Review: Turnabout in the City

May-June 1996

Wayne Gordon with Randall Frame, Real Hope in Chicago: The Incredible Story of How the Gospel is Transforming a Chicago Neighborhood (Zondervan, 1995).

John Perkins, ed., Restoring At-Risk Communities: Doing It Together and Doing It Right (Baker Books, 1995).

John Perkins with Jo Kadlecek, Resurrecting Hope (Regal Books/Gospel Light, 1995).

Despite all the talk about reform, welfare in America remains a tale of ineffective programs, outraged citizens, polarized reformers, and worst of all, families and communities mired in poverty, despair, and social decay. It is a grave error, however, to focus only on these distressing realities. In many places throughout the land, addicted people are gaining liberation, families are finding their way out of poverty and neighborhoods are coming back to health. The agents of change often are Christians, messengers of the good news of Christ's transforming power. These three new books on Christian social ministry bear eloquent witness to that power.

Resurrecting Hope tells the stories of ten churches that have chosen to become neighbors in deed to the poor in their communities. Its author, John Perkins, is the founder of the Christian Community Development Association (CCDA), a national network of churches, parachurch ministries, and people dedicated to serving the needy in the name of Christ. The stories show how quite different churches located in various parts of the country embody in their own way the three key principles of the Christian community development movement: Relocation to poor neighborhoods; Reconciliation across racial and class divisions; and Redistribution of skills, resources, and influence in order to empower the downtrodden.

These foundational concepts are detailed in the CCDA's "official handbook," Restoring At-Risk Communities, edited by Perkins. In nearly a dozen chapters, a range of Christian ministry leaders develop a biblical perspective on community development and explain how to put the principles into action. The chapter by Mary Nelson, president of Bethel New Life community development corporation in Chicago, for instance, surveys ways to stimulate economic development that will engage rather than bypass the inner-city poor. Glenn Kehrein, executive director of Circle Urban Ministries (also in Chicago), argues that Christian community development needs to be grounded in a worshipping congregation.

Other chapters, including one by Vera Mae Perkins, John Perkins' wife and ministry partner for thirty-five years, lay out the risks to families that choose to relocate to mean urban streets as well as the blessings they can experience by hearkening to this missionary call. The book ends with an overview of how to launch a Christian community development ministry (written by Mark Gomik of Baltimore's New Song urban ministries and Noel Castellanos of La Villita Community Church in Chicago), an introduction to the CCDA, including a listing of its organizational members, and a solid bibliography of resources on urban ministry

Real Hope in Chicago is an autobiographical account by CCDA president Wayne Gordon of the origins, development, operations, and results of the Christian community development ministry that has grown out of Lawndale Community Church. From the start, "Coach" Gordon, a white boy from Iowa called to urban ministry in one of Chicago's poorest black neighborhoods, ministered to broken lives as well as lost souls. Lawndale witnesses to God's power and purposes through an interracial church, a busy healthcare center, programs to help kids learn in school and succeed in college, extensive housing programs, and various efforts to stimulate economic development. Lawndale has fostered not only neighborhood renewal but also the revitalization of the wider church by deliberately drawing into partnership individuals and congregations in suburban Chicago and beyond.

The key message and challenge of all three books is that God's people can be agents of hope and healing if they adopt a deliberate strategy of engagement with the suffering instead of passing by on the other side.

How do these examples and methods relate to the public assistance programs that policy makers, citizens, and recipients wish to revamp from top to bottom? Perkins challenges government officials to observe the work of Christian ministries because they are solving urban problems that "government can never solve alone." Real Hope in Chicago shows Lawndale's reliance on donations and volunteer help, yet also hints at some fruitful collaboration with government officials and programs. None of these books, though, gives sustained attention to the public policy context of Christian social ministry. Yet as the church renews its commitment to social ministry, it cannot avoid the political framework. Surely one of the great challenges of our age is to restore government to its rightful task of ensuring public justice by strengthening the social outreach of faith-based organizations and other independent groups.

—Stanley W. Carlson-Thies