies.  It is to our honor that many people want to come.
Poverty is a valid and good reason to want to move here.  It is ambition and aspiration that we want from those wanting to live here, and most immigrants have that in abundance.  We want people to obey the law, but not all laws are equal.  Administrative law is not moral law, and much of it in this context needs to be changed because it is bad law.  Our present immigration laws create criminals where none should exist, it separates families, it creates legal twilight zones of detention that should never be allowed in America; it can be arbitrary and draconian and that usually to satisfy some lawmakers constituency or lobbyist group.
    We should repel the criminal, we should expel the criminal, but not use minor infractions or misdemeanors as an excuse for deportations.  This is a stupid and mean policy and takes kids who have grown up here to a culture of which they have no knowledge.  We should have a clear fast lane for guest workers for those who only want to work but don't want to become citizens, and a really good system to make sure those rules are kept.  We should have a way to ascertain aspiration rather than huge monetary deposits for visa applicants from the third world.  Just because someone has property in another country doesn't mean we can trust them.
    We need to wake up to the fact that Americans are getting older, we need younger workers, and we are not producing them from our own marriages.  We need to deal practically with those who are already here but administratively illegal, and we need to do it comprehensively  and systematically and soon.  We need to spend more money on judges and the system for clearing cases, and we need to make sure those INS people understand their role isn't to disqualify everybody who applies.
     Why in the world wouldn't we want to ask young people who are already here to prove their loyalty to this nation by national service of some sort before being allowed to become citizens?  It seems to me if you were raised in this country illegally, but then join the military or some multi-year voluntary service then the door to employment and schooling should be open to you.  Not just for the immigrants sake, but for our sake.  The conservative side of me doesn't see any sense in offering free schooling to someone (anyone) who isn't willing to give something back to the nation.
   If we don't get a grip on this we are hypocrites, as a whole nation.  We are also shooting ourselves in the foot, and the hand, and the head.  If you want to come here, yes, you should get in line, but it should be a fast line; just, reasonable, well managed, and as pleasing in its application as in its destination.

Reflections on Recent Voices Lowering our Expectations

  I recently heard a commencement speaker emphasizing the need for young believers to commit themselves to the local church and think about the "long haul" of living for Christ.  I then read an article that in some ways echoed the speakers application for Christians to not pursue the "world changing" mentality and passion, but to live out their daily life for Jesus in, well daily life.  Let me clarify that much of what both of these men have articulated I can applaud and to which I can say "amen."
  However, I am a bit bemused that they seem to posit the idea that there is some rush for young believers to be radical for Christ, heroic, and self-sacrificing.  Where is this happening?  Maybe we suffer from different definitions of radical, maybe we suffer from different standards of impact, I am not sure.  I certainly don't judge the migration of young evangelicals to urban areas to be radical, not in the forms that I see it.  I don't assess "mercy tourism" to be the same as mercy involvement let alone mercy effectiveness or mercy that leads to life and community changing development.  Contrasting with their call I confess that I don't see the maintenance of a middle class life-style with an obsession for a good quality of life/education for our children to be self-sacrifice, though certainly many of us make financial sacrifices to get the best for our kids.  If it is for our kids it is still about us. Though this is not wrong let's not confuse this with laying down your life (and risking the lives of your family) for the glory of God.  Raising our children in the faith does give glory to God, but again this is not sacrifice, it is just simply expected of good parents.
    As a pastor I couldn't agree more that young adults need to understand the pivotal role of the local church in the concept of the Kingdom of God.  I concur that all believers need the disciplined commitment, involvement, participation and long term taking of responsibility in a local church to really understand community, love, submission, and discipleship.  Consumerist tendencies in our culture, (the sense of entitlement to being entertained sufficiently while at the same time not being inconveniently obligated), which I see in too many people, tends to leave me muttering as a pastor.
    While the speaker warned against activist burn out in attempting too much, too soon, and not digging in for long term commitment he seemed to assume this was a big problem.   Certainly in some individuals, but these speakers and writers seem to assume that this is a problem with this generation.  Maybe they object to the rhetoric of altruistic and extreme challenge but I do confess that I think Jesus spoke in just those terms.
   I just can't apologize for calling on people to give up their lives for God.  I do want all of us to learn to live for the Lord in the small things, on the mundane kind of days.  I am sure that when the Apostle Paul was making tents he tried to be faithful in having the right material on inventory, the right needles, etc. and that he saw that work as giving glory to God.  This of course as he adjusted his posture to let the wounds on his back heal from his last whipping for preaching Christ.  Without heroes, without the blood of martyrs, without incredible risk taking in going where "normal" and "sane" people never go, just where would the church be, and what would it be?  Oh yes, the typical self focused and self indulgent congregation that makes absolutely no difference to the culture or the neighborhood around it.  Sorry, I only mean to offend the complacent.

The Swim of Evangelical Individual Proselytizing Against the Current of Cultural Degeneration.

    Recently I have read, heard, or heard about the statistics that outline the devastation experienced in our inner cities here in America.  Sometimes these statistics are laid out as the contrast of a "Tale of Two Cities."  In this contrast one sees the resurgence of communities due to gentrification, of investment in the arts, or targeted sites for municipal and private development being then measured against those neighborhoods and populations continuing to deteriorate.  When I speak of populations in deterioration I am of course speaking of the very personal tragedies of individuals and families in those populations.
    As with many Americans I find the resurgence of downtowns, urban infrastructure, and public art to be exhilarating and encouraging.  I love the ambiance of a working urban community where streets, sidewalks, public spaces, and creative urban design speak of vitality, commerce, safety, beauty, and being friendly for common use.  I like the preservation of the old with the innovation of the new.
     My calling as an urban pastor means however that this is not the only part of the city that I live in, or that I care about.  While I am in such developed and dynamic neighborhoods I see passing through those same streets pan-handlers and homeless street walkers that I sometimes see in other contexts, namely the neighborhoods where their relatives live or the shelters which they frequent.
    When I am in other urban neighborhoods, (those populated by a majority of single parent homes, failing schools, corners for the drug trade, sites of recent and future shootings and murders) I am struck with how different the present and the future look from this perspective.  On a thankful note I realize that in these poor neighborhoods I often see faith at work, while in the new urban centers I sometimes see none.
    For many Christian urban ministers and ministry workers the statistics of poverty with all its attendant pathology are not simply numbers but people with names and faces; people with babies, people with wounds, people in court and prison, and people we have buried.  These facts and figures of urban and moral decline contrasted with the wealth of the new urban nestors and investors brings up challenges to our faith.  Can our Christianity make any difference to these friends of ours who are crushed by poverty and failing neighborhoods?
    It might be nice to be ignorant of another resurgence in our country, and that is the growth of unbelief.  The philosophical trends of unbelief add weight to the foot on the neck of the urban poor. Poverty has always been around, just as God told Moses it would and as Jesus reminded us.  It is a result of the fall into sin of mankind, and the result of the disobedience of people which has cost them the blessing of an abundant land and fruit from their labors.  It is a result of sin in many parts including but not limited to that of oppression and theft from others, from the results of our sinful choices and behaviors, from corrupt governments or well meaning but stupid government.  However, unbelief has added to the complication of trying to change poor urban communities.
    As Evangelicals we have had the idea that if we could just save enough souls the world would change.  We celebrate the testimony of one benighted soul led to God, and we see that person begin to make choices that start to raise them up both morally and economically.  We still see that dynamic, we still see people being converted.  Yet, in the context of present American urban poverty, one wonders if it isn't spitting against the wind.  The tsunami of modern liberal thought has so destroyed the theological and moral foundations of every institution that protects us that individual soul saving seems to barely make a difference.
    When the world was pagan and Christianity was new the insurgent germ of faith, hope, love, and Truth began to penetrate society.  Intellectual and philosophical ideas were forming and one can even then see a yearning in them for something sure and comprehensive.  Revelatory Truth from Scriptures that devastated other belief systems by exposing their inadequacies, immorality, and superstition began to change whole cultures and civilizations.
    I am caught however in the present realization that the philosophies of unbelief have combined with poverty to complicate the plight of poor people.  This combination will continue to hurt and destroy them, until the cultural framework is renewed so that the values of life, gender, marriage, family, morality, authority and Truth are built on a sure foundation.  I am struck by the fact that some of the urban renewal we see is accomplished by people who value art, beauty, and enterprise but whose moral philosophy is terribly bankrupt and corrupt.  While these progressive folks are enjoying the benefits of a renewed urban landscape the ideology they have accepted at American universities, in American law, and in popular culture has opened the gates toward an amazing self indulgence that excuses the killing of preborns, a destructive sexuality, the dissolution of the marriage bond, the abandonment of faithful and involved fatherhood, the blurring of distinction between men and women, and the despising of the authoritative role of institutions (including parenthood).
    So what are we to do?  Can we continue to obey the Great Commission while failing to fight the battle of the Cultural Mandate?  Yes, we can, and we have, but are we making any difference for the community by just rescuing isolated individuals?  The fault of most Reformed Theologians or at least those of the practitioner kind (pastors and elders) in Reformed churches, has been to study the battle of the Cultural Mandate while neglecting the battle, and failing miserably in the fulfillment of the Great Commission.  Yes, like the story of the boy and the starfish washed up on the beach, throwing one back in made a difference for that one.  So also the conversion of one, poor, rich, or middle class person makes an individual difference.  Yet, the scope of the need is so vast that the present lack of urgency or speed of Reformed Evangelicals in bringing the Gospel to poor communities and the present surrender of cultural institutions of learning, law, government, and art to the purveyors of unbelief combines to simply crush those who live in those communities, and sometimes crushes the hope of those who wish to change them.
  I write this not because I am in despair.  I write it because I am angry.  I am angry that the battle is bigger than I am, that its component parts seem beyond my ability to influence.  I am angry that the philosophies of unbelief make life so cheap that the majority of black conceptions in New York City end in abortion.  I am angry that men make babies and don't stay to raise them.  I am angry that unfathered children have no culture of obedience and respect and that this lack of discipline with low parental oversight creates chaotic schools. I am angry that a liberal philosophical system castrates educators so they can't discipline children but have to appease them.   I am angry that women can't respect men, and women have taken on some of the worst aspects of uncivilized men.  I am angry that there are too many talented and beautiful men in prison, and not enough educated black men to marry some of these beautiful sisters.
    I am angry that the one thing Jesus told his disciples to do so that he could make them like himself we don't seem to want to do; "follow me and I will make you fishers of men."  I am angry that instead of wearing two guns, one called Cultural Mandate and one called Great Commission, we instead seem to go through life unarmed wearing only clothes that make us fit in.  I guess what I am asking for are some radical Christian (metaphorical) cowboys to come to the city and kick the culture's ass, and love like Jesus, and live like Jesus, and be Jesus to our people.

How Do We Find Men Who Will Plant Inner City Churches?

    One of the struggles of planting churches in the inner city areas of America is finding the kind of men who are willing and able to do it.  While focusing on the "church planter" let me say that finding the women to be involved in urban ministry is a challenge as well, but my experience leads me to say the women are ahead of the men in stepping up to the challenge.
    I am asked by various pastors and church leaders where they can find someone for their city, or their congregation which wants to help plant a daughter church or new site, or to plant a church in a strategic city that has no witness.  This to me is a wonderful problem, to actually have Christian leaders thinking that such places need churches and want men to plant and pastor them.
    I have been asked to suggest the names of African Americans to do this job, but I will tell you that finding anyone who will do this job, and can do this job, is a daunting task.  I need to clarify that I don't think African Americans are automatically qualified to do the job, nor do I think it right for anyone to assume that this is what they should do.  In my ministry I have sometimes realized that an African American brother was being challenged (even badgered) to go into the inner city when that was not their calling, nor their giftedness.  We will still continue to have the need for white men to go pastor white churches in various places, and for black men, and Latino men to plant churches in their communities.
    While believing that mixed churches and cross cultural churches are a manifestation of true Gospel reconciliation and the power of God to change our ethnic prejudices, I know not everyone will be able to plant or develop such a church.  I don't think of white churches or black churches as sinful due to their racial and cultural make-up; unless of course these are developed with exclusion in mind, then I do think they are sinful and harmful to the saints in that church.  I am a cheerleader and supporter of black men planting churches for black people in black communities, and in the Presbyterian Church in America we have far too few of them.  The racial and cultural handicap for black men to be trained in our circles, and to identify with our denomination (which is mostly an unknown quantity in the African American community) is a difficult hurdle to overcome.  Just as in missions where a national might be brought over the States to study in our seminaries, and then finds himself culturally out of tune with his own people when he returns home, this can happen in ethnic communities here in America.
    Let me speak a little more directly to that issue.  Some black folks are attracted to the PCA because they love Reformed doctrine and teaching.  They may have come from a background where the preaching was not intellectual, nor the teaching applicable to the life issues they were now encountering especially as they became part of the middle class.  Many new converts to Reformed teaching become enthusiastic and unfortunately some can even become self-righteous about what they have now attained in their learning (this is not exclusive to ethnicity).  Young men came become enamored of the kind of teaching they hear in seminary, which for those of us in Reformed circles in very academic, intellectual, and doctrinally rigorous.  Often our preachers don't preach any different than the professors teach so what we hear from our pulpits are lectures and not sermons.
    While praising God for the truths of the Reformation, and enjoying and reveling in Reformed distinctives, and blessed by so many great scholars to enlighten our minds and keep us from error we need to remember that people need truth communicated in a way that they can grasp; that they not only intellectually comprehend but with which they emotionally connect, and with truth that is applicable, relevant, motivating, empowering, and unavoidable.  In short, the people need pastors of the heart and not simply teachers of the mind.  I think everyone needs that kind of preaching, but black culture and the black community demand it.
    I am fully aware of the dangers of emotionalism and shallowness in much American preaching, but African Americans have one of the greatest legacies in the world when it comes to preaching, and preaching that is both moving and full of depth.  We do not want to create clones of intellectual dryness in young church planters.  If you don't love and preach Jesus from passion I think you should just stay home.
    One of the handicaps for anyone planting a church in the inner city is that the planter is not going to be able to attract many folks who have some prior involvement with the PCA or Presbyterianism in general.  Much of the work will of necessity be evangelism and outreach and building from scratch.  The white urbanite middle class churches at least have the power to attract young adults with some former suburban connection  to the PCA, which helps give a planter a "center of mass" to help the new church survive.
    On the other hand, this is exactly the great opportunity we have been looking for; to find non-Christians who are open to the Word of God and the love of Christ.  Poverty gives us an opening; as perverted as that sounds it is true.  It is also true that we have some young adults (even Boomers) who have a cultural resonance with issues of justice and mercy.  They would love to be involved in a dynamic and effective ministry within poor communities.  We need them all to help these kind of churches take root.
    Where do we find great church planters, who are willing to sacrifice themselves and their families, suffer for years in terms of experiencing all the difficulties of the inner city, living at a lower level of income, being patient with a small church that grows slowly, enduring the agony of watching dysfunctional people come to grips with  real discipleship and change and falling down and rising again and again?
    We want men to be ambitious so they have the passion and drive to plant, but then they must be patient to endure smallness and the feeling  that their peers are passing them by in the glory of a denomination that admires success and bigness.  It almost feels shameful to pastor a small and poor church.  It is a different kind of glory, but let no one make the mistake of thinking it is not glory to endure hardship for the sake of Christ.
    Where do we find them?   Well, first we admit that we don't.  God does the finding.  Our job is to begin with prayer, and to stay at it in prayer.  Secondly we realize that we may have to "grow our own." In evangelism and discipleship we find disciples.  We must be about the task of gathering and imparting to new believers, some who are gifted and called by God to become preachers, the truths we have learned.  We do this so they can teach others also.  We must engage and challenge young men when we meet them about the task and the need.   We must mentor, empower, and open doors for young men whenever we can.  This means we need to consciously always be looking for new recruits; developing programs and internships and scholarships for them so they can be trained.  We must encourage others to open positions, we must be creative in credentialing, we must be advocates for those who can be useful.  From day one we have to reduplicate ourselves and be ready to turn the ministry over to the next generation.
     We need to institutionalize this in our church budgets and leadership development must become part of our church culture.  If we make no place for young men they will not wait around long, but will find someplace they can feel well used.  We have to keep our eyes on the Kingdom and not simply our own employment. In the inner city we need men who are cross cultural, who can adapt economically and socially, and while working in small places still have large vision.  We need courage, we need risk, bathed in Gospel joy and hope.  Any race or ethnicity will do if they have been spiritually prepared, called, and gifted by God.  "Lord, give us men."

Community

Recently I was speaking to an urban pastor who is attempting to plant and build a church in the inner city.  One of his key leaders is a man who is heading up a Community Development Organization that grows out of the church.  They together are working on "Community Development." As they spoke they talked about developing community within their church, expanding it outward by loving their neighbors as themselves and letting ministry flow into the neighborhood from those relationships.  They see this as a strategy for effective impact in their neighborhood rather than simply initiating programs.
   As I listened to them talk about their ministry and their location I began to think about the distinctions between building a church and building community within a church.  I thought about the phrase "Community Development" and the distinction between restoring a neighborhood and building community within that neighborhood.  There are obviously different variations on this theme, such as having a church without real community within that church and restoring or developing a neighborhood without creating community.  There is the possibility of having community within a church but the church doing nothing to restore a neighborhood. There is the possibility of having community in a dying or dead neighborhood.
   I know from experience that some people place more value on their experience of community than they do on the life and growth of a church or a neighborhood, and others place more value on the artifacts of material improvement in a neighborhood than they do on the value of spiritual and emotional connections of the people.  Questions arise as to whether or not it matters, and as to whether or not one leads to the other eventually.  Another very practical question is whether or not both things (material/ institutional improvement and emotional/psychological solidarity) can be pursued at one time, or whether or not they ever interfere with each other.  My answer is yes, and yes.
    Have I confused you enough already?  Obviously I am using the word community here differently than simply that of a common zip code or city block.  I am speaking of relationship, and interaction, and a sense of commonality and purpose, and a positive solidarity of mutual help and support.  If urban living has taught us anything it is that living in a densely settled area does not rule out living in anonymity.  We can be completely isolated and alone while living in one of the most densely packed neighborhoods in the world.
    Sociologists have taught us that there are different kinds of communities, and these kind of communities vary in their positive effect.  Affluent urbanites tend not to need geographic solidarity except in the matters of property values and security.  They don't need to like each other to work on protecting those values.  They can find emotional and psychological solidarity in their vocations or avocations, their religion, their various kinds of social, civic, athletic clubs or affinities (to include causes, movements, gender issues, etc.)
    This is why we have "commuter churches" in the inner city that have nobody from the neighborhood where the church building stands attending that church, and no one from that church wanting someone from the neighborhood to attend.  The commuter church might indeed have a great score card of what makes community positive (for themselves) but absolutely no concern or compassion for the suffering that goes on around them.
    When I think of friends of mine who started works in the inner city I think of how they by necessity had to work on community.  They had to develop friendships with people who lived there in the neighborhood.  They were in the homes, hanging out on the stoop, the porch, playing ball in the playground, community center or sandlot.  Some of my friends had neighborhood kids literally move in with them, and life was filled with the drama of being close and intimate with broken and dysfunctional families.  These relationships were often intense, full of love, sometimes led to great disappointment and loss, even grief.  They were the seedbed of lots of stories that most urban ministers need to raise support.  For many of us they will forever be the thing that gives us identity with the city and we will always see the struggle personally from the perspective of those relationships.
    The challenge is both to stay there and to move on to greater impact.  I do believe both can become a false idol masquerading as the Kingdom.  In some ways it is the difference between Acts chapter two and 2 Corinthians chapter eight.  In both of these chapters in the Bible we see early Christians sacrificing for other Christians but in slightly different ways.  In Acts chapter two we see individual saints not calling anything their own, eating in one another's homes, and loving each other.  It is powerful and appealing and we sometimes wonder how come we don't see more of that today.  Then in 2 Corinthians we see congregations sacrificing for one another, but not so much an emphasis on communal living.  Latter letters of Paul stress believers working for themselves and making sure they care for their own families. In fact the Corinthian Christians are being asked to come to the help of those very Christians written about in Acts chapter two.
    If we don't keep our eyes on both aspects of the growth of the Kingdom we will shortchange ourselves, shortchange those we lead to confess Christ, and actually misrepresent the Kingdom of God.  What value if we rehab all the houses, re-pave the streets, rebuild the schools and school system, reform the police and municipal systems, and plant beautiful parks with playgrounds while all living as strangers?   What value if we love each other intensely, know all about our small group's family struggles, faith struggles, financial struggles, and love each other's cooking but change nothing in the systems that affect the health, security, education, and aspirations of all of our children?
    Some have complained about "Pietism" as a self indulgent kind of Christianity that pursues a personal walk with God to the neglect of a call to see Christ as Lord in all of life, in our culture, and in how we interact in our society.  While Ana-Baptists have been accused of creating alternative communities at least they have a sense that within that communal culture they will care for the whole human being.
    I guess I want it all.  I want to personally (call me a Pietist if you wish) know Jesus, and to love him and know his love for me.  I want it to be an intensely personal, mystical, and exhilarating relationship.  I also want community, the kind so that people are in my life and I am in theirs, where I feel their love and concern and I give of myself for my friends and where they lean on me and I lean on them.  I don't want to be isolated, and I don't want to be lonely, either individually or as an organization of Christians.  I want and need accountability and encouragement and want to give that to others.  I want to work on common problems and rejoice in the victories and weep together in the loss.  I want to feel a part of a team.  I want to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  I want to be a city set on a hill, collectively, doing good works not for my own glory or our own glory, but for God's glory.
    I want to get something done, and not just gaze at our collective navels.  If there is poverty in my city, country, and world I want to know what causes it and what we can do to stop it.  If there is injustice I want to stand up against it.  If there is illiteracy, fatherless-ness, and abuse, and gang violence, and sexual trafficking then I want to know what solutions we can create to change and stop it.  If there is common malnutrition I don't want to just give groceries to the person in my small group at our small church, although I will certainly do that.  I intend to grow a garden, build a grocery store, and learn what it means to eat healthy and share that with everybody.  If this leads to economic and or political action then so be it.
    In my life I have been in neighborhoods where suddenly there was a power failure, and people came outdoors.  I have been in neighborhoods where there was a snow storm and everyone was stranded.  Suddenly all of these isolated and self centered urban dwellers had to pitch in and help each other, and we laughed and found out that those we knew little about might just be interesting people.
    So may the church be the church and do it right.  Let it build community within itself, but let that community overflow into the streets of its neighborhood, and let this growing community take on the issues of its common contextual life (with programs, projects, organization, and whatever else it takes); never compromising its call to worship in Spirit and Truth but never denying itself to the world, which needs salt, and light, and goodness.

The Reality of Being Surprised by how hard this is...

    From time to time Church Planters get hit in the face by how difficult it is to plant a church in the inner city, among poor people, and to work cross culturally.  In their pain and distress they sometimes become angry with the people they feel should be supporting them, such as the denomination, the church planting agency, the network, or the Presbytery.  It is no doubt true that sometimes we are abandoned by those who said they would help us.  Sometimes people do not keep their promises about support, sometimes the people we depended on to coach and mentor us do not perform consistently or adequately for us to make the progress we should.
    Sometimes the disappointment is with our own team and with the folks we have gathered who say they are committed to the work.  They don't show up, they don't give, they don't seem to share the heaviness of the load. It is too easy to become resentful of the very people God has called us to pastor and to love.  It is easy to grow cynical of our institutions and systems when we feel like we are on the cliff of failure and no one seems to be reaching out to catch us from falling into the abyss.  We grow angry, and sometimes that anger is against God himself.  We can lash out, bite the hands that feed us, and burn the bridges of relationships that have helped us in the past.
    There is mess in the stress and more stress from the mess, and sometimes that mess destroys our families, our relationships, the new church, our reputations, and our souls.  Sometimes our anger is against the population we say we want to reach.  We are angry that they don't appreciate Reformed preaching, we are angry that they don't like our worship service, angry that they don't appreciate the facility we worship in.  We are angry that they can't take care of their own children during the service, and we are angry that people won't volunteer for nursery.  We are angry that false doctrine and heresy seem to get a bigger crowd than we do, and we are resentful that our sister churches don't give up more of their people to come and join us so we can have the center of mass we need to survive.
    We become frustrated that our methods of outreach seem to bear so little fruit.  When dealing with folks in the inner city we know full well that they are poor, that broken families and those affected by alcohol, drugs, illiteracy, unemployment, malnutrition, despair, unstable housing situations, and the fear of violence have a difficult life.  Yet as we try to reach them for Jesus, show them mercy through acts of benevolence, spend inordinate amounts of time on specific individuals, families, and situations and yet get no sustained commitment from them we act surprised.  It is as if dysfunctional people stayed dysfunctional even after coming under our sphere of influence.  How dare they!
    One church planter told me he had no intention of planting a church until the children he had led to Christ, and discipled all through high school, and then sent to college returned to the community.  Then, and only then, after he had some folks who were now stable, educated, and committed (i.e., middle class) would he plant the church.
    I know church planters who did not want middle class people attending their church, especially if they were white.  It was as if the professional urban ministry folks (those who had jobs in the community due to development ministries supported by foundations and suburban churches) were the only ones truly capable of loving on poor folks, so the church stayed small, manageable and (without the urban missionaries wanting it to), blatantly paternalistic.
    Let's get real people.  There is only one common denominator for success and that is the blessing of God.  In our cynicism we can look at those we think are successful and try to analyze where they got their money from, and what keeps them going.  We can be envious of other's gifts, we can be envious of other demographic situations, we can even be envious of the danger, hardship, and violence of certain neighborhoods that seem to give other ministries glory.  Our hearts have no shortage of potential for coveting, envy, jealousy, and cynicism.  Most of that simply comes from our own fear of failure and our tendency to live our lives in a state of constant comparison.
    God had to catch me up short in the early days of our work when our numbers were very small.  I kept thinking, "when we become a real church..."   It was as if God smacked me in the face saying in my mind, "what do you mean when, why do you  care so little for the people already gathered in my name?  You are a church now, so be grateful and act like it!"
    I often felt like I was the only one working or trying, the only one unable to pay my bills, the only one catching the flack and mess of poor folks lives.  Where was the denomination, where was the Presbytery, where was the church planting agency, where were the other leaders who said they believed in this work, where was the gratitude of the people whom I had helped?  I was often tired, confused, frustrated, and scared.
   I had to learn a few things, and one of them was to control my expectations.  Another was to not assume commitments from people who had not really given them.  Another lesson was to learn how to communicate, and to ask for help specifically and on time.  Another was how to be grateful and not spew guilt all over the place, especially when I was angry. Another was to learn how to celebrate small advances and victories and to share them with our small church, another was to learn how to let the mockery of the Devil and nay sayers roll off my back, along with my own skeptical unbelief.
    This was the calling God had given to me.  I was not a hired gun and not simply an employee of others to do this work.  If it was hard for me, someone who felt so passionate about the need to plant a church among the poor in the city, why should I be surprised if the people who knew little about the challenge were not right behind me.  Things take time, and broken lives need time to be mended.  At least two urban pastors had told me, even as a college student, that what the city needed was someone called to live out their lives here.  That nothing but longevity would answer some of the needs.
    The story was told, the denomination and agencies did respond, money did come, prayer was mobilized, volunteers began to show up and stay, people were converted, both indigenous and those who had moved in began to accept leadership, and the load was shared.  Some abandoned and even betrayed us, some never cared or helped, and things did not always work out according to our hopes or time schedule.  Yet, let Israel now say, "If they Lord had not been on our side..."   But the Lord has helped us, and we are (intensely, contentedly, and humbly) glad!