This op-ed first appeared at Cleveland.com and in The Plain Dealer.
When I became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio in July, many people said they didn’t know I was an attorney. For the record, I am not.
I am an ordained United Church of Christ minister, having spent nearly 30 years working in local churches and at the UCC’s national headquarters in Cleveland.
True, the ACLU is known for its high-profile litigation, having championed in court many of our nation’s bedrock understandings of equality, fairness and justice. But litigation is just one piece of the ACLU’s integrated approach, with advocacy and education being equally important to advancing our mission.
On the same day I started in Ohio, another minister – a Unitarian Universalist minister – began as head of the ACLU in Iowa. We join a long tradition of clergy, social workers, educators, journalists, policy analysts, and other ordinary folk who believe that protecting civil liberties and advancing civil rights is everyone’s responsibility. If we only leave it to the lawyers, God love them, we are missing the point that “We, the people” means all of us. The ACLU’s urgent work is safeguarding that lofty, inclusive constitutional principle until it is realized for everyone.
The ACLU was actually co-founded by a Unitarian minister in 1920, and the ACLU’s first national chairperson, a Methodist minister, served for two decades. Throughout its history, countless rabbis, priests, imams, ministers and laypersons have actively supported the ACLU.
In more recent years, the Rev. Barry Lynn, a UCC minister who is also an attorney, jumped between leadership roles with the ACLU and UCC, before heading Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. Lynn, like many clergy, understands that any faith scheme that needs propping up by the state is not only unconstitutional, but inherently lazy religion. Good church doesn’t need the government to do its bidding.
When recalling American history, too many of us cling to the simplistic idea that pious Pilgrims and Puritans escaped persecution in Europe to find religious tolerance in Massachusetts. Period. But we overlook the violent theocracy they quickly established – banishing, even murdering, Quakers, Baptists, Anglicans, Roman Catholics, and Jews, all while persecuting Native Americans and their spiritual practices. Nearly 400 years later, we are still living into the ideal of religious tolerance for all, including the non-religious.
The ACLU advocates for the rights of everyone to practice their faith without government intrusion, insisting that government must show no preference for one religion over another, nor prefer religion over non-religion. This stance, in my view, is active tolerance, not selective.
As a minister in the United Church of Christ, the theological descendants of those first exclusionary Pilgrims and Puritans, I know my own faith tradition has grown up considerably in its now-robust support of civil liberties, but it’s not been without struggle. Our nation, too, struggles mightily.
At a time when civil liberties are under daily threat, the free press is maligned at every opportunity, immigrants are threatened and scapegoated, systemic racism pervades all our social structures, and increasingly militarized police provoke fear rather than calm in the communities they serve, the ACLU’s mission has never been more urgent or compelling.
It’s why I could not be more proud, as a Christian minister, to be working for the ACLU of Ohio, spending my days with committed people across all religious and political spectrums, to safeguard and expand freedom for today’s maligned minorities. Few things, for me, are as eternally important.
This op-ed first appeared at Witness for Justice.
Good religion can be such a nuisance sometimes, especially for self-righteous lawmakers who prefer to throw around sentimental, misinformed caricatures of Christian scripture, while ignoring the thrust of its actual contents.
Few phrases in the Bible appear as consistently from beginning to end, in nearly all of its books, as references to “strangers, widows and orphans” and, specifically, how a righteous society should care for them. The phrase is used so often, so repeatedly, that it is considered biblical code language for the “most vulnerable,” the catchphrase we might employ today.
Biblical concern for “strangers, widows and orphans” — or some version thereof — is literally the moral thread that keeps noble faith and a virtuous society knitted together.
Deuteronomy is blunt about it: “The alien, the orphan and the widow who are in your town, shall come and eat and be satisfied, in order that the Lord your God may bless you.” The prophet Isaiah is straightforward, too: “Learn to do good; seek justice, reprove the ruthless. Defend the orphan, plead for the widow.” The Psalmist passionately sings the same sentiment: “The Lord protects the strangers; God supports the orphan and the widow, but thwarts the way of the wicked.”
The New Testament is just as clear, as the letter of James attests: “Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God means caring for orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.”
Such urgent concern for the downtrodden is the stuff of bleeding-heart Bible believers, who take seriously centuries of moral teaching that warns that a nation’s greatness is not measured by how it props up the obscenely wealthy or beats up on cultural outsiders, but by how it safeguards those who can’t even begin to reach the bottom rung of the societal ladder.
Given the Trump Administration’s federal budget plan to drastically slash funding for the nation’s economic safety net, while offering huge tax cuts for the rich, increased funding to forcibly divide and deport immigrant families, and support a massive build-up of the U.S. military by more than $52 billion, the losers in this proposed scenario are the most beloved people of our sacred texts: “strangers, widows and orphans.”
Our U.S. President, who claims Presbyterian faith, should spend fewer weekends golfing and more Sundays listening to knowledgeable Presbyterian pastors, who know quite well the kind of people that the Bible vehemently upholds and defends.
Given the still uncertain future of the Affordable Care Act, including at-risk funding for Medicaid and Medicare; a substantial decrease in support for affordable housing; and proposals to eliminate funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors and public educational television — that is, Sesame Street — for children, it behooves us to take up our Bibles and read.
Trump’s budget calls for a whopping $6 billion in cuts for Housing and Urban Development; $15.1 billion in reductions for Health and Human Services; $5.8 billion less for the National Institutes of Health; $2.6 billion slashed from job training programs; and so much more. The Environmental Protection Agency and International Aid are being reduced to shells of their former selves.
The worry is palpable, because the cuts are draconian and hereto unfathomed.
United Church of Christ-related Retirement Housing Foundation (RHF), one of the nation’s largest affordable housing providers, knows full well the anxiety that too many people are feeling. It currently has 23,000 applications on hand for its 185 residential affordable communities.
When RHF opened a 60-unit apartment earlier this year in a low-income community in Los Angeles, 1,600 families made applications. The need is real.
Luckily, good religion is more than a nuisance; it can serve as good people’s clarion call for action and advocacy.
“Reprove the ruthless,” says Isaiah, “when you defend the orphan and plead for the widow.”
Yes, the time for reproof has come.
This op-ed first appeared at New Sacred.
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price spends a huge amount of time these days talking about “choices” in health care, and how he’s committed to ensuring you will have more of them.
Be it the choice to join the 24 million Americans estimated to lose coverage, or the choice to be kicked off or denied access to Medicaid, or the choice to rely on your cash-strapped state for assistance, instead of the federal government, there will be so many options for you to consider.
Should you lose your employer-based insurance, you’ll be faced with lots of choices, like the option to pay more for less coverage, should the Affordable Care Act be repealed and replaced with Trumpcare. On average, premiums would be expected to increase 15 to 20 percent in the next two years, predicts the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
There’s also the choice of going without health insurance altogether, looking instead to the local emergency room as a choice of last resort. That choice, of course, will result in the rest of us choosing to pick up the tab, in the form of higher costs for everyone.
The proposed American Health Care Act (AHCA), or Trumpcare, allots tax credits up to $4,000 to help low-income families purchase coverage, meaning that the most disadvantaged will be choosing how to purchase insurance with about 65 percent less in government subsidy, as currently offered.
But, as Price sees it, that provides choice — a choice not unlike how to care for grandmother when federal subsidies for Meals on Wheels are ended, or choosing how to feed the kids when free and reduced school lunch programs are suspended. So many choices.
Young women and men who rely on Planned Parenthood for basic health care, family planning, and cancer screening services will have the choice to find medical care elsewhere, and at much-higher cost, when Planned Parenthood is defunded under Trumpcare. If you’re an older adult, you’ll be choosing what in the world to do when insurance companies can charge you up to five times what younger people pay.
There will choices if you’re wealthy too, like how to spend the extra $37,000 in tax savings realized when Trumpcare is enacted. The super-rich — the top 0.1 percent — will be deciding how to spend an additional $207,000 in reduced taxes.
Every family will have choices. Lots of them.
“They’ll have choices that they can select the kind of coverage that they want for themselves and for their family,” Price says, a talking point he and others have been repeating endlessly.
It reminds me a lot of what an auto dealer once said to me. I could choose any car on the lot that would best suit me and my family, but only if I could pay for it and he was offering no vouchers. Yet SUVs and health care access are false equivalencies. The former is a nice thing to have; the latter is essential to being an evolved, equitable civil society.
Your life-saving cardiac bypass matters just as much as your neighbor’s chemotherapy, and your kid’s tonsillectomy is no more important than any other kid’s, because access to medical care is a basic human right, rooted in God’s commandments to love all, not a luxury parsed out only to those who can afford it.
“The AHCA is simply a complicated strategy to shift costs from the affluent to the less well off,” says Wendy Mariner, a lawyer and medical doctor, and a professor of health law at Boston University. “… It demands a complete repeal of assistance to those in need.”
Or, as the prophet Isaiah preached it nearly 3,000 years ago: “How terrible it will be for you who write laws that make life harder for other people. You take away the rights of the poor. You hold back what is fair for people who are suffering. You take for yourselves what belongs to widows. You rob children whose parents have died.”
All this new-found talk of Trumpcare “choices” is a mockery, a betrayal of Christian values, a scheme designed to lull the most vulnerable into supporting a health care law resulting in worse coverage for them, at greater personal expense, to the benefit of the wealthy who will continue to enjoy Cadillac care for less.
This Op-Ed first appeared at Cleveland.com and in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.
I have been an ordained minister for more than 25 years, and I’ve presided at hundreds of weddings.
Once I served a church in northwestern Kentucky, near the borders of Indiana and Illinois. It was less expensive to get a marriage license in Kentucky, so many out-of-state couples flocked there, only to discover afterward that Kentucky requires its licenses be executed by an officiant legally bonded in the state.
My church sat near the courthouse, meaning that, if no judges were available, frustrated couples wandered our way, knocking in search of someone who could offer a quick ceremony and sign their paperwork.
My standard practice within the congregation was to require pre-marital counseling but, here on the church’s doorstep, if I sensed sincerity in their relationship and predicament, and couldn’t detect that binge-boozing was behind their mad rush to the altar, I occasionally tried to accommodate. Hospitality to strangers, after all, is a religious virtue.
The U.S. and Ohio Constitutions extend to all the free exercise of religion, meaning that, as a minister, the dictates of my religion — alone — necessitate what religious services I will provide and for whom. The same goes for every other minister, priest, rabbi or imam, be they conservative, moderate or liberal.
Over the years I’ve presided at weddings for church members, family, friends, even acquaintances of acquaintances. Many couples were Christian, or interreligious, but some were of no faith. I’ve turned down many requests, too — for calendaring reasons, if I felt the couple needed more time, or if the church’s values were being compromised. My standards, my decisions.
In 2004, after Ohio voters passed a constitutional amendment prohibiting same-gender marriages, I stood alongside hundreds of clergy, refusing to sign any license until all Ohioans had the right to marry the person they loved. That 11-year commitment made it difficult, at times, to tell dear friends that, yes, I could preside at their church ceremony, but, no, they would have to find someone else to do the legal part.
Again, that was my constitutional right, and that same right extends to clergy who refuse to marry same-sex couples.
Three times this month, the Ohio House has held committee hearings on the so-called “Pastor Protection Act” (HB 36), a bill purportedly designed to protect clergy and places of worship from performing marriages against their wishes. This is bogus legislation, designed to confront a non-existent problem, and a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. Clergy already exercise unfettered discretion over marriage decisions.
So what’s this legislation really about? There’s no other answer: It’s about protecting the falsehood, and perpetuating the stereotype, that LGBTQ Ohioans and our relationships are inherently secular, unholy, anti-faith, anti-church and, thus, anti-pastor, under the dual guise of exclusive religion and bad public policy. It’s about casting another net of shame over an already vulnerable group of citizens that still lack any statewide protections in housing, employment and public accommodations. This is Ohio masquerading itself as regressive North Carolina or Indiana, and it’s bad for business.
The God I worship is about loosening the bonds of oppression, not piling on. I serve the One whose burden is light, not made excessively heavy. But most importantly, as a citizen of this state, I smell rotten legislation when it’s foisted upon us.
My clergy colleagues widely agree: we don’t need these protections; we already have them. Instead, as concerned Ohioans, let’s turn our legislative energies toward those who really do need our watchful love and compassion.
Ten years ago, Trinity Hill UCC in Cincinnati, Ohio, was facing some big decisions. Its once-thriving congregation had dwindled to a few dozen people and its large, impressive facility sat mostly dark, unused, except on Sunday mornings.
So, sensing God’s call on the congregation to do a radical new thing, they decided to survey the surrounding community to surface unmet needs and explore how their building might be repurposed. The answer came back to them loudly and clearly: quality education for all families, regardless of income.
That’s how Trinity Hill Family Services, a member-ministry of the UCC’s Council for Health and Human Service Ministries, was born.
Today, the church facility — which was retrofitted slightly to accommodate its new missional direction — is bustling with UCC-related ministry to Cincinnati’s southwest side, offering early education, pre-school and kindergarten enrichment, before/after school services, a robust summer program, and reliable transportation to and from local schools. In total, Trinity Hill Family Services supports kids from infancy through 12 years of age, with plans to expand its offerings as community needs demand.
“Our objective is to assist families in the task of providing a strong foundation for their child’s future development,” Trinity Hill’s philosophy statement says.
There’s still a small worshipping community at Trinity Hill UCC and, in fact, the relationship between the Sunday-morning membership and its human service ministry is basically seamless, according to the Rev. Jean C. Oberhelman, pastor. It’s clear to all that the vitality of Trinity Hill UCC is the present and future impact of Trinity Hill Family Services.
The UCC’s Council for Health and Human Service Ministries (CHHSM), is an association of more than 400 member ministries, each founded by a UCC congregation, member or minister, and recognized by one of the UCC’s 38 Conferences. Ranging widely in scope and services offered, some CHHSM ministries are more than 150 years old, while others — like Trinity Hill Family Services — were formed more recently.
Last fall, CHHSM conducted a church-wide survey, completed by 355 respondents, to gauge present-day perceptions about health and human service ministries, understandings of these ministries’ relationship to the church’s wider mission, and what health and human service activities were of most interest to UCC congregations today.
Reviewed by the UCC’s Center for Analytics, Research and Data (CARD), the survey results were deemed a statistically reliable sample based on the breadth and diversity of respondents, which closely mirrored UCC demographics as a whole.
What we found is that many UCC members feel strongly that health and human service ministries will be central to the future vitality of local UCC churches.
When asked to agree or disagree with 14 mission-oriented phrases, the sentiment with the most resonance was “health and human service ministries are vital to the future of local churches,” with 85 percent strongly or somewhat agreeing. Similarly, many overwhelmingly agreed that “health and human service institutions are born out of church members’ passions to serve God by serving others” (84%) and that “CHHSM should play a more active role in helping congregations address local needs” (83%).
The research project, undertaken to inform CHHSM’s now-completed three-year strategic plan, made clear to CHHSM’s board of directors that, in response to rapidly changing church demographics and building-use needs, CHHSM needs to play a more active role in helping develop, resource and network new, as well as existing, health and human service organizations.
CHHSM’s emerging focus —based on the opinions of our survey’s respondents — is that the formation of service and advocacy ministries might actually help worshipping communities stay in business, albeit with a more clearly defined mission to meet and serve people outside their congregations.
The Rev. Patrick Duggan, executive director of the UCC’s Church Building & Loan Fund, which helps new and renewing congregations to redefine their models of ministry, agrees that service ministries may be a way forward for many churches in search of a purpose with greater impact.
“There are hundreds of churches around the country looking for new ways to advance the gospel mission,” Duggan said. “They have community relationships, motivated volunteers and under-utilized space. Health and human service offerings might well be the ideal sustainable, mission-focused, revenue-generating initiatives these churches are looking for.”
Luckily, CHHSM’s research shows that many UCC congregations feel they have the hutzpah to retool their missions, with nearly half (48 percent) of respondents describing their local congregation as extremely or somewhat “entrepreneurial” when it comes to addressing local human needs.
“We take very seriously the fact that one in five respondents indicated that their local church has started a health and human service ministry in recent years that could benefit from ongoing relationship to the wider church,” Michael J. Readinger, CHHSM’s President and CEO, told me. “And just because many of these ministries are now free-standing organizations, they should not be, in any way, deemed of lesser importance to the UCC’s overall mission.”
To the surprise — and hope — of the CHHSM board, survey respondents under 40 years old indicated a greater familiarity with CHHSM and said they could identify more CHHSM-member ministries by name than respondents over 65.
CHHSM purposefully wanted to know if there existed a sentiment that health and human service ministries in general, or CHHSM in particular, were somehow perceived as passé or yesteryear, and what we heard back was just the opposite. In fact, the phrase that was most strongly rebuked by respondents, and by a wide margin, was “CHHSM is basically an organization that honors the church’s historical ties to old institutions, but has little relevance to the church of today.”
Similarly, when asked to describe the defining characteristics of a CHHSM-member ministry, the missionally-flat phrase “business enterprise historically tied to the church” was overwhelmingly rejected by 89 percent of respondents.
What the research shows — both our own and that of others in the field of church development — Is that congregational vitality follows missional clarification and ownership. The latter is not a “tool” of the former, but rather the faithful objective of both: to worship God by serving God’s people.
The Rev. Dr. J. Bennett Guess is Vice President of the UCC’s Council for Health and Human Service Ministries and the former Executive Minister of the UCC’s Local Church Ministries.
“Why are so many people dying from senseless gun violence?”
It’s a reasonable question being asked by many right now, given that more than 10,000 people in the U.S. have been killed by guns since January and another 20,000 will likely die by year’s end. But there’s actually a plausible reason why we don’t have many answers to our questions: Congress actively curtails federal money from being spent on researching gun violence and how best to prevent it.
Since the ban’s enactment in 1996, at the urging of the National Rifle Association, Congress has hampered the nation’s principal public health agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, from looking into why the U.S. has five times the rate of gun deaths per year than most European countries, or why African Americans are twice as likely to be killed by guns than white individuals, or why children and adolescents are disproportionately impacted by gun violence. What are the mental health correlations to gun violence? Could we improve gun safety, training or storage methods?
During these past two decades, more than a half-million people were killed by guns, with more than twice that number injured. Yet, during the same time period, the CDC has effectively studied ways to make automobiles safer, contributing to a 19 percent reduction in car-related deaths. To be clear, the CDC didn’t ban cars; it helped make cars safer—safer to the point that you’re now more likely to die by gunfire than by car crash.
This is a point not lost on 12 state attorney generals who recently wrote to Congressional leaders, strongly urging them to change course and allow the CDC “to research urgent questions about the causes of gun-related injuries and health to help determine the most effective intervention and prevention strategies.”
The American Medical Association followed suit, adopting a position in June that the U.S. is facing a “public health crisis of gun violence” that requires a comprehensive public health response and solution. The AMA vowed to use its political muscle to untie the hands of researchers and allow the CDC to do its job.
“As America faces a crisis unrivaled in any other development country…an epidemiological analysis of gun violence is vital,” says AMA president Steve J. Stack.
As a Christian denomination with longstanding commitments to both social justice and public health, it’s time for the United Church of Christ to join those asking for more informed answers. This is why the UCC’s Council for Health and Human Service Ministries is teaming up with the UCC’s Justice and Witness Ministries, among others, in proposing a General Synod resolution urging the recognition of gun violence as a public health emergency. We want the UCC, in all of its settings and expressions, to demand that Congress lift its gun-research restrictions on the CDC.
In the gospel of John, while speaking to the ruling authority, Pontius Pilate, Jesus declares that he “came into the world to bear witness to the truth” and that all who are on the side of truth will listen to his voice.
As followers of a truth-seeking, truth-speaking Christ, we have a responsibility to be searching for informed, reasoned and rational solutions to the problems that plague our nation and world. People of faith and goodwill cannot willingly avoid the best possible solutions when it comes to protecting ourselves and our neighbors from the horrors of gun violence. We can and we must do better.
If your UCC congregation, conference, or ministry setting is interested in joining our call to study gun violence as a public health crisis, we invite you to reach out to us at guessb@chhsm.org or sorenses@ucc.org.
The Rev. J. Bennett Guess is vice president of the Council for Health and Human Service Ministries and Sandy Sorensen is director of the UCC’s Washington, D.C., office.
If your goal is to help people become more engaged and fulfilled in a Christian community, this we know: You don’t necessarily assign them to a board or committee, as once thought. Instead, you ask them where their passions lie, what gives them energy, what serves and fulfills the desires of their best selves.
For some people, that’s meetings, agendas and minutes, and that’s great. But for many others, it’s direct service, such as providing actual food to people in need, helping children grow into their God-given potential, helping someone improve their reading skills or mowing the lawn of an elderly neighbor. The list of ways to help is as long as people’s passions to make life easier for others.
It used to be that service had to fit neatly within a church’s existing ministries, but that’s been changing for some time. In fact, in recent years, there’s been a stark rise in the celebration of so-called “permission-giving churches” that actively encourage people to go ahead and do the thing that God is calling them to do. Instead of pooh-poohing new ideas, they are rewarded with positive reinforcement and impact support. The premise: Invite people to discern and follow their passions, and the rest — most likely — will fall into place.
At one permission-giving church I know, a handful of people became passionate about providing no-cost spay/neuter services to pets of low-income residents. Their concern was mutually for both animals and people. They now operate a stand-alone clinic alongside volunteer veterinarians, helping people living in poverty to care for their beloved pets, which otherwise can be very costly. And, to date, they’ve “fixed” more than 2,000 stray feral cats, greatly reducing overpopulation. That’s people following passion.
I love the story of CHHSM’s great patriarch, Pastor Louis Edward Nollau of St. Peter’s Church in St. Louis, who, in 1860, saw a great need for the church to respond to the cholera outbreak and provide care for the many children left orphaned by the epidemic. When one church member protested, saying the church lacked the financial resources, Nollau famously responded, “But we have the children!”
“Sometimes, it seems, all you have is problems and ironically, thank God, that’s where the passion is discovered to confront and overcome something once thought insurmountable.”
Nollau’s passion led to the formation of the German Protestant Orphans’ Home in 1861, which eventually became Evangelical Children’s Home (ECH) and, since 2011, Every Child’s Hope. No matter its name, the mission to serve the needs of children has not diminished. It’s one of CHHSM’s oldest member organizations.
Sometimes, it seems, all you have is problems and ironically, thank God, that’s where the passion is discovered to confront and overcome something once thought insurmountable.
The Council for Health and Human Service Ministries is a passion-driven movement, comprised of 70 corporate members and nearly 400 facilities, communities and programs, all founded by people who saw a problem and then mustered the inner courage, in faith, to take it on. The ministries of CHHSM are old, new and varied, but they are each part of a larger movement that has passion as its core and, from this place of gut-centered integrity, CHHSM derives its bold vision, its inspired leaders and its shared values.
It’s the reason I am so proud to have joined CHHSM this past month as its Vice President, after more than 25 years in ordained ministry, because I know that — as long as there are problems — people of deep faith will find a way, and the resources, to be overcomers for goodness’ sake. That’s the vitality of CHHSM, and that’s the DNA of the United Church of Christ.
The Rev. J. Bennett Guess is Vice President of the Council for Health and Human Service Ministries. He joined CHHSM’s staff team in April 2016 after serving as Executive Minister of the UCC’s Local Church Ministries and, prior, as the UCC’s Director of Publishing, Identity and Communication.
In 1996, while I was pastor of Zion United Church of Christ in Henderson, Ky., our small congregation faced a crisis, trying to cope with increasing numbers of people with HIV/AIDS coming to our open-and-affirming church, seeking friendship and support. Several died; others were chronically ill, lonely and afraid, or financially destitute. We provided extravagant welcome, yes, but we lacked the capacity and services to systemically serve as well as we knew we could.
So, a group of us began discussing how we could become better advocates and caregivers in our part of the world. Under the determined leadership of then-parish nurse Cyndee Burton (pictured above) and a handful of deeply committed church volunteers, Matthew 25 AIDS Services was formed.
Today, celebrating its 20th anniversary, Matthew 25 employs 25 specialized caregivers, alongside nearly 100 volunteers, in serving a current caseload of 509 patients in 25 Kentucky counties and others from southwest Indiana and southern Illinois. Its case management services include specialized medical care and medication assistance; mental health, dental and vision services; help with insurance premiums; housing, utility and transportation assistance; and groceries and nutritional supplements. Matthew 25’s annual budget significantly dwarfs, several times over, the budget of the congregation that birthed it.
Also, twenty years ago this year, in Evansville, Ind., just across the Ohio River from Henderson, a group of UCC leaders were busy cobbling together funds to purchase an abandoned downtown warehouse with hopes of greatly expanding the five-year labors of Bethel United Church of Christ, where a Sunday School class had been lovingly providing two meals daily and laundry services for about 30 homeless men, alongside an emergency night shelter that slept up to 12 in bunk beds.
The new warehouse space enabled United Caring Shelters to broaden its offerings, including free meals daily for hundreds (no questions asked), dormitory space and apartments for individuals and families in transition, and, eventually, an emergency night shelter for women.
Today, United Caring Services — as it’s now known — is a comprehensive ministry grounded in radical unconditional love for the poor, homeless and vulnerable in southwest Indiana, putting into action the belief that every person deserves to be treated with dignity and supported in realizing their God-given potential.
“The imperative to love often finds foolish, underfunded, stubborn yet good-hearted people attempting to make possible what others neglect or refuse to name or see.”
Both Matthew 25 AIDS Services and United Caring Services have significantly expanded and matured since 1996, becoming sophisticated, interfaith non-profits that receive support from various financial sources, including the government. Unless you dig into their histories, or understand the passionate motivations of their leaders to this day, you could unfortunately miss the important fact that they are undeniably — and remarkably — “church.”
The UCC’s Council for Health and Human Service Ministries is a collaborative of nearly 400 community ministries — some quite old and others relatively new —that were all founded just like Matthew 25 and United Caring Services, by church people who once identified a great need, cajoled their friends, held some fundraisers, nurtured organizational structures and, in time, became formidable service institutions — large hospitals and small clinics, retirement communities, continuing care facilities, hospices, services for children and seniors, affordable housing, community foundations and advocacy groups. Collectively, they have shaped our understanding of civil society, but without most of us ever pausing to consider how or why they ever came to be, except that they exist to meet critical human needs.
The imperative to love often finds foolish, underfunded, stubborn yet good-hearted people attempting to make possible what others neglect or refuse to name or see. And, if we’re truthful, most of these pietistic pioneers couldn’t have ever envisioned the huge impact on others their labors of love would have. But dream and scheme they did, and will forever, to the glory of God.
In mid-December, I attended an “Allies for Equality” reception, sponsored by Equality Ohio, honoring the work of Raymond Bobgan, executive artistic director of Cleveland Public Theatre. CPT, not far from my home, is an edgy theatre known for staging productions that push buttons and prompt conversations on issues of inclusion and social justice.
While there, I introduced myself to Ray and thanked him for his leadership in raising consciousness and promoting compassion in our city. In the course of conversation, I shared that I am a United Church of Christ minister, and he responded with sincere joy, “So much of my early success in Cleveland I owe to the UCC!”
She replied: “Our church was founded with the stated mission of serving the educational, cultural and spiritual needs of the community. We need you, as a cultural organization, to help us fulfill our mission.”
He explained that, two decades ago, when he was looking for a rehearsal and production venue for a then-fledgling theatre company, he approached the Rev. Laurie Hafner, then-pastor of Cleveland’s Pilgrim UCC, about the possibility of renting space, something that Pilgrim has an overabundance of.
“Pastor Laurie told me that we could use the church’s old unused theatre at no charge, completely rent free, if we didn’t mind cleaning it up and getting it ready,” he said, “and she seemed as genuinely excited about offering it to us as we were about having it.”
He recounted how he was almost arguing with Laurie, telling her that the church’s generosity far exceeded his wildest expectations, to which she replied: “Our church was founded with the stated mission of serving the educational, cultural and spiritual needs of the community. We need you, as a cultural organization, to help us fulfill our mission.”
Knowing Laurie as I do, that sentiment – “we need you to help us fulfill our mission” – comes as no surprise. That’s how she rolls. Now the senior pastor of Coral Gables UCC near Miami, Laurie approaches every situation with far-sighted, we-can-do-this enthusiasm. She realizes – more than most – that underutilized churches cost way more than giving space away. The congregation’s missional integrity might just be at stake.
Laurie could have responded with church-focused pragmatism; she could have insisted on a strictly leasor-leasee relationship. She could have nickel-and-dimed Ray’s company to address the short-term budget needs of the congregation. Or, she could have just politely said “no.” After all, what’s a start-up theatre got to do with ministry, right?
In time, Ray’s company did become a financial asset to the church and, yes, the relationship was formalized legally so each party felt secure in the partnership. But most importantly, more people found their way into Pilgrim, felt at home there, saw some great plays, met some neighbors, and went away thinking more deeply about love, justice and compassion. Some people, perhaps, showed up on a Sunday morning, or maybe not. That wasn’t the point.
The point was this: Either way, thanks to both Ray and Laurie, Pilgrim was one step closer to fulfilling its mission.
“Outdo one another in showing honor” – Romans 12:10
November is stewardship season, the time in which most congregations, if not all, feel budget-bound to focus members’ attention on giving. So, listen up.
Theologically, we speak of the bountiful goodness of God, and faith’s claim on us to be generous in response. Practically, we are anxious about many things, most urgently how to construct a church budget that reflects more than a wing and a prayer, but is built upon some actual numbers and known commitments.
An overflowing harvest-themed cornucopia adorns the communion table and serves as a non-verbal reinforcement for the weekly stewardship talk, during which a loyal layperson stands at the lectern and shares just how much this congregation means to him or her, before inviting others to search their souls and to consider their own giving accordingly. In the process, some will deepen their commitments, we hope, perhaps increasing their proportional giving by a percentage point or two, or at least not backsliding. A few will sheepishly stay away from worship for a few weeks until all this financial emphasis has subsided, because any talk of money — and especially the invitation to consider their spiritual relationship to it — makes them uneasy.
In the church, if we’re honest, the definition of the word “stewardship” too often centers on attracting more pledges so we can pay the congregation’s bills. That’s a gross oversimplification and poor theology, I know, but if you ask 97 out of 100 churchgoers, I bet they’d say the same thing: stewardship means giving.
But another approach to the word “stewardship,” in the secular world, has been challenging my use and understanding of the word, of late. Because, on every beyond-the-church, non-profit board or development committee I serve, “stewardship” is heard and used altogether differently, and the shift, at first, jarred me; now it instructs me.
In secular settings, stewardship is focused almost exclusively on how the organization is adequately expressing thanks to donors. During a public radio pledge drive, for example, the stewardship staff would be the ones making sure you received your complimentary coffee mug, along with either the two-volume Mandy Patinkin CD set or the Les Miserables beach towel, whichever you selected, when you signed up to make a recurring monthly gift.
In that world, stewardship is about emphasizing and showing appreciation, above all else. Donor cultivation surely has something to do with it, but cultivation is another department altogether. Stewardship, in this sense, is about honoring the gifts already received and, most importantly, the ones who offered them.
Just ask any Certified Fundraising Executive what “stewardship” means and you won’t hear anything about pledge cards, but you will get an earful about gratitude. That’s instructive, especially this time of year, and I’m pretty sure that nuanced shift in definition could teach us something in the church.
What if gratitude overflowed in November, not just for pledging units, but also for one another, for the many ministries we engage together, for the impact our churches have in our communities and around the world, for all kinds of church volunteers, for leaders, for staff, for pastors, for musicians, for weekly or monthly contributors, for all who made it possible? Thanksgiving abundant for all the people who, in response to God, are committed to being kin-dom builders together and who celebrate that resources will flow to ministry that matters.
In Romans 12:10, we are told to “outdo one another in showing honor.” Paul’s words remind us that friendly competition can be a good thing, when it’s about lifting others who have so unselfishly lifted us.
I nominate November as the month for that. After all, that, too, is the definition of good stewardship.
J. Bennett Guess 