I did follow through on the intent expressed at the end of the paper and volunteered at The Cooperative Ministry in Columbia for about seven years, early 2003 through 2009. In 2006 I began volunteering also at Home Works of America, an organization which serves primarily the elderly low income community in Columbia. In 2010 I opted out of the mostly food and clothing voucher ministry of The Cooperative Ministry in favor of more attention to the hands-on home repairs needed in pretty much the same dominantly African American community. I am very thankful for the opportunities, as a Home Works of America volunteer, to learn and use new skills in service to those in need.
Another interesting thing about the paper is that it foreshadows and explains some of the rationale for our move eight years later to the Catholic Church. I was pretty staunchly Lutheran at the time but interest in the Catholic Church was clearly blooming.
And finally, I am not pleased with the writing below but conquered the desire to get into editor mode and have published it just as written and submitted to the professor in January 2003.
_____________________________________________________________
Reflections on the January, 2003, Urban Plunge
Darryl K. Williams
January 23, 2003
This Cross-Cultural experience consisted of nine days in the South Atlanta African-American community. Issues explored and studied were housing affordability, gentrification and the resulting displacement of the poor, homelessness, community disintegration, community building, health care, and juvenile law enforcement. The experience included a meeting of Concerned Black Clergy of Atlanta,[1] a meeting with ELCA Synod of the Southeast Bishop Ron Warren, and visits to The Carter Center, the King Center, a social service organization, and to some communities under redevelopment. It included attendance at a Muslim worship service, four worship services in African-American churches, and one combined Black Methodist - Reformed Jewish Synagogue service. For the most part, the worship services were in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. on the weekend of the national holiday established in his honor.
In general, the Plunge was a discouraging experience. There are glimmers of hope, mostly
reflections off the faces of loving persons dedicated to improvement and
progress, but the breakdown of the family, failure of public education,
increase in juvenile delinquency and involuntary prostitution, and segregation
of the races are all major problems in Martin Luther King, Jr., Country where
the scars of the gross and shameful injustices resulting from the sins of
slavery and involuntary segregation and racial discrimination, both blatant and
subtle, are daily visible reminders that all is not well. And when those scars are ineffective
reminders, leaders in the community and in the churches, where religion and
politics are as connected as husband and wife, seem ready to fill the gap and
to say that the solutions to the problems of the individuals and the community
are in City Hall, the State House, and the National Capitol. The limited sample of messages I heard in the
churches we visited suggests that the predominant message is a paternalistic,
"Behave yourselves, remember the past, and vote Democratic." It may be that the messages are less
political on weekends other than the King Holiday weekend. It seems worth noting that the message in the
mosque we visited was about personal responsibility. The speaker said that it is an individual’s
first responsibility to take care of himself so that others do not need to take
care of him. Then, from that basis,
others can be helped. It is a message
that seems to be resonating in the Black community, resulting in growth of the
Muslim population.
I was reminded that, while Blacks, along with other races,
have prospered, on average, in Atlanta and other major cities over the past few
decades, averages mean very little. The
distribution of prosperity is bimodal rather than normal. Many have prospered, but many are trapped at
the bottom. They have been "left
behind," but not in the sense of the currently popular "rapture"
theology. They have been left far behind
the economic and social and educational progress of which Atlanta boasts. As a result they have deficient job skills,
deficient social skills, insufficient money, little family or community
support, and, often, no warm, safe, and comfortable place to lay their heads at
night. And the future does not look good
because their children are at risk and are disproportionately involved in
behavior which brings them before judges in Fulton County Juvenile Court. Some are involuntarily prostituted and put to
work on the streets or in hotels and motels.
I was reminded that, even for Blacks who are doing well
socially, economically, and educationally, there remains a heightened
sensitivity to racial discrimination because they have been and continue to be
the victims of it. It helps me
understand if I think of my own sensitivity to persons making fun of people
with Appalachian mountain accents, because that is where I grew up and learned
to talk. It has become clear to me that
many from other regions of the country make assumptions about persons with such
accents just as some make assumptions about Blacks because of the color of
their skin, their names, or their accents.
I was surprised to learn that some Blacks see even LTSS as a racist
community. How could that be? Well if the most visible Black employed on a
campus is a janitor, the concerned Black person wants to know why that is
so. If there are no Black Lutheran
full-time MDiv students on a Lutheran Seminary campus, the concerned Black
person wants to know why that is so. A
few days after the Atlanta trip, back at LTSS, I learned that a Black graduate
of LTSS had been unable to get a call to a South Carolina pastorate. No wonder the supply of students has dried
up. The eyes of the sensitive Black
person easily recognize racial issues that the rest of us miss.
What is to be the response of the "one holy catholic
and apostolic church" to these problems?
What portion of our energy and resources should go toward a solution to
it? During the Plunge I was reading a
novel (How Firm a Foundation by Marcus Grodi) about a Protestant Congregational
pastor struggling to defend his own church’s theology, which he had promised to
preach and teach, vs. the theologies of other Protestant churches and the
Catholic Church. I was struck by how
much Church energy is consumed as a result of the proliferation of theological
positions. I found myself wondering to
what extent such theological issues distract the Church from fulfillment of the
Great Commandments[2] and the Great
Commission.[3] The splintered "Church" is a
dominant presence in South Atlanta with hundreds of congregations and tens of
denominations. Jesus, the founder of the
Church, went about touching persons and solving their problems. Why then, are there not faith-based solutions,
led by the multitude of Christian Churches in the community, touching and
solving the problems of the people who live even in the shadow of Georgia’s gold-domed
state capital? That seems to me to be a
particularly pertinent question to us Lutherans, who are at the forefront of
one of the greatest splits in the history of the Christian Church and have a
well defined, well thought out, and well defended theology, but are in a small
minority, and are almost certainly wrong, in at least some of the details. Has that emphasis on theology distracted us
from obedience to the Great Commandments and the Great Commission? A principle I was taught as a manager in
industry is that people don't care how much we know until they know how much we
care. Is it possible that we have focused
too much on what we know and not enough on how much we care?
But despair and discouragement are counter-productive. We know that much about our faith will remain
a divine mystery that we can only struggle to understand. The critical thing is that we should not
devote so much of our corporate and personal energy to that struggle to
understand and reconcile the mysterious that we fail to act on those things
that are clear: That we are to love God and our neighbors and are to baptize
and teach. I'm reminded of a quote from,
I believe, Mark Twain: "It's not the things in the Bible that I don't
understand that bother me; It's the things I do understand."
The glimmers of hope I mentioned earlier included the
inspiring story of Dr. Robert Lupton, a man who charges the mainline churches
with jumping right over the Great Commandments to emphasize the Great
Commission and with being willing to send money to help the poor but not to get
personally involved. A Vietnam War
veteran, Bob’s commitment to serve juveniles evolved into a commitment to
families and, finally, into a commitment to build communities. His wife bought into Bob’s vision, and they
sold their home in the North Atlanta suburbs and moved into a “bad”
neighborhood in South Atlanta 17 years ago.
The organization they built is called FCS Urban Ministries, and the
neighborhood they built is called Tapestry.
Bob has written two inspiring books[4] about the wonderful things that happened as a
result of his family’s act of obedience. Also inspirational were the individuals we met
in the Juvenile Justice System. A
program coordinator, a judge, a facilities manager, and a person specializing
in a fight against involuntary prostituting of juveniles all showed sincere
love and concern for the young persons with whom they were dealing.
Another hopeful event occurred after the official Plunge had
ended. An article in the Atlanta Journal
Constitution during the King Holiday weekend had reported on the state of
integration of churches in Atlanta. Only
two were mentioned as being well integrated, and one of those was Our Lady of
Lourdes (OLL) Catholic Church in the heart of Martin Luther King country, just
across the street from King’s burial place.
The next weekend after the Plunge, my wife and I were back in Atlanta to
celebrate the first birthday of our youngest grandchild. On Sunday morning we visited OLL. There we found an economically and racially
mixed congregation, packed with joyful worshipers focused on worship and
celebration of the Eucharist and talking about the ways that particular congregation
tries to serve the community in which it worships and lives. I guess the Catholic Parish system has
contributed to the mix of the congregation and to its ability to focus on worship
and on love of neighbors.
Finally, what is to be my personal response to the challenge
of the Plunge? I chose this particular
experience because of membership in Ebenezer Lutheran Church, a downtown church
challenged by many of the same problems as Atlanta churches, though on a much
smaller scale. I guess the Black
community of South Atlanta is bigger than all of greater Columbia. The Plunge experience will help me play an
educated role in determination of the future mission and programs of Ebenezer,
but it also challenged me to get personally involved. As a first step, I am taking the counselor
training at The Cooperative Ministry and plan to volunteer there at least a
half day per week.
________________________________________________________________________
I want to express my appreciation to Dr. Arthur Lewis,
Director of the Lutheran Theological Center in Atlanta, and Reverend Michael
Wilson, Director of the Urban Training Organization of Atlanta, for organizing
and leading the 2003 Atlanta Urban Plunge experience. May that experience result in greater and
more effective ministry of all who participated in it.
[1] A joke
the members tell on themselves is that they are not all clergy, not all Black,
and not all concerned.
[2] Mark
12:28-31
[3] Matthew
28:19
[4] (Return Flight and Theirs Is the Kingdom)
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