Relocation, Reconciliation, and Redistribution

We are living in a unique and hopeful time in history, when the dynamic of the church as the continuation of Christ’s body on earth is being rediscovered. And with this rediscovery we are seeing the rekindling of community, spiritual gifts, and social concern.

But these phenomena, however life-giving and exciting, will lead to stagnation if they are not mobilized in the battle of meeting human need -- both spiritual and physical. The key to this battle is behavior. It is not only personal behavior, though, that must be transformed. Sin organizes itself as well into institutions which wind down upon people and oppress them and perpetuate sinful patterns in individuals.

What we need is a change created by Jesus Christ in our institutional behavior equal to the change that can occur in the life of an individual. Jesus offers himself in his church as the corporate model through which we can live out creative alternatives that can break the cycles of wealth and poverty which oppress people.

This is the whole dynamic we are stumbling upon at Voice of Calvary in Mississippi. We have seen three principles that seem to be at the heart of how a local body of Christians can effect institutional behavior in a neighborhood. These principles can be called the three “R’s” of neighborhood development: relocation, reconciliation, and redistribution.

The first is relocation of the body of Christ to the area of need. Someday, Voice of Calvary might be a model for Christian neighborhood development in the poor community. But we have not planned it as such. As I look back, God has developed our work because from the beginning we were committed to living with the people in the neighborhood and, in fact, cut off all the other alternatives. Of course there were times when I wanted to leave Mendenhall -- but I couldn’t. I was trapped.

One little way this has worked is with my kids, who experienced the same educational system that all the other kids we worked with had to go through. So my commitment in ministry to the education of children in the neighborhood was also a commitment to my own kids. I couldn’t raise the educational level of my own children without dealing with the problems facing all the children in the neighborhood.

This relocation makes those who minister in the neighborhood accountable to the real needs of the people because those become their needs, too. A person in that position will know and be able to start with the real needs of those around them and communicate through these “felt needs” to the deeper spiritual needs, just like Jesus communicated to the woman’s need at the well through her basic need for water (John 4). There is no room for special missionary compounds or for moving out into the suburbs and commuting to a ministry. No, if we are the body of Christ, we must be like Christ and actually “dwell among” the people to whom we carry the gospel (John 1:14).

The second principle is reconciliation. The body of Christ has as the first priority on its agenda in the neighborhood to reconcile people to God. But for this to be effective in our American culture, the body must be unified across racial lines. The body, especially in America, must be reconciled cross-culturally and include both black and white in churches ministering to neighborhoods of need.

When black and white people come together in our culture today, there is freedom. For white people it means the freedom from guilt that enslaves us -- both the guilt of racial attitudes and the guilt associated with material possessions. It means the freeing experience of using the “technology” available to us in meaningful ways in neighborhoods crying out for that technology. The fact is that the black community does not have the necessary technology -- biblical, managerial, economic, or medical to pull off the type of creative development needed today. But at the local level of need, white churches can send teams of “technicians,” small clusters that could make up the core of a local body of Christ, into communities in crisis to develop meaningful involvement. Whites have no right to commute to “help” on their own terms in the black community. But they do have the right (and possibly the obligation) to relocate themselves in the black community, especially if they mobilize their skills behind local community leadership.

That dynamic is at work in a creative and peaceful and reconciling scale in our own staff and with our volunteer program. What we’ve discovered is that blacks and whites in the body can discipline and “de-honkify” or “de-niggerize” themselves and deal with the racism, guilt, and blame that afflicts us and then allow technology and leadership to emerge.

A third principle is redistribution of goods and wealth. How well a ministry can begin that process and create a stable economic base in the neighborhood determines not only the motivation but also the long-range effectiveness of a body’s commitment to a neighborhood. For without an economic base, there will never be a stable platform for carrying on the ministry, and when we’re speaking about impact on a neighborhood, we are talking about a commitment of at least 10 to 15 years before real effectiveness and change develop. A ministry, therefore, which has no plans to create economic support systems in the community, is no better than the federal government’s programs which last only as long as funds are budgeted. The long-term goal must be to develop a sense of self-determination and responsibility within the neighborhood itself.

The type of economic development should be determined by the needs of the people. With two-thirds of the poor housing in the country located in the south, Voice of Calvary developed both a cooperative housing project and a construction company called Peoples Development, Incorporated. The need for food first led to the forming of a farmers’ co-op and then to a co-op store. Most recently, a co-op farm has been started. The latest economics have been based on the needs for household goods including appliances and furniture and the desperate health needs of people. Voice of Calvary has, therefore, developed a co-op health center including a home-health program, nutritional program, and well-baby clinic, and has opened a thrift store.

When this article appeared, John Perkins was a contributing editor to Sojourners and president of Voice of Calvary in Mendenhall and Jackson, Mississippi.