Ed Stetzer

Americans still tend to think about poverty as an inner-city problem. But some time around the dot-com bust and 2001 recession, the number of poor people living in the suburbs actually outstripped the total residing in cities. So why is suburban poverty often treated as out of sight, out of mind?

One reason may be that it’s more diffuse. In urban areas, the poor are often packed into predominantly low-income neighborhoods. In the 'burbs, they’re generally scattered through more economically diverse communities. In other words, the U.S. suburbs are home to lots of impoverished people, but they’re not home to lots of slums.

That’s beginning to change, though, according to a new brief by Elizabeth Kneebone of Brookings. During the 2000s, suburban poverty not only grew—it also became more concentrated. In 2000, 27 percent of poor suburbanites lived in neighborhoods with a poverty rate of at least 20 percent. During the 2008–2012 period, the figure was about 38.3 percent.

Deeply concentrated impoverishment is still more common inside cities. As Kneebone writes, nearly a quarter of the urban poor live in neighborhoods with poverty rates of at least 40 percent. Just 6.3 percent of the suburban poor are trapped in those circumstances.

Not long ago, when religious liberty cases reached the courts, the people seeking protection for their beliefs were mostly from small faith groups and their lawyers were liberals.

The contested issues were narrow: a demand that plain, black Amish buggies carry bright safety triangles, for instance, or bans on hallucinogenic tea in a Native American ritual. The resolutions of these cases were as narrowly drawn as the complaints themselves. A judge might carve out an exemption for the practice in question, and life would go on as usual for everyone else.

But after years of culture wars, and amid recent gains for gay rights, the politics of religious liberty has been transformed. Now exemptions are being sought by the largest faith groups in the country, the burning issues are marriage and sex, and the term religious freedom has taken on a new, politicized meaning.

"Things have changed dramatically in the last 20 years," said Michael Moreland, vice dean and professor at Villanova University Law School. "Back then, the Catholic Church wasn't very often in the position of needing exemptions."

The new terms of the debate were on display in the recent Hobby Lobby case over birth control coverage for workers.

The plaintiff was a multibillion-dollar arts and crafts chain owned by conservative Christians. At stake was broader access to contraception for many women. And the religious leaders championing the Hobby Lobby case were from the Roman Catholic Church and the Southern Baptist Convention — the largest and second-largest denominations in the country.

Most people think small groups are a good idea; very few people seemed to be engaging in them well. That’s the general conclusion that Ed Stetzer and Eric Geiger have come to through their nation-wide research. InTransformational Groups they give us insights into this research and help in making the shift from merely having groups to making disciples. The usefulness of this resource is found largely in its ability to expose the blind-spots in the larger church’s use of small groups. Transformational Groups really can help pastors utilize groups for more intentional disciple-making.

As part of LifeWay’s Transformational Discipleship project, the book’s primary goal is to help pastors and churches turn small groups into effective tools for discipleship. Their research revealed some distressing information about the church and its small group ministry. Stetzer and Geiger found that in far too many churches community is really optional. Community is just one of the things that our churches do, among the hundreds of other things it does. It is not viewed as nor communicated as a discipleship essential. So the authors ask:

Did you ever think people who attend your church are comfortable without community because you are making it comfortable for them? (13)

But it’s not enough just to have small groups. Their research further revealed that people are not looking for correction. In other words, they will be in a small group if it requires no commitment from then, and if its primary goal is just comfort. One of the things Stetzer and Geiger do well throughout the book is distinguish between small groups that simply exist, and small groups that aid in transformation. Correction is a necessity for transformation. Finally, they found that those interested in or involved in small groups were primarily concerned with their individual needs. That is to say, they were less concerned about the others in the group and their role in the group’s life. This individualism dramatically impacts our small group emphasis and effectiveness.