COMMENTARY: Don’t dismiss ‘fringe’ ministries
Dan
Dick, Sep 10, 2009
 Dan Dick |
By Dan Dick
Special Contributor
I
was speaking to a pastor from Chicago who lamented the appearance of street preachers who claimed the corner outside his church
to read Scripture aloud, preach and pray with passersby.
I asked if they were disruptive or aggressive? No. Did
they accost members of the church? No. Were they ministering to anyone that the church was trying to serve? No.
What
then is the problem? “Well, they’re not official. They don’t belong to any church. They could be saying
anything out there!”
My next question: Have you tried talking to these people? No.
Cities
and urban ministries are extremely unique. I’m not talking about stable city centers and urban monolithic churches.
I’m talking about the alleys and the side streets, the tenements and the overgrown lots, the avant-garde and the bizarre
sections of every major city.
Churches that cannot tolerate a certain level of odd, extreme and eccentric behavior
will not be happy.
In every major city I visit, I find fringe Christian groups that fit no mold and align with
no established denomination. This is not to say that there are not some incredibly effective and innovative urban ministries
in the United Methodist Church. There are amazing inner-city churches in our denomination, serving in powerful and transformative
ways.
But there are many emerging Christian options that scare the daylights out of the mainline. In my limited
experience, I have worshipped in a Bronx laundry room where the Scriptures were read by a meth addict, been prayed for by
a Harley biker who used some profanity in his prayer and met a hooker who teaches street kids Bible stories.
One
of the best sermons I heard on mercy was delivered in a park by a man dying of AIDS, and one of the sweetest ministries to
the poor was an older woman who handed out candies and offered blessings—and whom church people labeled “crazy.”
There
are many people in our cities who fall through the cracks, and the church simply isn’t there for them. But by the grace
of the Holy Spirit, many of these people find a way to fill in the gap. They find others like themselves and form Christian
community. Not traditional Christian community, by any means, but raw, real, life-saving community nonetheless.
What
makes me sad is the response of many mainliners. In too many cases, good church folk don’t celebrate that these people
are finding God’s grace; they view them as a problem or a threat. I hear stories from people who tell of pastors who
call the police to chase them away. There is sometimes a disconnect between what we profess and what we practice.
In
New York a few years ago I consulted with a church in a changing neighborhood that was seeking to improve its outreach. On
Sunday morning, the pastor preached an impassioned message of inclusivity and tolerance, challenged her congregation to welcome
the stranger and reminded them that compassion differentiated the sheep from the goats.
As we were leaving the
church for lunch, a young Latino woman struggled with her baby carriage that was blocking the sidewalk and bumped into us.
In exasperation, the pastor snarled at the woman, “Hey, in THIS country, we stay to the right.” Oddly, no one
in the church could understand why they weren’t making greater inroads with the Hispanic/Latino community.
In
the same neighborhood, a thriving storefront church was launched—all lay people, no pastor. The little church was forced
to close when the ecumenical council in the area labeled it a “cult” and warned people of the danger it posed.
That’s
an extreme story; the exception, not the rule. What is fast becoming the rule, however, is the rise of unaffiliated, independent
groups of people with no desire to become a “church,” but who still seek Christian community and spiritual fellowship.
These
types sound ideal for a denomination that professes a desire to grow, serve, love and make disciples. Yet in many cases we
don’t include these people in our vision. And this isn’t a criticism of the United Methodist Church alone. No
one seems to have room for these folks, which is why they are making space for themselves.
I talked recently
with some young men and women sitting on the steps of a church in Evanston, Ill. Some of them carried Bibles, and they were
praying when I first walked up. They asked me if I were a Christian, and when I told them I was a pastor, they warmly welcomed
me.
I asked them if they attended the church whose steps they occupied, and they told me they did not. They said
they moved from church to church to have their Bible study, but they didn’t “belong” to any church. Ham,
a large, smiling, boisterous bear of a man said: “Nobody wants us. We drink, smoke, cuss and laugh out loud. We’re
not what you’d call ‘church folk.’”
After chatting with them for a while, I left and
wondered what most of the congregations I know would make of them.
Any time people take responsibility for their
own spirituality and break away from the mainstream, someone raises the alarm about sects, cults or heresy. Sometimes it is
well-founded, but often it is an attempt to absolve “the church” of its own failings to make space for those who
are different.
It is helpful to remember that we Christians are all children of a sect. Our roots sink deep into
the rich soil of the outsider, the fringe, the minority and the persecuted. Charges of cult, sect, heresy and apostasy are
part of our DNA. It shouldn’t surprise us that it is still part of our story today.
Were we truly honest
in our reading of the Gospels, we would realize that part of the appeal of Jesus’ ministry was its openness to the dirty,
smelly and ignorant, as well as the mentally and physically challenged. Christianity was not primarily for the well-to-do,
comfortable, safe and secure folks.
Today’s urban settings are a modern microcosm of the first-century
world in which Jesus came to serve and save. Those who are finding faith on the street corners and tenement steps are the
same people Jesus found on the dirt roads and lakesides.
He told us we would always have the poor, and that includes
the dirty, the uneducated, the deranged and the diseased as well as those who “drink, smoke, cuss and laugh out loud”—the
very people he came to save.
The Rev. Dick is director of connectional ministries for the Wisconsin Conference.
