The Church And Its Community

This is the next to the final column inquiring as to whether the church has been a positive or a negative force in the world. The final column will ask, ”what makes the difference?” So far we have been concerned about the larger issues in which Christianity has interfaced with the secular world. This week I will examine the way a single congregation has lived out the Christian witness in its community. The identity of this congregation is not important, but the details describing it are accurate. After a word about the congregation’s earlier history, I will limit my analysis to its last forty years.

The congregation, founded a century ago, belongs to a mainline denomination. After World War ll it had been one of the strongest churches of its national body, listing nearly a thousand members. By 1975 membership had shrunk to less than 400 and was mainly composed of senior long-time members. The church was housed in a prominent stone and brick building in the center of a midwestern city whose downtown faced serious problems. Both the city’s growth and its wealth had increasinlgy migrated to the suburbs, while inner city retail business and mlddle-class housing were in economic free fall. This decline presented the congregation with the possible decision to of selling the property and relocating in the city’s more affluent growing area. The decision was to stay and take more seriously the challenges of the inner city

Directly across the street from the church stood a large YMCA building n serious need of repair. When the Y decided to abandon the building and construct a new modern Family Y, the church was offered the property, tore down the building and backed by the denomination and using a government program, constructed eight stories of apartments for seniors with limited incomes.
Three blocks away, the YWCA also had a deteriorating building. Several downtown churches agreed to take over the top floor and convert the space into modest apartments and temporary shelters for abused women and their children, and to offer a counseling service addressing the needs of the troubled new residents.

One of the two hospitals in the city decided to close, and sold its decaying building for $1 to the same group of downtown congregations, offering an additional cash gift to help make the building useful. These congregations attempted to use the hospital rooms for homeless or poorer seniors, calling them, THE KEEN AGERS. That program lasted two years and was abandoned due to a lack of funds to keep the building habitable. Here was an example of how this and other congregations sought to meet the community’s human needs.
Because of its commitment to both interpersonal and international peace, the denomination listed this congregation as a ‘Shalom Church.” That designation became part of the congregation’s public fsce’
About the same time, the State closed the city’s large hospital for the mentally ill, placing hundreds of its patients in community facilities. Many of the former patients found the church to be a welcoming place, and began attending services or just dropping in. The pastors offered an informal counsellng service. But that is a story all by itself.

The same congregations that founded KEEN AGERS had previously developed a program offering hot noonday meals to the homeless, the mentally ill, single mothers and their children, and others longing for acceptance as well as food. A building was purchased and 200-300 people each day were welcomed and fed with congregations rotating staffing, cooking and serving the meals.

It was obvious that alcoholism was rampant on the downtown streets. The congregation opened its door and each week several AA groups met in rooms formerly housing the large body of Sunday School youth and children.

Given the increasing age of the congregation’s members, there remained few children and youth whose families were part of the church, while throughout the city there remained a signfiicant number of neglected foster children. The congregation decided to love these children, and established a summer program calling it THE ROYAL FAMILY KIDS CAMP. The congregation funded, staffed, cooked and ran the camp supporting many of the most neglected community kids. The names of potential campers were discretely supplied by the judge of the Juvenile Court. THE RFKC has been in operation for over a quarter of a century, and involves increasing numbers of the church’s members.
In more recent years, believing that Jesus welcomed those others thought of as outcasts, the congregation has welcomed and celebrated the inclusion
of numbers of people from the Gay and Lesbian communities, as well as others of “the ratted on and spit upon.”

There are other areas in which the congregation continues to address human needs, and what I have offered is just a sample. If you ask church members why the congregation has regularly taken on these ministries, although the answers may not come in traditional religious language, you might hear, “Isn’t that what Christianity is all about?”

What this church does is duplicated in thousands of congregations in the United States, only they don’t make a public fuss about it. Shortly I will conclude this series by asking why the church has sometimes been regarded as blight on the world and sometimes a blessing.