AOCM

Me in the Inner City?

The Revd Simon Smallwood is Vicar of St George’s Church, a UPA parish in Dagenham.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples,

“The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.” (Matthew 9:38)

Much of the crowd Jesus saw was urban. They were people from the towns he had been through. It wouldn’t be too far-fetched to imagine Jesus responding in a similar way to the vast urban estates of today. We live in one. It’s not inner-city, multi-ethnic, or high-rise; but it is very crowded and working class, with all the features of an urban priority area (UPA).

What has been our experience of gospel ministry in such a context?

I’ve been asked to highlight some of the opportunities, blessings, challenges and discouragements peculiar to UPAs, so I’ll take each of these in turn.

Opportunities

“There are no God-forsaken places, only church-forsaken places.”
(John Fuller)

Within a 1/3rd mile radius there are 3,500 crowded homes. When we arrived 9 years ago, the church had a regular congregation of 20. It’s not that the rest of the population had heard the gospel and rejected the good news of Christ’s kingdom. The vast majority had never heard of the local church, let alone the gospel!

This is fairly typical of UPAs - vast populations with tiny, struggling churches, presenting a huge opportunity for pioneering gospel ministry. The logic and responsibility of Romans 10:14 applies. And now we need to explode two myths:

Myth 1: Illiteracy marginalises gospel ministry

By and large, UPAs like Dagenham have high levels of illiteracy. Received thinking goes that illiteracy impairs any ministry that involves words. We have found this to be wrong. It’s the words you use and the form of communication that matters. So our folks now expect 25-30 minutes Bible teaching on a Sunday, and an hour’s Bible teaching mid-week. In the past 9 years we have studied in depth whole Bible books like Genesis, Exodus, Joshua, Mark, Revelation and so on. It’s harder work for the gospel minister to prepare teaching in an appropriate form (simple, clear, well-illustrated etc.), but there’s a huge appetite for God’s Word and endless opportunities for gospel ministry.

Myth 2: Social needs take precedence over gospel ministry

Like any UPA, we are confronted with overwhelming and relentless social needs. Received thinking tells us it is necessary to address people’s social needs first, before they will listen to the gospel. Our experience has been the opposite. The council and social services have the resources to do a much better job than a struggling church could ever do. But what the church can uniquely provide is the gospel and a gospel community. In our experience, it’s often the gospel that has proved most helpful to people whose lives are in a mess. Realistically, many cannot expect much lasting change to their material circumstances. But the gospel introduces a hope, meaning and joy that is treasured far above material help. And also, the gospel often sets things straight for people. Being sorted out is a product of the gospel not a pre-requisite to gospel ministry. Far from social needs taking precedence over gospel ministry, acute social needs heighten the opportunities and need for gospel ministry.

Blessings

These are many and varied. Seeing people who were born disadvantaged realising that they have been made sons of God, with an inheritance in the new creation that far exceeds their wildest dreams … that’s a blessing! Seeing the power of the gospel transform some individuals’ lives … that’s a blessing! Seeing the community of the body of Christ beginning to emerge in an urban community characterised by disintegration and harshness … that’s a blessing! Seeing faith lived out with courage and perseverance in some very difficult circumstances … that’s a blessing! But there’s more: Greater freedom to experiment (the Diocese almost expects urban churches to pioneer new methods of ‘doing church’); entering into gospel partnerships with individuals and better-resourced churches (how else would an urban church survive?); dealing with people who are plain-speaking and “in yer face” is so refreshing in a suffocatingly ‘PC’ world!

Challenges

There are many, but two particular challenges are these: cross-cultural gospel ministry; and traits that characterise the local community characterising the life of the gospel community. The two are related.

First, most (though by no means all) Anglican ministers are middle-class, and their experience of gospel ministry is middle-class. So, received models of church are largely inappropriate. For instance, the middle classes give a much higher priority to smartness, manners, punctuality, planning, paperwork etc. The challenge is to do cross-cultural gospel ministry, i.e. develop a model of ministry that suits the local community rather than trying to develop models of middle-class ministry in a working-class area. The challenge is to develop a gospel community, not a new middle class in a UPA.

Second, as local people become members of the gospel community, they bring with them traits that characterise the local community. Not all of these conform to the good, pleasing and perfect will of God! Especially when numbers begin to increase, many of these traits make church life very challenging: volatile tempers, appalling language, an immaturity in crisis, underachievement, fear of responsibility and leadership, emotional dependency, chronic ill health, poor resources (money and abilities), etc. The challenge is finding out how to respond to an insurmountable pastoral case load and how to prevent the church from disintegrating.
DISCOURAGEMENTS

Just living in a UPA! The environment (graffiti, constant vandalism, litter, sirens etc.) and the community’s problems act as a heavy burden on the soul. Without the hope of the gospel and constant contact with Jesus Christ, the influence of His Spirit and the love of the Father, it would drag any sane person down. To this we can add an acute sense of one’s own powerlessness and inadequacy to make any difference to the majority of people’s lives. The tragedy of fallen humanity is in your face constantly in a UPA, in a way that it is not so much elsewhere.

As for the gospel ministry. the main discouragement is the slowness of progress. Contacting people, gaining their trust, communicating the gospel, persuading them to suffer the cost of identifying with Christ and His church in such a hostile environment is painfully slow. Each soul is hard-won and so precious. But then, once in the church, piecing together injured and shattered lives, developing maturity in the deeply immature, is painfully slow. It can be very discouraging. But worst of all is when those in whom a vast amount has been invested, tasting a better way of life, decide to move out of the area.

But we cannot finish on a negative note! After 9 years, the church is about 80-strong (adults) and many more have gone to glory or moved to greener pastures. Each one is a fabulous trophy of God’s grace. We also have over 100 children each week attending our mid-week gospel clubs, and who knows what the harvest from gospel seed sown in young lives will be?

“There are no God-forsaken places, only church-forsaken places.”