Here is my schedule for the rest of the summer:

May / June: Close roles at First United Methodist Church and hammer out the PhD Dissertation

Early July: Travel to Edmonton to situate final details of the move

Mid July: Enjoy a vacation at Holden Beach

Late July: Spend time with my in-laws in Florida and continue writing the dissertation

Early August: Attend the Regent U. Faculty Retreat then officially move to Edmonton

I feel bad about taking a break from the blog, but I simply must finish my dissertation and I am closing distractions - even good ones!  I'll be back...

 The Rethinking Youth Ministry Blog has a great post with questions about how to address issues of global poverty beyond an annual 30 hour Famine. Somehow we need to find a way to enable youth to deeply connect with issues central to the Kingdom of God in ways that are effective.

The Big Ear Creations blog addressed some of these issues through quotes from Tony Campolo on macro economics and youth ministry. The blog quotes Campolo in an interview with Kara Powell. He states,

“I find most youth workers haven't a clue as to what macro economics is all about and how macro economic factors influence the poverty, and create the poverty in third world countries. They don't understand why third world peoples are angry with America...They hate a powerful country that is able to control international trade in such a way as to increase poverty in third world while it aggrandizes itself. Those insights into how things operate on the macro level and how macro factors in politics and in economics in third world countries and in our own country foster poverty are totally beyond the comprehension of most youth workers and that's a very sad thing indeed...”

Campolo then provides a scathing review of youth workers:

“Point blank, I am not impressed with youth workers. I find that they don't know what's going on in the world. That youth work becomes a matter of fun and games. When I go the National Youth Workers Convention I get more depressed every year. Because what I find is what the youth workers are really interested in is techniques. They don't want to deal with issues. They don't want to deal with the hard nosed facts of what is going on in the world.”

Unfortunately, I have to agree with Tony – and as I revealed over the last couple of weeks his criticism is more or less accurate for my own ministry, especially as it existed before I really understood some models for transformational development.

In the quote above Tony mentions macro issues of economics. In my next post I will go back to Jayakumar Christian to address the complexity of dealing with poverty on a macro level…
 

Jayakumar Christian believes that the identity of the poor has been marred in three specific ways.  1) It is marred by flawed social norms and worldviews.  Here in Appalachia I've seen this in what I described a few days ago as the Appalachia stereotype.  Many of poor in Appalachia have difficulty breaking out of the roles they are asked to play in local culture. 2) It is marred through years of marginalization.  Here in Appalachia it would go beyond years to generations.  According to Christian, "years of exploitation have reduced the marginalized to dull, submissive living objects."  Hence, 3) It is marred as the poor are reduced to mere objects.  The poor become less than human, which opens the door to further exploitation.

Jayakumar Christian presents a solution to address both the individual circumstances of those in poverty and the broader structural dynamics that impact poverty: recognize that the poor are made in the image of God.  Ruston Seaman summarizes this by stating that the poor need to find their identity and their purpose rooted in the Kingdom of God rather than in the prescribed social norms.  Those of us who work with families in poverty must find ways to affirm the image of God in people and not further mar their identity.

Jayakumar Christian is an author who has spent his life trying to alleviate poverty with World Vision in India.   He describes an alternative reading of poverty.  In Working with the Poor on page 3 he states, "Poverty continues to defy simplistic descriptions, definitions and easy solutions.  It continues to raise very uncomfortable questions for our continued reflection and response.  Essentially, poverty is about relationships... with these relationships the poor experience deprivation, powerlessness, physical isolation, economic poverty and all other characteristics of poverty."

Christian goes on to link poverty - particularly the kind of intergenerational poverty I have been exposed to in West Virginia - to hopelessness and a distorted history.  While hope and hopelessness are usually concepts that are future-oriented, Christian describes them as a state of mind.  Hopelessness prevents meaningful action in the present due to low aspirations that change is possible.  Hopelessness can become a cycle in which lack of interest in changing the present marginalizes the poor in a vicious cycle of powerlessness, which continues to destroy hope.  Hopelessness, then, becomes rooted in the distorted history of a people. 

What is a solution to the vicious cycle of powerlessess in these distorted histories?  According to Christian, it is The Kingdom of God - as I will discuss in my next post...

Chris comments on some reflections on youth ministry and poverty from Tony Campolo

The Just Life blog breaks down the Christian Community Development Movement

A great series in Collection of Crumbs discusses poverty and youth ministry

For my third situation in which I failed to bring trnasformation to families in poverty I'm going to reiterate a post from September of 2007 that originally fit into my "How not to do youth ministry" series: 

It's time for the next installment of the "How not to do youth ministry" series. My fourth to the worst true scenario happened just a few years ago. I have a real heart for tough to reach kids, and had managed to work my way into a network of local teens that were deeply troubled. Most of them had parents that either neglected them entirely or abused them regularly, and they treated one another in a similar manner. A highlight for our youth group every summer was attending the Burrito Brothers Flying Youth Camp at Camp Caesar. Following a week of going to each of these kid's homes to personally sell their parents on the value of this week, I was successful in recruiting about five of them to go. One of them, a youth of about sixteen years of age, asked if he could bring his girlfriend who lived with him and his family and was quite a few months pregnant - enough to be showing. After sorting out the most complicated medical / liability process ever, I agreed and these five kids joined the twenty-five regulars in the group. We left for camp in a rather large entourage directly after a church service and stopped just a couple miles from our church to get some lunch. Since there were quite a few restaurants within a short walking distance, I allowed the students to choose an eatery and meet back in thirty minutes. I chose Wendy's and sat down to inhale my triple with fries and a frosty in relative peace, confident that my youth were responsible enough to walk twenty yards and eat a meal without getting into trouble.

About 1250 calories into my lunch I looked out the window to observe three local squad cars with sirens blaring swing into the restaurant and block my church van! Moments later another officer on foot came walking down the street with one of my youth - the boyfriend - in handcuffs. His girlfriend was in hot pursuit and was screaming at the officer that the boy had done no wrong and that he had no right to cause him any trouble. I threw away the rest of my Frosty (which was unfortunately most of it, as I recall) and went outside to try and get a grip on what was happening around me. It turns out that the police officer had witnessed the boy hitting the girl right on the sidewalk of the main road, and he immediately intervened. Both the boy and the girl were denying the incident and were claiming the officer was inventing the entire story. I may be dumb enough to get myself into these crazy situations, but that day I wasn't dumb enough to believe the teens over our local police. I whipped out my paperwork and called the boy's parents, who took almost an hour to travel the two miles to Wendy's and take both of the students back home. So, for an entire hour I stood on the side of the road in my very small hometown on a busy Sunday afternoon talking with police while my well known church van was surrounded by squad cars with their lights on, and the rest of my youth group just stood and watched from a short distance. Or - even worse - called their parents to fill them in on how the trip was going so far. Sadly, once we got in the van and finally left for camp one of the most mature kids in the group looked me right in the eyes and said, 'So this is what you've reduced our youth group to?" Ouch. And the worst thing about the whole situation is that I've had three things occur under my leadership that were even more miserable!

In the late 1990s I entered into a ministry setting in which a young child was accidentally scolded to death in the tub by a grandmother. The family was a block away from my church and another daughter (not the mother of the child) occasionally attended the church and brought her three boys. The family in many ways represents the poor Appalachian white stereotype with minimal social skills, a reality that was especially demonstrative in the funeral where it was clear the family did not have the capacity to handle the level of stress the death of this very small child generated. An ambulance had to be called due panic attacks and the service was cut short in light of the intense grieving. In addition to this tremendous and powerful grief, the family was in the midst of a public investigation into the incident that made headlines for months. Shortly after this situation, the youngest son of the daughter attending our church burned their house down playing with matches. Our congregation rallied around the family and did our best to help. We were able to secure a home for them to rent and provide a number of material goods to replace what had been lost. However, within a short time they were so far behind on their rent that they were evicted. Meanwhile, the grandmother moved into a house, which, only a few months later, also burned down. Christina and I were buying new furniture at the time and donated our old sofas and dining room set to her so she could get started again. She moved into a new house, but it also burned in a matter of months - along with the furniture we had provided! The court case finally ended and the grandmother was found to be innocent. Not only that, she received a large settlement from the home owner who was found to be negligent - the incident was blamed on the hot water tank.  The money from the settlement was spent quickly.  She is still raising the other two children of her other daughter, who was found unfit to be a mother. I worked with this family for two years at this church and had weekly contact with them. They made great strides in spiritual growth and at one point I was doing a weekly Bible Study in their home and the entire extended family was attending! Yet, a decade later the long-term results are negligible. I am in a different ministry setting and they occasionally still call me in a crisis when they need a minister. Yet, they are no longer in church and have not found a way to break the cycle of poverty. The children I ministered to years ago are now adults with the same patterns of living and dysfunctionality as their parents. In the midst of countless hours of instruction and significant financial assistance, the family is as they were. This is the second of three major failures in my pre-World Vision attempts to break the cycle of poverty in specific families. One more to share, then I'll walk through some literature that has helped me rethink how to approach families in poverty...

For the next few weeks, I plan to share some of the things I have learned about working with this population. Others who are more gifted have already paved some roads, and so some of these posts will get into a powerful literature and apply it to youth ministry. Today I want to share one real-world example out of my experience where I absolutely failed to bring transformation to a family in poverty - I will share two more in the coming days. In my future posts, I will reflect back upon these experiences to see if there might have been more effective ways to handle these situations.

Situation 1:

One of the families I had the privilege to serve came from circumstances that many would consider unbelievable. Two brothers and two sisters began coming to one of the churches I served after a friend invited the oldest to my middle school program. All of the other children were in the children's program. The first time I picked them up in the van I recognized they were in abject poverty, as they literally lived in a shack. These were intelligent kids, but each had issues. I came to terms with why the first time I visited inside the home to help one of the students with homework. The mother had died when they were very small and only the father was alive. He was an unemployed alcoholic. I entered their home, in which half of the floor was dirt and the other half boards, but many of the boards were broken. The kids were in the front room and the father was in the kitchen with the boy I was going to help. A large bottle of Jack Daniels was on the table and as I came into the room, he offered me a shot. I wish I were kidding. The father offered me - an at the time very young youth pastor - a shot of Jack Daniels before I helped tutor his son!!! I politely turned the shot down, and managed to get through the awkward hour. I was in the home working with the boy with his drunken father sitting next to me. I continued to work with this family for about three months and would frequently (one time a week) visit in their home. I established as much of a relationship as was possible with the father, but did not have any breakthroughs. There were spiritual breakthroughs with the children, and I believe we as a church did a good job rallying around them to help as best we could. However, their home life was too overwhelming. One afternoon in full daylight the father, after a significant drinking binge, pulled out a shotgun and took it outside to threaten a neighbor. The police were called and he was arrested. I visited him in jail that night, but never saw the children again. They were shipped off to a relative on the other side of the state. I left that church only a few months later and to this day do not know what happened to this family.