For several decades, I’ve served moderately well-off congregations who are quite adept at giving and committed to doing charitable acts. More than a tithe of congregational giving is expended each month in support of both local community and larger church needs apart from ourselves. In fact, my current congregation has a strong (albeit quiet) reputation for its willingness to consistently put significant dollars into feeding, housing and serving those in need through food banks, Sumner Family Service and a host of other support groups. We help build houses through Habitat for Humanity, send adult and youth groups on annual national and international mission and work trips, and do the seasonal food baskets and clothing drives. However, like many faith communities, we are quicker with our wallets for charitable giving than with personal time and commitment to address and change systemic challenges that keep the poor desperate and trapped. While charity can be an immediate response, justice demands so much more when our intention is to truly make a lasting difference for more than just those who stand before us.
Still we keep trying to grow in our awareness and our response. We worked for nearly two years to connect with the community organizing group Sound Alliance. We currently support a multi-faith advocacy group called Faith Action Network. We invite speakers in for adult education classes on local and area needs. And we listen to through sermons and study, scripture regularly encourages us to engage ourselves in the life of the local and larger community. We know political engagement is an essential arena for Christian faith because politics (not partisanship) speaks best to our life together. We are discovering that knowing is not the same as doing and in fact, knowing without doing can create a level of guilt that inhibits action even further.
I suspect one of the biggest obstacles in congregations like the ones I’ve served has much to do with the majority of us being at least moderately well off economically and socially. Our lives are safe enough to minimize our own sense of risk, and secure enough to shelter us from our neighbor’s desperate and growing needs. The temptation often is to settle for altruism flavored by compassion instead of justice centered on the gospel of Jesus Christ. Add an inborn Lutheran tendency towards quietism, that desire to help row but not rock the boat, and the call for justice for more than just us, can slip into the background.
Middle-class churches, like the middle-class of society, carry an inherent fear of falling, of failing, if sufficient attention is not centered on our own survival. It often seems prudent to give until it begins to help but usually not until it challenges, not if the giving of time and money costs so much it changes our lifestyle too. Charity is much safer than advocacy and a hand-out much more convenient than the challenge of arm-in-arm action. As a larger faith community, we need reminders that it takes both to accomplish a hand-up, a leg-up, a step-up for all God’s children. God-willing all faith communities will one day learn to rock the boat hard enough to create opportunities for every boat to be raised together.
