A high-powered group mobilizes, but some ghetto workers are skeptical.
With his billions of dollars in budget cuts now cemented, President Reagan is encouraging church volunteers to fill the breach left by reductions in social welfare programs. For suburban, mostly white evangelicals, long impotent in dealing with inner-city ills, the cutbacks present a clear challenge to minister to the physical, social, and spiritual needs of the urban poor.
While some suburban churches have long track records of effective urban outreach, most seem ill equipped to prepare and send lay people into poor neighborhoods. It boils down to white Christians, and white money, trying to reach poor blacks and Hispanics. Already there is some concern about how successful that will be.
One evangelical Christian organization was formed in recent months to organize outreaches to the poor. The STEP Foundation (Strategies to Eliminate Poverty) is a group of wealthy business leaders and church and parachurch workers who share a conviction that suburban Christians should be about the business of ministering to the urban poor.
The STEP board of directors meets monthly in Dallas, and on it are some of that city’s wealthiest Christians. The board is composed of Henry “Bud” Smith, a Dallas insurance executive; oil and silver magnate Bunker Hunt; Clint Murchison, Jr., owner of the Dallas Cowboys football team; Bill Bright of Campus Crusade; Holly Coors, wife of Colorado beer brewer Joseph Coors; Mary Crowley, a wealthy Dallas businesswoman; Clarence “Arch” Decker, a Denver lawyer and publisher of a Christian newspaper; Harvey Oostdyk, an inner-city worker who heads the Dallas STEP program; Kent Hutcheson of Campus Crusade; and Robert Pittinger, formerly of Campus Crusade. STEP’s president is E. V. Hill, pastor of the Mount Zion Missionary Baptist Church in Los Angeles and director of the World Christian Training Center (CT, Oct. 2, p. 57). Hill recently received $1 million from Hunt to duplicate Hill’s training program in 14 inner-city locations across the country.
One of STEP’s strategies, Hill explains, is to “find successful programs and get them duplicated. Another strategy is to recruit church laity directly into STEP volunteer programs. Pilot projects are under way in Dallas, Denver, and in conjunction with E. V. Hill’s Los Angeles ministry. The idea is to establish model programs of church volunteerism in these cities.
At the heart of this effort is Harv Oostdyk, a New Yorker who has worked in the inner city with Young Life and the Cities and Schools Program. Oostdyk, director of the Dallas model, writes enthusiastically about expanding the scope of volunteerism in churches:
“Too much volunteerism has been tutors, clothers, and donations. People seldom have an opportunity to give things like ideas, insights, skills such as data processing, accounting management, and influ-fluence.… The pews of the churches of America are filled with a whole glorious spectrum of gifts that have never been applied to the needs of the poor.”
Months before STEP formed, Oostdyk was promoting his ideas with Christian leaders throughout the country. In Dallas, he found a kindred spirit in Pittinger, formerly of Campus Crusade, and in Denver, with Decker, an attorney and publisher of the Christian newspaper, HIS People.
Both men were then active in the burgeoning “Christian Right.” That movement gained momentum at the National Affairs Briefing in Dallas in September 1980, when then candidate Ronald Reagen appeared and gave his endorsement to politically active conservative Christians. Both Pittinger and Decker were instrumental in introducing Oostdyk to other conservative Christian leaders. Because many of these people lived in Dallas, the city became a natural meeting place for the organizers of the STEP Foundation (then called Foundation for the Poor).
In the early months of the Reagan administration, Oostdyk and Pittinger were pushing for a presidentially appointed “National Commission for the Poor.” The proposal, which was written by Oostdyk, included a suggestion that E. V. Hill chair a commission that would “bring new resources and strategies to the ghetto,” mainly through church volunteers.
The proposal picked up steam in February when STEP presented its ideas at an afternoon session of the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.
In the weeks that followed, four U.S. senators—Jesse Helms, Bill Armstrong, Roger Jepsen, and Mark Hatfield—signed a letter to presidential aide Edwin Meese in support of the proposal.
In the final analysis, the president opted for a broader approach: a 35-member task force on “private sector initiatives.” It wasn’t exactly what the STEP Foundation had in mind; nonetheless, their voice was heard. And no one, including the president, would underplay the importance of church volunteerism.
Meanwhile in Dallas, the STEP pilot program is expanding, STEP board member Mary Crowley, president of Home Interiors and Gifts, Inc., personally recruited a cadre of women volunteers to help in the 70-block target area in northeast Dallas. “It’s going to work in Dallas,” said Crowley at a recent STEP meeting. “It can happen when … God’s people work together.”
Oostdyk sets the pace for the Dallas program. His plans for coming weeks: “Identify 100 Christians in our 70 blocks and have them in discipleship, build relations with 15 churches in our blocks, and identify 20 Christian workers in the area.” Students from Dallas Theological Seminary (the seminary is located in the project area) are also showing an interest. Some 100 seminarians are going door to door in the 70-block area, to evangelize and disciple. Other plans call for the development of a “think tank,” in which business, government, and church leaders could meet to grapple with various urban problems.
In Denver, STEP is proceeding at a slower pace, using the same technique of recruiting laity to reach the poor. Kent Hutcheson, international training director for Campus Crusade, heads up the Denver program. He has worked closely with Christian Corps International (CCI), an evangelistic social concern ministry in predominantly black northeast Denver, directed by Russell Porter.
How effectively has STEP coordinated with evangelicals already working in the inner city? Judging from the model programs in Dallas and Denver, the relationship has room for improvement. One complaint coming from urban ministers in those cities is that STEP came not to listen and understand, but rather to lay down its own programs.
“We were sort of brought in on the tail end without being able to get input on methodology,” said Tony Evans, black pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas. He said he has had contact with STEP through Black Evangelistic Enterprises and as an instructor at Dallas Theological Seminary.
“If STEP is claiming evangelism as a goal, it needs to be more tightly tied to evangelical churches,” Evans suggested. “Only through the local church will they have a lasting effect.” He pointed out that a lot of the needy in the inner city are already in churches. Caring for their needs must come first, he said. He favors the idea of planting evangelical churches in the inner city where they do not already exist.
In Denver, a group of inner-city ministers who meet regularly have also criticized STEP for doing little to research existing evangelical efforts, CCI director Russ Porter suggested that “STEP will only be effective if they come in as participant observers willing to be taught, rather than taking the reins.”
Asked about the initial lack of coordination with inner-city ministers, E. V. Hill said, “Remember, we were just born,” stressing that STEP’s strategy will take time to develop. “I’ve already received more than a hundred letters from groups demanding support,” he said.
John Perkins, a well-known black minister who built the Voice of Calvary Ministries, said one problem of an organization like STEP is that it might use its clout and influence to build its own image, rather than working with churches and ministries at the grassroots level. He emphasized a need for a strong “philosophy of development” that deals with the “white dominating society.”
It remains to be seen how suburban evangelicals can best help the urban poor and what role an organization like STEP might play in that process.
