Day 55- Working For, Being With, Working With

Total Mileage: 6,382

Song of the Day: “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” (Radiohead)

I’m struggling with a question right now:

As Christians, how should we balance the drive to meet needs with the call to meet people where they are?

The main reason that this is on my mind is the continual process of post-San Francisco decompression.  While I was there, I feel like I encountered two radically different approaches to ministry --both convinced that the other was missing the mark--, and I’m determined to find some sort of middle ground between the two.  A philanthropic powerhouse, Glide provides an almost absurd number of services and support structures to the homeless and low income population of San Francisco, while Fr. River Sims and the Temenos Catholic Worker provide a real presence in the community as a reminder to sex workers and homeless young adults that God loves them and meets them where they are.  I feel like we need both of these things, and I’m not entirely convinced that one is the right way of doing things or that one could even function without the other.  Still, where is the balance?

I was talking to Erin about this dilemma, and she told me about a system that Dean Sam Wells of Duke Chapel uses.  I don’t know whether he’s the originator of the system, but he divides service into three categories:

Working For-

This would be the Glide approach, where you provide goods and services for the maximum number of people by using a very streamlined and efficient system, but perhaps at the expense of some of the personal interaction with the people you are helping.  Quite possibly the epicenter of homeless outreach in San Francisco, Glide provides:

Case management

Counseling

Crisis intervention

Shelter reservations

Housing search and placement

Transitional housing programs

Information and referrals

Voicemail services

Basic needs assistance

Hygiene kits

Financial assistance (for back rent and move-in costs)

Reduced rate vouchers for California IDs

Vouchers for clothing, food boxes, and household items

Food stamp/EBT and social security applications

English/Spanish translation assistance

Basic healthcare

Mental health services

HIV testing

Yoga

Meditation

Bible studies

Domestic abuse recovery programs

Substance abuse recovery programs

Youth/childcare programs

Community/rooftop gardens

Three hot meals every weekday and two hot meals plus a bagged dinner on weekends

An affirming environment for people of all races, genders, religions, and sexual orientations

Now, this is more than any one person could ever do.  Far more than one person could do.  Glide requires a huge number of financial donors and as many as sixty volunteers at every meal shift, not to mention the tremendous number of specially trained volunteers and staff required to run Glide’s other ministries.  Glide is one of the most massive collaborative inner city relief efforts I have ever seen, and as a result, it felt a bit like an assembly line to me.  When I volunteered there, it seemed like we were all cogs and gears, moving meals from place to place with limited social interaction.  Sure, we accomplished a lot (serving somewhere around 900 meals in the span of two hours), but unlike my experience at LaSalle Street back in Chicago, I didn’t get to have any extended conversations with the folks we were assisting.  The dichotomy between provider and receiver seemed absolute and insurmountable.  There was still a certain satisfaction that came from being part of such a well-oiled charity machine, but I don’t feel like I really got to know the people we were serving, and, in my opinion, that’s a little dangerous.  Of course, my Glide experience probably shouldn’t be taken as universal.  After all, I was a one-time volunteer who had only just arrived in town the day before.

Glide has helped countless people overcome addictions and get off the streets, and a key component of that process is building relationships with people and teaching them that they are loved in spite of --or maybe even because of-- their differences.  With their many programs to help people learn to take care of themselves, Glide can point to quite a few success stories of people who have overcome addiction or gotten off the streets.  The place is an urban missions Mecca that has drawn the attention of celebrities and philanthropists the world over.  When I attended Glide’s Sunday morning celebration (a less churchy euphemism for “worship service”), one of the other attendees commented that the celebrations tend to be about 40% tourists, and, to use his words, “One time I was here, and Bono just dropped in out of nowhere.  Bono!  Ever since then, I’ve watched for receding hairlines and sunglasses every time I’m in here!”  After a testimony from a woman named Terry about how the church helped her quit meth and be proud of her identity as a transgender woman, an associate minister told us, “There is no other church that looks like this in America, but it costs a lot to keep this place going!”  In my Mars Hill entry, I think I made it clear how I feel about requests for money during worship: ambivalent on my best day and flat-out perturbed on my worst.  That being said, Glide has actually set up a system where you can now donate via text right there during the celebration.  I really support the work done by their many nonprofit arms, and I’m glad that the organization does so much to reach out to the LGBT population, but that text-donation system left me kind of speechless.

If my experience is truly indicative, Glide is capable of massive change, reaching out to huge numbers of people to meet their basic needs and encourage them to love themselves as God loves them.  It’s an impressive and efficient organization with huge potential.  Again, in terms of the variety of services offered and the number of people reached, I’ve never seen its equal, but could Glide have become so streamlined that it no longer meets the basic need for relationships?

Being With-

This is Fr. River Sims/Temenos’s approach, being a Christian presence in a community that seems unaware of just how much God loves it.  While Temenos builds relationships and shows love and attention to the disenfranchised, there isn’t quite the same relationship of goods and services, and the goal is not so much to lift people up out of their situations as to show them that God is there with them.  While Temenos provides blankets, socks, food, and other resources, the goal is not so much to get people off of the street, but to be with them in solidarity while they are there.

Here are Temenos’s mission statement and founding ideals:

Christianity has at its center the conviction that God entered human history and took on flesh in the person of Jesus Christ thereby redeeming humanity in the very midst of its own fragility and limitations by co-mingling the human with the divine.  Throughout the Gospels we are repeatedly presented with the One who actually sought out the most disenfranchised and rejected.  He went to those who were considered the most loathsome and unclean, physically and spiritually.  The very source of the compassion of Jesus is his identification with the humanity, the suffering, the rejection and the abandonment that anyone, anywhere, has ever suffered (John 1:10-11; Hebrews 2:14-18).

Inspired by these reflections on the life of Jesus and by the ministry of Dorothy Day, Temenos Catholic Worker seeks to identify with those who find themselves abandoned and isolated in their suffering, in particular male and female sex workers and homeless gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender youth.

Temenos is a Greek word for an area that is cut off or separated.  Harry Hay referred to it as “the edge of the village”-- a dwelling place designated by some ancient societies for gays, lesbians, bisexual and other outcasts.

Temenos Catholic Worker seeks to reach out in the name of the Risen Christ to those who are alienated and cut off from society and to follow the model of Jesus who, as Monika Hellwig writes, was “one who entered into immediate, shockingly unconventional relationships with people, not evading the human encounter by the choreography of the socio-cultural role definitions.”

Tremenos Catholic Worker is committed to the ideals of:

Personalism- A philosophy of life based upon respect for the freedom and dignity of each person as an image of God, paersonalism understands that our fundamental purpose as human beings is to incarnate self-emptying love through practical action for the common good.

Non-Violence- Jesus taught us to take suffering upon ourselves rather than unflict it upon others.  Thus we oppose the deliberate taking of life for any reason and see every oppression or degrading of human life as blasphemy.

The Works of Mercy- As recorded in Matthew 25:31-46, these works include feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, and visiting the prisoner.  We understand the works of mercy to be at the heart of the Gospel; they are clear mandates as to how we are to respond to “the least of our brothers and sisters.”  Anything beyond what we immediately need belongs by right to those who are going without.

Voluntary Poverty- Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, wrote that “the mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.”  By embracing voluntary poverty, that is, by casting our lot freely with those whose impoverishment is not a choice, we ask for the grace to abandon ourselves to the love of God.  This puts us on the path to incarnating the Church’s “preferential option for the poor.”

Born of the experience of rejection and uncertainty, Temenos Catholic Worker seeks to embrace in the name of Jesus Christ others who have felt abandoned in their most difficult moments.

Seeking to meet people where they are, Temenos also engages in “harm reduction,” acknowledging that you cannot force people to change, but you can still provide education and resources to curtail the destructive nature of their habits as much as possible.  Though you can’t make someone quit using drugs, you can still provide clean needles to prevent them from contracting diseases.  Though you can’t make someone leave a life of prostitution, you can provide them with condoms to shield them from the worst aspects of the profession.  Though you can’t make someone want to have a roof over their head, you can provide blankets to keep them warm at night.  The goal is not to change people or even so much to help people change; Temenos is about being present with people.

Working With-

After seeing the tremendous heart of Temenos and the amazing muscle of Glide, I think we need more interplay between their two divergent schools of thought, and we certainly shouldn’t glorify one over the other.  I realize that I’m oversimplifying things a bit for the sake of argument, but we shouldn’t just be present or just seek to meet needs.  We need both, and I got pretty frustrated with both Glide and Temenos for sort of behaving like they had the only right approach to ministry.  Look, we’re all working toward the same thing: sharing the love of Christ with people in need.  It’s just that some organizations are better at meeting basic needs and getting people into better situations, while others are more skilled at developing relationships and being a positive Christian presence.  A truly effective ministry really needs both of these elements, a being with and a working for, and when the two collide, you get “working with”-- a mentality of building relationships with the long-term intent of helping people learn to care for themselves.  That is the mentality I want to promote wherever I wind up serving.  It’s a balance that considers all the good elements of both Temenos and Glide.  You can’t just have a ministry of presence, and you can’t just be the well-oiled need-satisfying machine.  We need both of these forces, and we need them badly.

We are called to build relationships with one another.

We are called to share the love of Christ.

We are called to provide food and water and shelter for those in need.

We must reach out to the poor, the widow, the orphan, the prisoner, and the disenfranchised.

We must be present providers.

We must seek to love our neighbors on a very personal level, knowing them and treasuring them.

We can’t get swept up in the philanthropic machine.

We can’t turn ourselves into lone warriors against injustice.

It’s a collaborative effort.

If we want to make this world a better place, a safer place, a more loving place that reflects the love of God, then we must learn to work with one another.  We need both Glide and Temenos.  We need the being with and the working for.  It is not enough to choose one and declare it the only right way.

Christ sought to do both, and so should we.

We must work with.

I'm still not sure of how this mission to work with is best embodied in a ministry.  Perhaps it is in a mingling of non-profits and Christian worship like at New Song or Lawndale or LaSalle Street.  Maybe it could be embodied in overseas mission efforts like those of Willow Creek or Mars Hill.  Perhaps there is some happy medium that still remains to be discovered.  Perhaps working with looks different in every city and every congregation, and it's something that I won't really have pinned down until I'm working in one specific church context.  Perhaps every church has its own balance, its own mission, its own way of responding to God's call.  Only time will tell, but as I move ever closer to the ordination at the end of the summer, this is good food for thought.

Peace and Blessings,

Tom