The trouble with our church or any church is not lack of members or money; it is lack of ingenuity, creativity, and courage.
—James Stobaugh
Our collection one week recently was $691.30. We needed $1,300 to meet budget.
Standing at the front door of our brownstone church, saying farewell to our eighty congregants, I saw Robert, a street person in our neighborhood. He asked a member for a quarter. We barely have a quarter to give you, I thought.
It wasn’t always this way. In my closet sits a photograph of our turn-of-the-century congregation. Healthy-looking men and parasol-laden women encircle a whole block. Written in optimistic white ink is “The Church in Friendship.” Pittsburgh was thriving, and so was the church. It boasted a huge Sunday school, active youth group, and overflowing morning worship. The softball team won the all-church league! The church’s potential seemed unlimited.
But the steel industry faltered: our armies won two wars but our businesses lost the import war. Superhighways enticed people to the suburbs. A few stalwart souls continued to commute to our declining church, but their children yearned for modern bathrooms and carpeted nurseries. A popular pastor retired. By 1960 we were a shadow of former glory. By the early eighties, we were only a handful of dazed saints.
By now the community hardly knew we existed. Robert and his friends had nothing in common with us. Their world was full of drugs, unemployment, and juvenile delinquency. Our world was quiet afternoons with a Sunday paper. Except for when this community mugged us, raped us, or stole our cars, we were effectively ignoring it. Most of us hoped to escape.
To our credit, we felt conviction. God wasn’t pleased with our negligence. This was our time and our place. These were our people. Like it or not, God had called us here to represent his Son. What were we going to do about it?
Conviction, though, is one thing. The fact was, we didn’t know how we could help anyone. We simply didn’t have the resources. We were in a large, older building, and our expenses, even cut to the minimum, were often double our weekly offering.
Recognize existing resources
Where could we begin?
With what we did have.
No, we didn’t have a lot of discretionary income. Our budget was overstrained. But as we assessed our resources, we realized we have more than we thought we did.
For example, we have a large building. That gave us space to host a variety of ministries and programs without having to worry about finding or renting room for them.
Second, we have a church office with a manual typewriter and a copier. We can handle, slowly, the basic communication and correspondence needed in any outreach.
Third, though our congregation is small, it’s resourceful. Most of us have learned the hard way how to get the most for our money.
Most important, we have an omnipotent God. And our community needs an omnipotent God: unemployment is almost 40 percent; 84 percent of community families are led by single parents; most children are born out of wedlock; and crime is as bad as anywhere in Pittsburgh. But our God is bigger than even these staggering problems.
Once we had seen all we did have, we could put those resources to use. For example, we were concerned about the mental health of our community, but we couldn’t afford a part-time counselor, let alone a full-time one, to address the staggering needs. So we went to a local Christian ministry and offered office space in our building—for free—if they would provide a counselor available to people in the community. They agreed, and we now have a counselor in our church a couple of nights a week. We were able to provide far more counseling help for the community than we could have otherwise. The trick was recognizing the value of an existing resource—our building—and using it.
Network with other groups
That experience illustrates another principle we’ve learned: When you can’t afford to do it by yourself, don’t. Work with other groups.
One widespread and growing problem in our church neighborhood is chemical addiction. Why not ask a chapter of Narcotics Anonymous to come to our church? we thought. We couldn’t afford staff to tackle the problem, and Narcotics Anonymous had expertise in this area. And to be honest, we were new to all this, and we felt more comfortable risking our building than ourselves!
Narcotics Anonymous came, and within a few months we had the largest chapter east of the Mississippi meeting in our church. Every week, from 350 to 700 people flowed through our church. A few came to our worship service. More important, the community supported our efforts because their families benefited. Feeling cocky, our board refused any rent, except a small stipend we immediately returned to another community ministry. “I’ve never been loved this way,” a surprised NA representative told us.
There were problems, like the time some recovering addicts stole furniture and ruined two carpets. But our board had tasted victory for the first time in decades. We still were receiving about $700 per week and spending more than $1,000, but we were finally doing something that was changing our world.
We looked around for other ways to affect our community. We remembered that each year we paid dues—$100—to East End Cooperative Ministry, a coalition of forty churches that runs a food closet, soup kitchen, meals-on-wheels program, shelter, halfway house, and employment agency. We decided paying dues was not enough. The board and I volunteered to serve in these ministries. Before long our tiny congregation was logging more than one hundred hours in these ministries every week—more than an hour per member! It didn’t cost a nickel, but we started receiving rich spiritual returns.
We began to support, along with other churches and groups, a Jubilee housing project. The project buys abandoned houses, refurbishes them, and allows low-income people to live in them at modest rates. The only stipulation is that they must take good care of them. If they do, in twenty or so years they will own their own homes.
Before long, other people on the block painted their houses and cleaned their yards. Tenement owners made needed repairs. A feeling began to spread: This community is worth taking care of! It wouldn’t have happened without many groups working together.
Focus on areas of greatest need
One painful realization for any pastor is that you can’t do everything. The number of needs in any church and community is simply too great. We feel this acutely. With so much that needs to be done, and so little money, what can we do?
We have decided, by necessity, to focus on the areas of greatest need. In our community right now, one of these is our young people. One of every twenty young men on our block will die before age twenty. Four of every five young women will be pregnant before age fifteen. At least two youths will die of an overdose of drugs during the year.
Neither I nor my predecessor was equipped for this challenge. We both asked the Lord for a financially affordable way to do something about this dilemma. He sent us Joe.
A few years before I came, a middle-aged Mafia enforcer named Joe Bellante was shot twice by the mob because he owed them $10,000. While in the hospital, Joe committed his life to Christ. Some of our Session members heard about Joe’s situation and got to know him. A few of them raised enough money to make a financial settlement with the Mafia, and thus they literally saved Joe’s life.
From this amazing beginning, Joe became an assistant to the pastor and took responsibility for youth ministry. We added a line to the budget, and members who could afford to give extra did. It wasn’t easy, but if we were going to stretch anywhere, it would be for this area of great need. Joe began youth clubs, and soon our basement was filled with kids on Wednesday nights. His knowledge of the street was invaluable; the police used him to defuse crises; he went to Florida to retrieve runaways; he held junkies all night to keep them from harming themselves.
After a while, we realized Joe’s ministry could be even greater if it weren’t restricted to our church. Joe formed an independent ministry named Urban Partners, and its budget is now larger than ours. Members of our church continue to be its biggest financial contributors, and some of our members serve on Urban Partners’ board.
Again we faced the problem of funding a staff person to reach young people. Returning to our principle of networking, we talked with East Main Presbyterian Church in Grove City, Pennsylvania, outside the city. They got excited about the potential and agreed to fund a staff person who would be responsible for developing new ministries to young people and others.
Avoid dependence
This raises a key question for churches trying to build a major ministry with modest means: How much can you depend on others? To refuse funds is to refuse opportunities for ministry. But to accept them is to open yourself to an insidious cycle of dependence.
We’ve tried to resolve the issue by determining what the funds are for. If they’re for operating expenses—lights, heat, my salary—we refuse them. That’s our responsibility. We are committed to dying as a church before we accept others’ money for basic expenses.
On the other hand, we will gladly accept money for ministry and mission. Our vacation Bible school reached almost a hundred kids. We felt fine about Nabisco’s giving cookies for the school. The next summer, the city provided free lunches. In a cooperative effort with three other churches, we provided a hot lunch for more than half the children in our 9,200-member community. The difference was that these gifts weren’t given to keep Fourth Presbyterian alive; they were given to help children who might not eat as well otherwise. That was why we rejoiced that East Main agreed to fund Cindy Schartner, our new staff member. She’s not an associate pastor or director of Christian education. Her primary responsibility is to coordinate ministries directed outward, to the community.
The “avoid dependence” principle works the other way too: we try not to build an unhealthy dependence in the people we serve. A few years ago Bob Lupton, executive director of the Family Consultation Service in Atlanta, introduced me to the idea of “dignity ministries,” programs that build not dependence but dignity. I knew these were needed because in our community I’d seen, for example, people receive donated, hand-me-down Christmas toys for their kids. The people were losing their dignity in having to depend on handouts, in not being able to choose and buy toys for their children. So last Christmas we opened a Christmas store. We asked area churches to provide new toys, and we made sure the toys were both nonviolent and appropriate for people in our community. But instead of giving them away, we sold them—at 30 percent of retail price. (We also made Bibles available.) For many customers, it was the first time they had been able to buy Christmas toys for their children.
If folks couldn’t afford to pay for the toys—and it was surprising how many could—we allowed them to work for them. They joined others from the community who were already working in the store. These weren’t empty, made-up jobs, but real ones. People cleaned the store, set up displays, unloaded boxes, priced items. We made people come to work on time. If they didn’t work the whole time they were scheduled for, they weren’t paid. In all, we employed twenty-five people, and it was exciting to see homeless people and others of varying financial status gain work experience. When we finished the project, we had actually made a little money, which will give us a start on this year’s store.
By minimizing dependence, we maximize impact.
Don’t settle for second-rate
I’ll be the first to admit we’ve never had enough money to do anything the easy way. For example, we host a drop-in center for homeless people in our basement and we can’t afford a separate phone line for it. If a person wants to reach the church office, he or she may have to call twice: once when it’s picked up downstairs, and again while the people downstairs let it ring. But in our ministries to the poor and powerless, we endeavor to provide excellence. We think our Lord demands nothing less.
As we seek to rehabilitate the homeless, for example, we draw on the services of East Liberty Family Health Care Center, an independent Christian health ministry. At the same time an orthopedic surgeon and a dentist in our church offer care to needy street people. The church does not have to take a back seat to any organization in America.
Not settling for second-rate means, among other things, that when you enter new areas of ministry, you have to ask for advice. Recently we took over an eleven-unit apartment building in our neighborhood to house elderly and homeless people in our congregation. We recognized that as a small church we didn’t have a lot of expertise in housing ministry.
So we formed an advisory committee, a blue-ribbon panel of committed Christians from outside our church who are specialists in various areas. They examined the facility, helped with legal questions, and guided us through a maze of nonprofit matters.
To help with the renovation, a contractor who belongs to East Main Presbyterian has agreed to bring his workers for a week this summer. We’ll provide the materials, while he generously provides the labor. Here again, by tapping others’ expertise, we’re able to make sure the project is done right.
A simple fact
I will never forget the day we invited Robert into our church and handed him a cup of coffee. We and East End Cooperative Ministry had opened a drop-in center for the homeless. Here people come to get warm, to find counsel. Each Monday evening, for example, some of our members lead a Bible study at the center.
A simple fact dawned on us: with no increase of our budget, we had become a powerful church. We were becoming respected, even loved, by people in our community, and some of them started coming to church. Eventually some became officers; gradually we were becoming a community church again. We had no more broken windows or walls defecated on because this was their church.
One day a drop-in person stole our VCR. Frankly, I never expected to keep a VCR in an inner-city church—they were hot commodities on the street market. So I wasn’t surprised when it was stolen. But I was surprised when it was returned by another drop-in. “Hey, man,” he scolded the thief, “what you doin’? This is our VCR. This is our place. Don’t go stealing from our place!”
Our budget is still $72,000 a year, and we still have 79 members. We still receive $691.30 some weeks. But more and more the congregation offers $1,000 or even $1,500. We have begun to meet budget for the first time in years. Last year, we ended up $7.30 in the black!
One glaring weakness of our work over the last few years is that we haven’t been able to incorporate the homeless and recovering addicts into our congregation in a substantial way. We are still searching for ways to make them feel welcome upstairs as well as in the basement. Now anything we start has to be connected closely to the church. When we started an aerobics class, four members committed themselves to come every week so people in the class would get to know people in the church.
And we need more money. I certainly haven’t preached enough on stewardship. We need to be challenged to be more responsible in our giving.
Meanwhile, much work remains. Unemployment, for example, poisons our community. We hope to start a small business someday that will employ neighborhood people.
I have never been tempted to indulge myself with any sort of prosperity theology, since prosperity is absent from my world, but I believe the only limits are what God does not allow or we are unable to dream. The trouble with our church or any church is not lack of members or money; it is lack of ingenuity, creativity, and courage.
The book of Esther has meant a lot to me over the last few years. Esther had to act decisively, courageously, and quickly, or the nation of Israel would perish. After praying and fasting, she left her apartment, turned the corner, and peered into the face of the greatest, most powerful force for evil in her day. In every community, the church is turning corners and finding itself face-to-face with King Xerxes. Esther risked everything. We have to risk everything too.
We are the church of Jesus Christ, and we have to be more than a good feeling or an attractive building. Our communities are counting on us.
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