THE STRUGGLING CLASS
To use the word “class” in the USA is controversial. “We don’t have classes in America,” many say. “That’s what exists in more backward countries. We are a land of opportunity.” The reality is that people are more bound to a social standing and way of life than they are willing to admit. Everyone is born into a family tradition, even if fractured, that is difficult to break out of. To do so means going contrary to the expectations of everyone that we’ve ever known.
Class is not the same as caste. The lines that circumscribe class are mostly invisible and ill-defined; yet, the hold that class has upon a person is so real that a poor person can win a fortune in the lottery, and then squander it all within a year because of the spend-thrift habits that he/she customarily lives by. It’s the way of life that controls the person and from which it is difficult to free oneself.
We are all acquainted with class to some degree. In school, children are divided into age groups so that most eight or nine-year-old students are third-graders. Some larger schools may have an advanced third-grade class of fast learners while the others are considered average. Many school districts place disruptive high school age teens in an alternative education high school where a different norm of discipline applies.
A class can be most any group of people who share some affinity. Wycliff Bible Translators are currently using accelerated translation methods (MAST – Mobilizing Assistance Supporting Translation) to provide scriptures to small tribes so that its members can read God’s word in their heart language. To this date these people have had to hear the word of God in church worship and education in a trade language common to the whole nation. In a similar vein, blue-collar trailer park people have a “language” that diverges from the “language” of suburban highly educated professionals, yet if they attend a suburban congregation, they are expected to understand and be touched in their heart by the “language” spoken there.. In a formal work setting, receptionists in a doctor’s office, for example, are able to communicate perfectly well at work with both patients, nurses and doctors. However, placing the doctor and his or her family in the same living room with the receptionist’s family would probably strain relations. Expectations of how to correct a child’s misbehavior to what constitutes pleasant conversation will differ. Expect the classes to clash.
Let me compare our interaction with members of the struggling class to a traveler going to a foreign country. The first thing we need to do is get permission to travel there. We apply for a passport from our country that certifies our identity. We indeed are citizens of the USA (or Canada, for example). We have a language, customs and laws that regulate our lives. In like manner, we belong to the Kingdom of God, specifically the kingdom (nation) where Jesus is the King, Messiah, Christ. God is the center of our worship and we are regulated by the law of love.
When we travel to some other countries, we need a visa allowing us to enter. That requires us to send a picture, a form properly filled out and a money order to pay the fee. Our application is added to a pile of others that a consulate employee examines one by one. If our application is in order in every detail, a visa is approved and put in our passport. The whole process may take from one to three weeks depending upon the efficiency and the number of staffers allotted to the visa-issuing office.
In a similar manner our attempt to gain access to the heart of a person may be a long, laborious process of repeated, brief visits over an extended period of time. At other times it is quick and easy. A person may open their door and say, “Come in. Would you like a cup of coffee? Yes, you can pray for me: This is what I’m facing. I need help.”
The application for a visa demands that we agree to abide by the laws of the country that we are visiting. The host country expects that we respect its authority. The people will be very hospitable, but they want to be treated with respect. We will certainly find some of their customs strange, but we don’t have a right to poke fun of them.
To get to know these aliens and foreigners (to us), we need to find out what their relationship is to God. We already know that if it is not the Creator of the universe, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is an idol, a false god made by the imagination of the person, often the SELF (Jeremiah 10:6-15). That false god has its origin in Satan, God’s adversary and the father of all lies. To know someone, we need to ask what they believe about God, and how that belief guides their living. What are the inconsistencies between a claimed faith in God and habits that are contrary to God’s commandments? If they claim God’s forgiveness and mercy, does this motivate them to change or to continue in sin with a calmed conscience? As we probe like this, we need to ask ourselves what are the inconsistencies in our own life between the faith we profess and the life that we live.
I like to take what people tell me at face value, to accept what they as the truth of their reality. At the same time, I realize, that even as I am trying to impress them, they are trying to impress me. We and they seldom tell the whole story, and so we deceive each other. So, it’s good to probe deeper, to ask questions, to seek further clarification. To push like this can be awkward and uncomfortable, even embarrassing and shameful.
If we want to peer into a person’s heart to know what controls them (their god), then we must allow them to ask us questions and peer into our heart. There are secrets that we keep hidden, but if they are sins of any nature, we must confess them. In revealing our own frailty, temptations, and sins, we are showing others how we have redemption and freedom from the power of sin. We will be sharing how our sins are being dealt with in a loving way. Through God’s love we are forgiven and overcome by the Spirit of Christ living in us. Being open like this is the greatest advertisement for the truth about God’s rule (the kingdom) administered by Christ, the One loved by the Father (Matthew 17:5) and by the resurrection shown to be Lord of all (Matthew 28:18). We will be demonstrating how we have been “rescued from the dominion of darkness and brought . . . into the kingdom of” Christ where we enjoy “redemption, the forgiveness of sins” (Colossians 1:13).
We have asked permission to enter their lives, their world. Our goal is to invite people to enter our life, our world. To them it is foreign. In reality, it’s God’s country, an inheritance and birthright prepared for them and us by the work of Christ. We desire that they make this their home, their present and eternal family.
We are called to understand the people that God is calling us to reach. Timothy Keller and Allen Thompson teach us the importance of demographic and ethnographic research as one of the steps in the church planting process[1]. The authors remind us that ethnographic research is not new at all, but is even found in the Bible. As practiced by the Apostle Paul, it was largely intuitive. When speaking to those of the synagogue of Pisidian Antioch, Paul argued that Jesus was the Messiah (i.e., Christ), the Son of God, by referring to the world-view of his listeners, a world-view derived from the Old Testament Scriptures (Acts 9:20, 22; cf. 13:14-48). In Athens, on the other hand, Paul was face to face with the Gentile, Greek pagan idolatrous faith and worldview. There, when talking to Greek philosophers he pointed out the foolishness of worshipping idols when one of their own poets had said, “We are his offspring,” referring to the Creator God. From here Paul went on to testify to the fact of the resurrection of the man Jesus from the grave, saying that through him God would judge the world with justice (Acts 17:22-31).
Most of the struggling class are not mentally or physically challenged. These demand a more specialized ministry appropriate to their needs. Like us, they need the love of Jesus and his salvation; but we do not include them in our challenge to disciple the working poor. Getting to know people of the struggling class, that is, of the working poor, is a matter of actually seeing people. When we shop at a supercenter like Walmart, we have a tendency to not “see” the associates. They are there to do a job, stock shelves mostly, answer questions of clients and help them find things, attend the checkout lanes or supervise a department. Every worker wears a light-weight shirt or pin with the store logo so they are easily identifiable. They are our go-to people when we need help, but have we stopped to look at the clothes they wear under their uniform or the shoes they use? Have we taken note of how they speak? Do they have an accent that reveals that they are immigrants or come from an immigrant home environment? Have we asked ourselves what their home life might be like, if they are single or married (do they wear a wedding band?), if they have children, where they live, or how they spend their free time?
While traveling, have we noticed the housekeeping at the motel we stay at? Do we notice the people at the fast food restaurant where we pick up a quick snack? Or at a more upscale restaurant, the receptionist, or the waitress who takes our order, or the busser who cleans our table and sets it up for the next party? Do we actually see the people who work at homes for a landscape business?
Now if we are the owners of a cleaning service, we take note who our workers are. We know them by the complaints or compliments that we received from office managers or from homeowners. We know them by whether they call in sick every Monday morning or if they are steady-eddies that never fail. But I would guess that we do not know them as fellow believers in our local church. And when we hand out the pay-checks, we might not even want to ask ourselves how they spend it. We probably don’t want to know about conditions at the place where they live. We don’t want to go there lest we feel pity for their plight in life. All we want to know about is whether they do their job.
Another way to understand the struggling class is to examine census data. Every census block has information about marital status, income, age, and race. This is helpful, but it will not reveal to us the existence of a trailer court on the edge of a suburban neighborhood, nor does it reveal information about attitudes or political affiliation. The planning department of city hall may have a wealth of information about neighborhoods. It’s a matter of getting to the right office and asking questions. The local police department can probably help you identify neighborhoods with high crime, or domestic violence rates.
Public schools will help us understand the struggling class. Walk into the school office and volunteer to mentor a child, or do anything useful. We will soon observe the order or lack of it in the classroom. We can easily gather information about the percent of children who are eligible for free hot lunches, and what the graduation rate is if we are helping at the high school. Interacting with both staff and students puts us at the heart of the life of the struggling class.
If we have identified a trailer court or a neighborhood where poor people live, we can walk the streets and talk with whomever might be out and about. We might ask if they have a prayer request, if they have a church where they regularly worship, or if they would accept an invitation to our church. However, if we walk the streets of the neighborhood, the residents might find that suspicious. It’s much better to be up front and clear about our intent, and there is nothing quite as open as identifying ourselves as being from a local church and asking if there is a prayer need.
Still another way to know people of the struggling class is to talk with them as they stand in line to sign in to get food at the mobile food pantry that comes to our or another church. Most people who volunteer staff the sign-in table, unload the truck and bag loose fruits or vegetables, or help carry food to a client’s car. Greeting the clients as they wait in line, talking with them, handing out tracts or invitations, talking with those who are social or praying with those who express some need, help us understand them. When I have done this, people have asked if I am the pastor of the church. The people are eager enough to get help with food, and that in itself is a demonstration of love, but the people are also asking an unspoken question, “Do you care about me, for who I am? Are you interested in what I am going through?” Many, of course, don’t want us to know lest we judge and condemn. They don’t know for sure whether we are with them or against them, whether we understand. That’s the beauty of prayer. We can stand with people, identify with people’s hurts and needs, and pray their prayer to our kind and compassionate God. That’s intercession.
[1]Timothy J. Keller and J. Allen Thompson, Church Planter Manual, Redeemer Church Planting Center,(2002,p.76ff).