A Church that Matters

A ringing phone after ten p.m. in a pastor's home is a sure sign that someone is in trouble. They need help fast. It might be a frustrated parent, a frightened spouse, a discouraged police officer; anyone.

This time, though, the voice was a pastor whom I had met several months earlier. While looking at the lowest income rural counties in the U.S., I had visited with him for a few hours about his community. It was perhaps in the bottom ten rural counties in the nation for personal income.

Now several months had gone by. My report to the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church had been turned in. It rested securely and comfortably on a shelf in New York City. It would probably never see the light of day again. But the pastor needed help now.

"What is the Church prepared to do for us? We need help. Our people are starving. We pay in all that money for mission work. That is a part of being United Methodist. Then it goes to either New York or some other overseas place. We are getting tired of that."

What he didn't say was that the community was deciding whether or not to support a casino gambling industry in the county. He may have been primarily looking for some hope of stopping the gambling industry. It is pretty hard to resist the lure of casino industries when the actual common unemployment rate runs above 70%.

When I told him the results of the study, he became terrible depressed and tearful. He mourned the wasted money for the study. I told him I would try to find out what I could. He just hung up the phone without words of goodby.

Since that time I have spent much time revisiting and studying these counties. My wife, Donella, and I have also visited many more counties where the per capita income is less than one third that of the nation as a whole. I have looked for ways the whole Church (not just denominationally) does and should impact the economic well being of the community.

When I visited the other communities in the study, I heard the same song over and over. Often the songs rang with almost the same words. The words were changed only with the variation in faith community practices. United Methodist, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Mormon, whatever. Wherever there existed any ecclesiastical structure I heard the same cry. 'We send the money away, but we are among the lowest income people of the world, and no maoney ever comes back.'

One overwhelming desire and need seems to fill these communities. There is a clear sense that the hope of financial stability for the local community, and for the whole world, is in local entrepreneurship. Newspapers and electronic media make headlines with the remote possibilities of mahor industries coming to town. However, this eventuality is more rare than top grade caviar. If nothing else, we can and must be realistic in our approach.

It is clearly true that many folks wish to become business owners and operators. Many have dreams of owning and operating their own business in their own home towns. They would love to go to the bank, borrow the money, purchase equipment, and make things happen. But it is also clearly true that in the lowest income areas, the drive to own and operate a business is tempered with expectations of failure. This attitude pervades both the potential entrepreneurs and the community providers, the bankers and the landlords and the politicians who must support the project if it is to work.

In most of these areas there are adequate funding programs coming from state and federal sources and private programs. But those who could and perhaps should establish business operations in the area just don't. It is in fostering entrepreneurship that the church and other non-profit entities can and should do their strongest work for low income communities.

But it is also in this area that the church often falters. Sometimes the church limits itself to overt evangelism or entertainment. Sometimes the church avoids talking about money or justice. Sometimes the church fosters a distrust of local entrepreneurship. Often the last can be traced in part to inexperienced clergy. One successful farmer in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas left the United Methodist Church after a staffer "came down from New York City and told me that, if I was successful, it was because I was cheating someone."

Honestly, I believe the church can and should look to our founder, Lord and Master, Jesus of Nazareth. He was, among other things, quite an entrepreneur himself. He gathered and held together a small staff of non-experts and changed the world with them. His finances were meager, and his technology was limited. Yet by his personal power he was successful in every way that finally mattered.

The great proof of his success in what he came for is found in the certainty that he did change lives. Nothing more could be asked.

As I have worked through this project I have told hundreds of laity, clergy, denominational leaders, economists, social scientists and everyone else I could find who would listen. As I have finished laying out the project I have been asked a powerful question by most of them.

"What is it you would have us do after we read the book and attend a workshop?" That seems to be a fair question to any person who works in this area.

And the answer is quite simple. As you become accustomed to thinking about economic development, entrepreneurship and mission together, you can focus the mission of your faith group or other non-profit entity on economic development and entrepreneurship needs.

Hopefully, you will make your programs, goals, tactics and strategies align with the needs of your own members and the rest of the community. If the community needs self esteem, for instance, you will program in that direction. And this will be backed by your own efforts and the efforts of others with any other need you can find.

I have great trust in the good faith action of the working people. If folks can respond to their faith with God by doing good toward their fellow human beings, I believe they will do just that. They just need to understand how. That is the point of the project.