Deprived Communities, Evangelical Churches and Faith-Based Family Care: Grace's final sermon to her Place of Former Employment

Deprived Communities, Evangelical Churches and Faith-Based Family Care: how maybe it works and maybe it doesn’t

This is something I wrote during my final few weeks in the job. I'm bumping it up now as it's the last vaguely well-thought-out thing I've posted in a while and, yes... comments from any newly-discovered readers are very most welcome...

The Deprived Community

It is often said that the problems of the Deprived Community stem from a generationally-ingrained culture of dependency, learned helplessness and minimal aspirations. It is true that some of the expectations held by people (you won’t get your GCSEs, you will do drugs and get in trouble with the police, you will be a crap parent and get Social Services trying to get your bairn took off you) seem extremely negative. However, these are attitudes, aspirations and expectations created, held and perpetuated not only by the Deprived People themselves. Instead, they’re things which people have been told or have had more subtly communicated to them by Early Years practitioners, the very structure of the benefits system and the plethora of statutory and voluntary “services” which exists to “help” them. The Deprived Community “poor”, the whole economic structure of society’s response to social exclusion and those at grass-roots level seeking to help the poor all conspire together to keep the “poor” marginalised and downtrodden. What is needed, then, is a way out. A breaking of the cycle at one point or another.

And there appear to be two main approaches to this.

Firstly, there’s the suit-wearing, married toff people who sit in offices and eat lots of biscuits talking about the Deprived People. Their view is essentially that of the political Right - that governments need to cut “services” to promote independence and to reform economically so that people are financially better off in work than on benefits. Ideal, provided the Deprived Community “poor” were both grateful and delighted and able to eagerly partake of each available job opportunity wiping floors or bums or tables, thus reducing dependency whilst reinforcing all social divisions. Getting people into meaningful, productive and dignifying economic activity is a hugely complex task, and one that can’t be done from the distance of a policy-making office. You need to meet and get to know the people.

Secondly, there’s the liberal, educated, veggie box, Lib Dem lefties who’ve chosen to live in the Deprived Community. Their argument is for “services” to become more inclusive, empowering, user-led, grass-roots and radical in their approach, leading the “poor” to rebel against their oppression. It’d be great. Yet experience shows that people who are hungry, depressed and addicted, who are contending with rising damp on the second floor and the need to buy school shoes for their sixth child, do not have the energy of inclination for revolt. And they also find the posh parents at the Childrens Centres and toddler groups make them feel nervous – although the posh parents are really friendly – about going to things like that. Lots of them are, like, social workers and psychologist-type people and you don’t want to be in the same room as them. The empowerment of a community requires relationships deeper and more committed than either the neighbourly or the professional. You need not only to meet and to get to know the people, you need to meet and get to know and live with and alongside and amongst and share everything of your lives with them.

This is what Jesus did.

When he came to earth as the Son of God, Jesus did so in order to meet and get to know and live with and alongside and amongst and share everything of his lives with people, and by so doing, he demonstrated to the world how God wants us to radically recreate society and form a better world. So, in the context of a struggling, marginalised, downtrodden inner-city neighbourhood, the Church has, in the life of Jesus, a wonderful example to follow. And, in the form of the Holy Spirit, the perfect advocate and supervisor to show us how to do it. And the Church, too, has a very clear advantage over all other services, initiatives, projects and social or neighbourhood organisations: its staying power. Churches, and their people, will be in existence for hundreds of years beyond any New Deal, Sure Start or any other social project.

So, therein lies the awareness of an approach that works and the motivation and funding to carry it through. Does it work?

The answer, I think, must lie both in the experience of Those Who Come To Christ from the Deprived Community and in the experience of Those Who Don’t Get It.

Let’s start with Those Who Come To Christ

Are they enabled to have a meaningful experience of God and community? Are they accepted and included? Are they liberated and empowered?

Are they enabled to have a meaningful experience of God and community? Those who have come to faith from Deprived Community are quite definite in affirming that yes, they have. But people who have visited the church as unbelievers or seekers from other backgrounds seem generally not to. Unless a person had “needs” or requires “help”, the church struggles to know how to respond to them.

Are they accepted and included? To a certain extent, but probably only as far as normal class boundaries permit. They are welcome as cleaners, caretakers and caterers, but not in working with the young people, in handling the money or as members of the Leadership. Those are still jobs for the men, for the doctors, for the posh people in the church.

Are they liberated and empowered? I’m not sure.

The first problem, as I see it, of the church approach to outreach within the Deprived Community is that it utilises that very culture of dependency it needs to challenge. It exploits the prevailing culture of hopelessness and dependency by its desire to “help” or “support” or to “care for” people and families. It’s a colonial approach to mission which was developed by 18th Century British missionaries throughout the non-Western world, whereby the natives were taught British social and cultural values as an allegedly integral part of the Christian gospel. It’s an attitude still ingrained within middle class Christianity, to the extent that many are not aware or able to even question it. The evangelical church, in the same way as wider British society, revolves around its notions of them and us.

And the second problem, of course, is that it’s never that simple. What happens when a woman previously afflicted by psychosis and talking to demons suddenly regains clarity of thought and wants to preach on a Sunday morning? What happens when a teenage lad reveals his attraction to other men and insists she is as affirmed by God as ever before? What happens when a “non-Christian” wants to lead a Bible study because he believes God can use his knowledge and insights? The evangelical church cannot cope with experiences which challenge its dogmas. And yet, whenever Christians have sought to engage with a new culture, they’ve been forced to. The evangelical church, for reasons I have never found credible, is afraid to think.

Thirdly, a fear of thinking is, in itself, something I find quite frightening. That every syllable of the Bible is a dictated-from-a-cloud utterance from God is a valid theological position; however those that adhere to this view need to recognise that God’s original Word was delivered in Hebrew and Greek and that any English translation will inevitably be choosing one of a number of understandings of many texts. And most people within as well as outside of Deprived Communities don’t like being told not to think or question or discuss.

And what about the experience of Those Who Don’t Get It?

Why doesn’t it work for them? It’s their fault, obviously. The church could never have got it wrong or have failed them, because the Church is Christ’s body on earth. That’s as far as evangelical thinking goes. However, I would propose a few further suggestions.

Firstly, they might not want or need the sort of “help” or “care” or “support” on offer. Not everyone has or perceives themselves to have to stereotypical “felt needs” of Deprived Community, not everyone wants to enter into a relationship of such dependency. And even if they do want voluntary-sector or faith-based “help”, the church isn’t the only place offering. And the Hare Krishnas down the road do it all vegetarian, too.

Secondly, they may have a background or experiences which fall beyond the scope of what church workers are educationally, intellectually or spiritually equipped to engage with. And church workers have, like anyone else, their professional and personal limitations and prejudices. Like Barack Obama throughout the US, anyone coming the church with an ambiguous ethnic background or allegedly Arab-sounding name will be treated as a practicing and Islamist Muslim, whether or he would define himself as such. Yet whereas professional workers have supervision sessions to consider their practice, their limitations and their prejudices, church workers flounder along in what they’re doing, often with very little space to ask, talk, think or pray.

Thirdly, they might be asking questions they’re not supposed to ask. Like, “why are you trying to put me through a Christian basics course when I’ve read the Bible four times already?” (ans: “because you’re unsaved so you can’t have read it properly”) and “how do you know that the Bible is the word of God?” (ans: “because it says so”) and “why when you say you have full gender, ethnic and class equality here are all the deacons white, male and doctors?” (ans: “don’t ask”) and “but what about how it describes Jesus in the Qu’ran?” (ans: “um, er...”) And so forth. Evangelical Christians are like doctors (and thus so many doctors are evangelical Christians) because both are trained to believe that they know everything, have all the answers and can essentially rely on themselves to be more literate and knowledgeable than those to whom they’re talking. And even in Deprived Communities, people beg to differ. As, of course, did Jesus.

So where do we go from here?

This, then, would be my set of recommendations for evangelical churches wanting to work within Deprived Communities

1. Look after your own workers. Make sure there’s time and space to study, train, think, talk and pray together.
2. Listen to your community. Consider the wider picture, but leave space to recognise the diversity of individuals.
3. Rely on the example of Jesus. He was excellent at both of the above.
4. Don’t think purely in terms of what you can “give” or how you can “serve”. Think about what you can learn from people, and how you can work together.
5. Don’t be afraid to admit when you get it wrong.
6. Don't fall into the trap of believing you can speak directly for God and be his gatekeeper. Remember that, as you keep saying, he's bigger than you are.
   
7. Pray. And listen to what God tells you.