Chapter two part c. Direct Service charity is toxic because it sees the person as needing to be fixed, rather than the system as needing to be fixed.
 
Most direct service charity is set up to with the presumption that people who need things do not have gifts, they are only people with needs, weaknesses, people who are broken. Because we don’t know the people who are served, and sometimes even when we do know the people, we begin to presume that hunger grows out of something more dangerous than simple poverty. The popular world view is that people who need food are irresponsible, without gifts or strengths, unwilling to work, mentally ill, addicted, criminals, in-short we begin to see the problem is the people who don’t have enough, not the system that doesn’t allow for enough. We start to see people as their addictions, their mental health challenges, their struggles, and then more insidiously we begin to wonder if they are responsible with their money, responsible with their families, responsible with their lives.
 
Laura Stivers’ critique of several direct service homeless ministries demonstrates how we demonize people who live with poverty. She argues that homelessness is conflated with chronic homelessness (Stivers 49); similarly, people who don’t have enough food are often conflated with people who are homeless. Because home ownership is a mark of responsibility, not having a home becomes a sign of irresponsibility (Stivers 47). Not having enough food becomes a sign of not knowing how to budget for food, shop for food, or how to cook food, a sign of unreliability and incompetence (Stivers 49).
 
People who need homes and need food are seen as unable to provide for themselves because of unreliable and incompetent past choices, rather than because of they way choices are limited for people who live with poverty. Since they make poor choices, we who have enough are encouraged to help people develop new skills; job skills, social skills, skills for healthier decision making, without any evaluation as to whether individuals actually lack any of those skills. People in need begin to be identified as “diseased other,” someone wholly unlike me, which helps to covertly create “a moral boundary between who is respectable/clean… or diseased/dirty” (Stivers 51). The wide boundary between people with and without resources is made even wider by this covert stereotype.
 
Stivers suggests that the stereotype of disease encourages people with enough to look for cures and the image of having plenty leads to encouraging people with little to learn middle class language, values, and practices as a step to breaking out of poverty (Stivers 75). The presumption is that if people in need were more like people with plenty, they would not have gotten into this predicament. In both ministries Stivers studied, they are involved in “transforming” the individuals and families who take part. As long as people in need must be transformed we are presuming they were not good enough at the start (Stivers 114). Stivers would like to see society, systems, and supports transformed, rather than focusing on transforming the individuals who struggle to deal systemic obstacles.
 
Even more compassionate views of people in poverty emphasize the deviance of the individual rather than the systemic challenges people without sufficient resources face. Seeing the poor as victims of trauma, as suffering from mentally illness, as victims of assault, and/or as abused, help us to respond with compassion and helpful services (Stivers 53) and yet still presumes that the role of shelters, food programs, and social services, is to treat the individuals for their woundedness rather than change systems to prevent wounds, and to prevent wounds from leading to poverty (Stivers 54). There are many survivors of trauma, mental illness, and people living with addictions who are not homeless or short of food resources—the difference between them is only whether or not they have the money. Victim language suggests that the people without homes do not have agency in their lives (Stivers 55).
 
Direct service ministries are a problem when we see people only as victims, and only as people who make bad decisions, and only as people who have needs. Interestingly, Stivers found that even in programs where the staff and volunteers get to know the participants in some depth, the world-view that the people are the problem is hard to break. For example, at one of the programs Stivers studied the guests named low paying jobs and the inability to access affordable housing as key to their poverty, while the staff listed dysfunctional behavior of people who are homeless and the shortage of shelters (Stivers 72). When we are working for programs that presume that we have to change the person in need, rather than in programs that address the faults of the system, we are inclined to hear that our program is providing exactly what is needed. “People who have experienced poverty and/or homelessness know what the structural obstacles are” (Stivers 112). We have to recognize that people in need have a voice that we can listen to, have knowledge that we may not have, have contributions to make to the work of ending homelessness or food insecurity.
 
And yet even asking for people’s contributions can be done in a way that is, to use Lupton’s word, toxic. In both ministries Stivers studied the people in need help with the work, in one program after they are transformed appropriately (in faith and independence from the program) they come back as volunteers, in the other work is required as payment for the resources provided. The implication with the work requirement is that otherwise this is a handout that will increase dependence, although Stivers notes that there are no work requirements that come with a handout like the mortgage interest tax credit (Stivers 115). People with housing have demonstrated their worthiness by qualifying for a mortgage; people in need of housing must demonstrate their worthiness in other ways.
 
Interestingly, Lupton sees work and payment for services as reducing the toxicity of direct service charities. He argues for creating food co-ops in place of food pantries, in order to protect the participant’s dignity. People who need food join for a low fee and receive a higher dollar amount of “surplus” food (Lupton 7). Throughout the book Toxic Charity Lupton successfully avoids blaming people who are poor for their poverty, but he does imply that without payments or work requirements people prefer dependence on handouts. His concern with direct service is that it is too tempting for people in poverty to choose the easy (and apparently to him, comfortable) life of poverty, rather than to make the life transforming changes required for having enough. While he argues against direct service ministries he emphasizes the brokenness of individuals, rather than systems, when he emphasizes that direct service job training programs are ok (Lupton 56).
 
A big fan of job training is David Apple, an urban missioner encouraging churches to go beyond food ministries in Not Just a Soup Kitchen. The strength of this book is its emphasis on relationship building, and on his understanding that he himself is broke, that all of us who have enough are equally broken, and that in God’s eyes we are equal in our relationships. He notes the ways that the addicts he meets generally describe themselves as losers, as unworthy of a better life, as unworthy of services to help them (Apple loc 852). Unfortunately he then presumes that that sense of unworthiness is a sign of a lack of faith, and that that lack of faith is the primary block to getting ahead in the world. He, as Stivers has critiqued, is identifying personal brokenness (which for him is lack of Jesus) as the primary obstacle to food security. This helps him to see, then, other services for fixing the individual as essential to effective help, so he suggests job training, recovery services, teaching reading, and most importantly, Bible study and teaching about Jesus. As Stivers notes, even this compassionate approach presumes the people in poverty are problems, rather than that the system that creates poverty is the problem. People who need food are seen as only needy, not a combination of needs and strengths.
 
Apple, Dr. David S. Not Just a Soup Kitchen: How Mercy Ministry in the Local Church Transforms us All. Fort Washington, PA: CLC Publications, 2014. Kindle.
 
Laura. Disrupting Homelessness: Alternative Christian Approaches. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011. Kindle.
 
Lupton, Robert D. Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charity Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It). New York: HarperOne, 2011. Kindle.
 

Chapter two, part b. Sometimes we get to know folk, but we don't develop mutuality in the relationships.

Lupton insists that our ministries must build trust. “For some reason healthy people with hearts full of compassion forget fundamentals when it comes to building relationships with those they attempt to serve. Forging ahead to meet a need, we often ignore the basics: mutuality, reciprocity, accountability. In doing so, relationships turn toxic” (Lupton 57). Mutuality is dependent on our built up trust, reciprocity requires that we recognize each as having something to give and some need, accountability requires the person who doesn’t have enough food to take a role in getting that food.
 
Lupton’s critique is not as strong in asking for accountability for those serving the food, although he asks if their programs are getting results. Given his concern for reciprocity and mutuality he might have considered results to be measured by relationships built or in boundaries crossed but instead he measures only whether people who need food stop needing it. He does note that it is a sign of the failure of our direct service charities that we are ministering to strangers, or, in loving cases, guests. Rarely are the poor and the people who need food part of our churches. We are not helping fellow members, but outsiders, people who are other  (Lupton 62). They are invited only to be visitors for a short time, and then sent away, not meeting our own need for relationship, nor that of the person who also needs food.
 
Kevin Blue, also critiquing our present forms of direct service charity in Practical Justice: Living Off-Center in a Self-Centered World suggests that “[d]irect relief of another’s suffering is a high form of love. Sometimes it requires our money; frequently it requires our time. But most of all it requires that we see the value and dignity of each person we interact with” (Blue loc 571). When charity programs don’t focus on seeing the value and dignity of the participants we lose the ability to see each person as bringing gifts in addition to bringing needs. The result is ministries that reinforce the givers as one-up and the people with little as one-down. Blue describes ethical direct service as partnerships, where everyone is bringing something to the partnership, if only themselves (Blue loc 670). He sells people with little short when he adds the “if only themselves”. While there are surely some who are so wounded that it is only themselves they can bring, the majority of people who need food have many gifts they bring to the table. It is our failed sense of charity that blinds us to those gifts.
 
Stephen Bouman, a Lutheran priest who uses community organizing as his principal tool for creating congregational vitality, argues for creating partnerships around a shared table. The Mission Table: Renewing Congregation and Community takes the interesting approach that a church’s mission to serve people in need, and our mission to reach out to share the good news, are the same tasks. Using the language of solidarity from Alinsky (and Gutierrez as we will see in the next Chapter) Bouman notes that our goal should not be connections only to people like us, or members of the same church, or even people who like us, but rather to be made whole by gathering at a the table in solidarity with people who are very different from us (Bouman 10). The healing the church needs is exactly this fellowship across difference if we would take that risk. And yet Bouman notes that many congregations allow their anxiety around survival to pull them away from these ministries (Bouman 10). Many congregations are not willing to take the risks needed to actually meet our neighbors, hear their stories, and most importantly, recognize their gifts. 

​Blue, Kevin. Practical Justice: Living Off-Center in a Self-Centered World. Downers Grove IL: IVP, 2013. Kindle.
 
Bouman, Stephen P. The Mission Table: Renewing Congregation and Community. Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2013.
 
Lupton, Robert D. Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charity Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It). New York: HarperOne, 2011. Kindle.

Chapter 2, part A, because, why finish chapter 3 too soon??? This chapter is all about the problems with Charity/Direct Service, part A is that we don't get to know each other.

Saul Alinsky and Robert Lupton are each interested in improving the life people living in poverty, Lupton by encouraging Christians to engage in community development, Alinsky by encouraging community organizing. Alinsky’s Reveille for Radicals, originally published in 1946 and his Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals, 1971, are the foundational handbooks for community organizers today. Lupton’s 2011 Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charity Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It) is a addressed to a more evangelical Christian audience. Both are arguing against direct service charities and in favor of more systemic change, although I expect they would agree on little else. Each of them have significant critiques of direct service charities that are important to my argument. (Chapter 3 addresses the challenges of Lupton’s community development language).
 
As the name of his book emphasizes, Lupton finds direct service food ministries to be toxic. He argues that handouts are both ineffective and damaging to those who are served. The Christian commitment to service leads us to look for problems so that we can fix them. “Service seeks a need, a problem to fix, an object to pity. But pity diminishes” (Lupton 190) those we aim to serve. While it is clear that we (usually) are not intending to pity, and certainly not intending to diminish those we serve, because we don’t know them, and because we start with our need to serve, our ministries do diminish those we serve. At the end of serving those of us with enough to give away ask how many people we served, and how we feel about our chance to serve, but not whether the actual life of people who do not have much is improved. Often the end result is more about our own satisfaction more than community improvement.
 
Unless we know these dreams of people in need, and unless we know the resources they bring, our solutions will necessarily be more about us as givers than about those who are the receivers. It is rare that a congregation creating a soup kitchen or food pantry knows the people they are intending to serve. People who do not have enough food are in fact fully developed people—like us they have ideas of how to solve their problems; they have relationships with others; they have resources to offer to the problems of hunger. Lupton emphasizes that most importantly people who are poor have dreams and visions of what life could be: “longings for a better life for their children, hopes that their labor will someday produced a more prosperous future” (Lupton 113).
 
Saul Alinsky’s community organizing strategies begin with knowing the dreams of the people. To create change in the world he argues that we must first of all see what is really happening (Alinsky 1971 12). We who have enough must open our eyes to parts of the community that may not be our usual places to look, places where we may not feel welcome, or at least may not feel comfortable. At a meal program, or at food pantry, or a community garden, we have to look to see the fullness of the world that the people who come to eat are a part of.  The world of poverty and of not having enough is a significant part of our community, of the United States. When we can see that we will also see that we who have plenty need that world to change as much as those with not enough need change. Alinsky insists that “[a] major revolution to be won in the immediate future is the dissipation of man’s illusion that his own welfare can be separate from that of all others” (Alinsky 1971 22). We are in this together. When we think of getting ahead as an individual activity, or worse, that we are competing with others and can only get ahead if they stay behind, than we will continue the status quo. We must see the people who have little, and see them as people, and we must also see that our own future is contingent on their successful future.
 
When we know the people who need food, and begin to see ourselves as connected to them, and our future as connected to their future, we begin to desire changes in our systems and strategies around food. Alinsky reminds us we should not, indeed we cannot do that work without the involvement of the people who have little. “If you respect the dignity of the individual you are working with, then his desires, not yours; his values, not yours; his ways of working and fighting, not yours; his programs, not yours, are important and must be followed” (Alinsky 1971 122). By starting with knowing people who need food, we become a people who want to respect the dignity of those who need food.
 
For Alinsky an organizer is someone who comes in and helps a community overcome their own apathy, and then follows their lead in what is to be done to improve their community. This will not work if we have not built the trust of the people by engaging fully in community. “It is difficult for people to believe that you really respect their dignity” (Alinsky 1971 122). It is rare for people to be listened to, and so rare that you will need to listen again and again before people in need will trust that someone with enough cares about, or indeed even understands, their needs. Alinsky sees the organizer as a motivator, so that the people can act, rather than an actor, helping the people to follow.
 
While I agree with Alinsky’s point I think that the language is different when Churches speak of this. We do not begin as organizers, or even motivators, but rather as neighbors. We invite people into our space as guests, but as Christians it is our intent that every guest should become eventually a neighbor. Our intent at the start is nothing more than love—we are called to love our neighbors and to do that we begin by getting to know them. Jay Pathak asks “[w]hat if [Jesus] meant that we should love our actual neighbors? You know, the people who live right next door” (Pathak 15). I will say more about Pathak’s exploration of how we have made neighbor a universal, rather particular concept below, but here we notice that meals ministries sometimes invite people into our buildings without recognizing that they are our neighbors. If we invite people in and then treat them as strangers we are failing at our Christian commitment to love our neighbor. In Lupton’s language, our charitable instinct becomes not one of love, but rather toxic charity that fails to give people the respect they deserve.

Alinsky, Saul D. Reveille for Radicals, (New York: Vintage Books, 1989.)
 
Alinsky, Saul D. Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals, (New York: Random House, 1971.)
 
Lupton, Robert D. Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charity Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It). (New York: HarperOne, 2011.) Kindle.
 
Pathak, Jay, and Dave Runyon. The Art of Neighboring: Building Genuine Relationships Right Outside Your Door. (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2012.) Ebook.

Welcome to chapter two! This chapter aims to lay out the argument against direct service charities. This is the introduction to the chapter. In the end my thesis will argue we can redeem direct service by including the people who need the services in the work to provide the services. 

​We need to change US food systems, which is a long-range project. In the meantime, there are people who will not get the food they need without programs that meet immediate needs. Hungry people can’t just wait for us to make systemic changes. Churches can and should be engaged in helping to create systemic change; they are already engaged in direct food service by providing food pantries, meals programs, and most recently, gardens.

Traditionally we provide food in the form of “charity”—that is we who have plenty of food give food to those who do not have enough food. When stated in this way it is clearly a win-win—the person with plenty has an opportunity to care for their neighbors and the person in need gets more of what they need. All is good. Or all appears to be good. It turns out charity in the form of direct service is not that simple.

People who need food may need, or want, or dream of, particular types of food, available in particular ways, and at particular times; people who have plenty consider keeping costs down, simplicity of serving, storage capacity, shelf-life, and the pleasure they get from being the givers. The givers make rules about who and how and when and why people can receive; those in need respond by adjusting the story they tell, adapting to meet the required why, complaining about when the food available, explaining how important this is to them, working hard to meet the rules that have been laid out. The givers are now the authority, deciding what it is the eaters need; they are far removed from the eaters who are allowed only what the authorities decide. The distance between the givers and receivers makes it so those that are trying to help do not actually know what help is needed.

When those who can give become only givers, and those who receive become only receivers we have created an us-vs-them scenario instead of neighborly sharing. Our evangelism becomes disconnected from our direct service charity because we cannot imagine the people who need food as our neighbors, our sisters and brothers, as part of the Body of Christ. But more than that we come to see the people need food as only receivers, and thus as only people with problems. We come to see people with enough food as only givers, and not in the same need of redemption as the receivers. Not knowing people makes it impossible to love them as full human beings.

People giving from their bounty care about reducing waste, increasing fairness, and creating efficient systems to minimize the number volunteers needed, so we implement strategies for making the giving more effective, and these strategies make the giving even more impersonal. We worry about serving maximum numbers efficiently rather than about creating the maximum opportunities to serve. We serve people who have gifts and talents and experience that would make them excellent volunteers, but we do not let them lead.

If we don’t get to know the people our food ministries serve, don’t love people who need food as neighbors with gifts and strengths, and don’t share the work of leadership in our ministries than our charity creates an us vs. them environment and becomes not very charitable.

Unrelated to my thesis, I notice that blogs require short paragraphs and an academic paper has many long paragraphs. 

More of Chapter three, this time section two, where my theologians engage with the more practical texts. Whether it is really possible for Gutierrez' sweeping theological treatise aimed at Latin American Catholics to speak to Lupton's practical mission advice aimed at North American Evangelicals is questionable, but I've given it a try. 

While Gutierrez agrees with Robert Lupton’s (Toxic Charity) critique of charity in the form of handouts from people with plenty to individuals with less, much of Gutierrez’ critique of our economic and political systems is a direct critique of Lupton’s proposed solutions to the challenge of charity. Both authors insist that solutions to poverty must arise from the people who live in poverty, and that it is disempowering to be given things based on what people who have plenty believe you should be given. Both are arguing for moving the power for change from those who have plenty to those who have little. But that apparent agreement hides substantial differences that are foundational to their theories and proposed practices.
 
For Lupton modern US poverty has been caused in part by the welfare state. “[T]he welfare system has fostered generations of dependency and has severely eroded the work ethic” (Lupton 121). The challenge of “dependency” is, for Lupton, the primary challenge. He shares a moving story of Janice, a single mother who Ann chooses to support financially, which ends with Ann learning that Janice is more interested in conning people like Ann than in finding work (Lupton 60). His analysis implies that Ann’s support, like government support such as welfare, is actually causing Janice’s unemployment—it is easier for Janice to get handouts than to work. As such, Lupton argues that ethical charity must not include direct support, but instead should be based in community development and job training.
 
Gutierrez disputes the value of community development in particular, noting that the term almost always really means only economic development—as shown in Lupton’s example where it is presumed that Janice’s real problem is that she won’t work. Gutierrez argues that economic, social, political, and cultural development cannot be separated from each other (Gutierrez Liberation 15). I imagine Gutierrez asking Lupton why it is that our culture expects mothers to be separated from their children in order to do paid work? Why are we lacking social support systems to care for our children? What are the political systems we have created that make it so hard to find work and to find child-care and to find affordable housing? Why is Ann so frustrated to find that Janice is not just like her?
 
Indeed, development theories pre-suppose that the solution to poverty is that those who are poor should take on the cultural practices of those that have more; essentially people who have plenty are more culturally advanced than people who have little  (Gutierrez Liberation 50). When we feel we can see so clearly what another person should do to improve their life, and yet we have not gotten to know that person as neighbor and a friend, any ideas we have are based in our own cultural identity, own life experiences, our own world view. Whether intentional or not, we are presuming that our strategies are better than the strategies of the person we are aiming to help.
 
If we start instead with the person in need, trusting that they are worthwhile to be known, and that they have within them the next steps for their challenges, we are engaging in more than economic development—we are engaging in human development, we are making room for individuals to control their own future (Gutierrez Liberation 16). Gutierrez suggests development theory works when it takes “into account the situation of dependence and the possibility of becoming free from it” (Gutierrez Liberation 54). Freedom from dependence is liberation; the ability to be in full control of our own lives. Liberation begins with economic, social, and political independence, but is much more, it is a process self-growth, it grows out of an individual’s own values, and out of their own life story. That is, liberation is something that people with less things do for themselves, from their own growing awareness of themselves and of the culture they are enmeshed in (Gutierrez Liberation 57).
 
As a church, then, to engage in a theology of liberation is to engage in helping people to know themselves, to know their own values, strengths, and weaknesses, to begin to see themselves as children of God. Interestingly, that is the same work that the church might be doing with people who have plenty! But people without things, and people who are oppressed have additional weight blocking their self-awareness. Gutierrez suggest that the work of the church is
To “make the oppressed become aware that they are human beings” (Gutierrez Liberation 154) or even better help them to become agents of their own humanity (Gutierrez Liberation 155). He wants the poor to see the systems that have been created to trap them, and trusts that when they see those systems they will develop for themselves the right tools to fight the systemic oppression around them.
 
What Lupton fails to see is the systems that oppress people in poverty. Gutierrez is quite blunt in suggesting that poverty in the third world is actually a by-product of the same behaviors that created wealth in the United States and elsewhere (Gutierrez Liberation 51). I believe the same dynamic is at work in US poverty where we have created a system where a full time job is not sufficient to support a family and support systems for moving out of poverty are not prioritized. With Lupton, our social and cultural forces blame the poor are blamed for their inability to get ahead. Gutierrez is speaking out against the moral critique implied in the language Lupton uses around dependence.
 
To develop a theory of dependence, Lupton looks at individual actions. Gutierrez would say that Lupton’s focus on individual behaviors is where his mistake begins. “To be poor is something much vaster and more complete than simply belonging to a specific social group (social class, culture, ethnos)” (Gutierrez Wells 101). The lasting solutions to poverty are not primarily about helping individuals to overcome individual barriers, but rather for the systemic barriers to be removed. We don’t try to identify individuals, but systems, and in the same way, it is not individuals who do this work but the entire church  (Gutierrez Wells 101). The Church is converted to a new way of engaging poverty, rather than the dependent poor person being converted to a new way of wealth.
 
Working with people who have plenty and people who have little, the Church works for Liberation. Liberation for Gutierrez is not, in fact a question of having wealth, or not. Liberation is a community value, where the people in the community work together, play together, indeed, they pray together to create an environment where each person can live up to their full-potential, with enough food, enough work, enough self-agency to be the people of God together. Outsiders do not develop people to this potential, but rather are in solidarity as the community breaks from the status quo that is holding them back (Gutierrez Liberation 59).
 
Gutierrez, Gustavo, We Drink from Our Own Wells The Spiritual Journey of a People, Maryknoll NY: Orbis: 2003. Matthew J. O’Connell, Trans. 20th Anniversary Edition.

Gutierrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation, History, Politics, and Salvation, Maryknoll NY: Orbis: 1988. Sr. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson, Trans. 15th Anniversary Edition.

Lupton, Robert D. Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charity Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It) HarperOne 2011 Kindle Edition.

Sometimes at Worcester Fellowship our lunch line is just like Church. I hate it for its rigidness, its rules, its “lets keep you in your” place mentality. I love its for its hopefulness, its building of community while we wait, its promise of abundance at the end of the line.
 
As we wait in the park  each Sunday I am impressed that the lunch line works at all. There are people moving into and out of the line, people looking for someone else to take their place in line, people arriving very early, people who arriving very late, the late ones worrying whether there is enough, and asking if they can cut ahead, and begging the line authorities to provide absolution for their lateness, or drunkenness, or disorderliness, and to provide a place further ahead in the line.
 
But as there are no shortcuts to heaven there is no cutting the line. Those who are late must wait behind a hundred or so hungry bodies to see what is the little snippet of the Kingdom today. Is it ham or bologna or tuna or will there be only peanut butter and jelly left when I get to the front? Is today’s message one of hope and abundance or one of despair and less sandwiches than people lined up?
 
“I’m hoping for tuna” Sam who is always a little late, always a little anxious, always in need of lunch for himself and his girlfriend, over there, on the pew-like bench by the fountain, Sam tells me, pointing. He asks as politely as he knows how: “Will there be any f’in, excuse me, any tuna when I get to the front of the line?”
 
Like all those in indoor church who need reassurances before worship starts, these questions drain me of the good news. I’m not a detail person. I don’t know if the Sunday School teachers are ready or the coffee is hot in indoor church, and I don’t know if the tuna will run out in outdoor church. We are here to proclaim release to the captives and I’m stuck in the sheer tediousness of getting started.
 
But before I can check on the tuna there is a fight brewing in front of Sam in the lunch line. Someone is trying to cut the line. An older white man I don’t know says quietly but firmly “hey, don’t cut” and I head toward the problem knowing that while many folk will sulk to the back of the line, others will simply leave if challenged on their place at this altar.
 
And so I was thinking about the order of people at God's altar as I was moving closer, looking up at a very angry young Hispanic man, noticing his hands clenched in his pockets, he was gritting his teeth, pacing a bit, but staying there, close to the front of the line, waiting for me, the authority, with my stole flapping around me. I said, as he expected, “you cannot cut the line.”
And he said his confession, "I haven't eaten in days."
And I refused him absolution, sticking to the agreed upon Levitical Commandment:  "You have to go to the end of the line." 
"Well then I won't eat." He sulked away in despair.
 
Harvey, a regular, and a good line following Christian could not contain his anger at this blatant disregard for the rules. "Why the f** do you always cut the line?" and "Why can't you go to the end of the line?"
 And so the man came back screaming "I'll go anywhere I d*&$ well please" and "why don't you mind your own business".

And so now I am standing between two tall men, holding forth like Moses holding the waters, and saying in my most grown up, deep, calm, and forceful voice: "Stop fighting and do not cut the line." Repeat eight times. 

And the line continues forward, like a prescribed liturgy, without the cutting man, without all those who cannot follow the prescriptions of order and predictability and neatness and beauty.
 
And then an elderly white man behind this whole scene, also very tall, the one who said "hey, you can't cut", the man just ahead of us, with the white shirt and blue stripes, he reaches the food table and takes one of everything without a word, a sandwich, an orange, a bag of chips, a box of juice, and heads back to the end of the line, stopping for just barely a second to hand the entire lunch to the angry Hispanic young man, the one who had tried to cut.

And then the elderly man waits in the line again to get lunch for himself, probably not tuna this time, probably peanut butter and jelly. 
 
And I am reminded once again that this is, indeed, just like Church.

For more on Worcester Fellowship see www.worcesterfellowship.org.

This is from Nov. 11th, 2008

I was eating lunch at an outdoor table with a few friends while visiting in Austin last week when several homeless guys walked by. One stopped a the table next to us and asked if they had any change.

One of my companions turned to our table. "They shouldn't do that." She said.
"Shouldn't do what?"
"They shouldn't ask people who are eating for change."

This is one of the difficulties of this job. "They" aren't "they" anymore. While I probably agree, its probably rude to ask people for money while they eat, it's different to make such a statement when the person asking is Jo, or Jose, or Juan, not "that guy". And the more people I've met, the less I can see "that guy" as "other". I don't know him, but I know others like him. I have people I could call "friend" who ask people--indeed who ask ME, for change.

Many visitors to Worcester Fellowship ask about change. "Should we give people who are asking for money any money?"

One answer is easy. "This ministry is not about giving people money. Worcester Fellowship doesn't give people money."
"But should we, you know, the rest of the time? Should we give people money?"

I've spent a fair amount of time searching for proof that the Bible doesn't ask us to give poor people money. Unfortunately, it does. In proverbs it says "if someone asks you for money, give it to them." Damn. 

"But won't they use it for alcohol, or drugs?"
"Yup, some will. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes. And also for coffee at Dunkin' Donuts so they can use the bathroom. And phone cards so they can be called for jobs. And a chocolate bar. And a lottery ticket."
The fact is, except for cigarettes and drugs, I've used MY money for all those things, too.

Here is my advice. Decide for yourself about the money. But look the person in the eye when you say "yes" or "no". And ask "how are you today?" And smile. And think of them as "Jo" or "Jose" or "Juan" and not as "them". Maybe say a prayer.

People shouldn't have to ask people who are eating lunch for spare change. That I know for sure!

From Dec. 15th, 2010

We read Micah, chapter 1, in Bible study today. Micah is a prophet writing to his community about hope and about doom. We started by asking the question: is the chapter hope or doom? The clear answer: DOOM. Wow, Micah is predicting suffering and loss for everyone. What a bright and cheery advent message!

We went over some of the setting and noted how similar those times were to today: that the rich have the money and the power, their sense of satisfaction and righteousness. That the poor have, well, that the poor have nothing, their sense of dissatisfaction and hopelessness.  The poor have peace and religion and family and friends, but the rich don't seem to notice that the poor have no way to get ahead, no work, no supports, not enough food, not enough housing. Micah's message is addressed to those in power: your doom is coming. For the wealthy: doom is coming; for the poor: doom is now.

But Bible study at Worcester Fellowship isn't really about tussling with the setting or about understanding the goals of a prophet, and it really isn't about the predicted destruction of Jerusalem. So we explored the question: "have you ever felt a sense of doom?" 

Some days I have the right question!

First we talked about Korea and nuclear war and terrorists. Brian wants to go into the Navy and he's concerned about how the Navy will be involved in a war in Korea. Mark lives with the challenges of paranoia and has to check every floor of his building every evening before he can sleep because of all the news about the threat of terrorists. He describes how media reinforces his fears, even as he knows that his building in Worcester isn't a likely target for terrorism. We heard how Alison worries about her son who is in Iraq, and how much violence Estella saw in her home as a child when her father returned from the war Korea.

And then we moved to the sense of doom we feel in our personal lives. Sandy mentioned how hard it is to have the nights getting longer and longer. Alison described her struggle with depression, Ron how his regular seizures are stealing more and more of his brain. Juan said that his biggest sense of doom comes from his addictions.

There was instant agreement with the doom of addiction and then lots and lots of examples. How you try so hard for days and days and then one day you are late for the food pantry so you don't have food and you get a few bucks and you have another drink. How you try to stay in the house to stay away from others who are using and your mind gets more and more convoluted as you get more and more isolated and you just want to die. How you go to meetings and church and bible study and see your social worker and then your therapist, but then there it is, 2 am and you are awake and you can't remember any of the reasons why you were trying to get sober. And how a long night is followed by waking up in the morning afraid that you won't make it another day.

Brian asked "what is that saying... you know about if you do and if you don't?" 

Alison replied quickly "doomed if you do, doomed if you don't." 

Mark was sure that wasn't right "No, its damned if you do, damned if you don't. Excuse me pastor, sorry." 

There was a pause and the Estella summarized the study.  "I think Micah would say Doomed if you do, doomed if you don't."

Me too.

Another a piece of my thesis for my DMin Project. Chapter 3 is my biblical and theological arguments. This is Part D, IIIb, trying to say that our goal in food ministries isn’t to change people, but to love them the way they are.
 
Solidarity with people who are different from us is unexpectedly difficult. Letty Russell tells a story of an African American pastor serving a diverse congregation where the majority of the power brokers were white. Over time the members complained about small actions of the pastor—like swaying to much in worship—and refused to take on big issues like racism and oppression. What she wanted was to create a church where newcomers did not need to decide to act white in order to be welcomed (Russell 155).

Similarly, solidarity with people who do not have enough food is a decision to look for ways we may have been asking others to act like us. We need to be able to accept people as they are, now, with all the quirks and idiosyncrasies and unusual behaviors they have learned on life’s journey, and with all the culture and heritage they claim for themselves. Popular discourse has created a mythology about people who need food—a mythology about childhood abuse, addictions, and mental health challenges when we are kind, and a mythology about race, class, laziness, and dependence when we are not. To sit with someone in pity, or in judgment, is not solidarity, is not actual love, and is not contributing to our mutual salvation.

“Salvation is not something otherworldly, in regard to which the present life is merely a test. Salvation—the communion of human beings with God and among themselves—is something which embraces all human reality, transforms it, and lead it to its fullness in Christ (Gutierrez Liberation 85). All of human reality includes of course the areas where we are weak and distant from God—but it includes all of our weaknesses, not only the weaknesses of people who live in poverty. Until we see our own struggles and shortcomings as ideas in need of transformation we cannot focus on the transformation needed by those living in poverty. We must love people exactly as they are, now, and see their gifts and strengths and joys as clearly as we see their challenges. Together we can be transformed; together we can be saved.

Russell argues that we need to empower women to be “as co-strugglers in the gospel” (Russell 95), I am certain she would accept me suggesting that people without food are also equal co-strugglers, along with those of us who have plenty of food. Gutierrez emphasizes that we may also have an instructive role—that of helping those without enough to see how our systems have created this reality of some with enough and others with plenty. When individuals blame their life circumstances on their bad choices we need to expose the systems that have made bad decisions for poor people to be catastrophic, while bad decisions for people with plenty are merely annoyances and set backs. Part of our work is to “make the oppressed become aware that they are human beings” (Gutierrez Liberation 154) or even better help them to become agents of their own humanity  (Gutierrez Liberation 155).

Many people who are poor already see themselves as agents of their own lives, but these are often the same people who fail to follow the restrictive rules of some food ministries. When we begin to see the humanity (and the divinity!) in the people who need food, we will begin to see the ways we are asking people who need food to adjust to be like us, and in response to that we will stop! The goal is a food ministry where people come as they are, and are respected for who they are, and loved as they are. Our goal must be to sit with the oppressed, even at the loss of our own social standing  (Gutierrez Liberation 152). We cannot use the fact that we have more things than another person to lead us to the erroneous assumption that we are more important than that person, or that we should have more power, even here at this food ministry, than the person who needs food.
 
​Do you know of a food ministry where people who need food, and people who have plenty of food, work together to create community? I'd love to hear about it! 

Gutierrez, Gustavo, A Theology of Liberation, History, Politics, and Salvation, Maryknoll NY: Orbis: 1988. Sr. Caridad Inda and John Eagleson, Trans. 15th Anniversary Edition.

​Letty Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church, Louisville KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.

Another a piece of my thesis for my DMin Project. Chapter 3, Part D, IIIa, we have to know the people for whom we provide food. Chapter 3 is my biblical and theological arguments.
 
How are we to find God? How are we to find Salvation? For Letty Russell it is clear that we find God and Salvation by being among the poor and disenfranchised. This is not because God is not with everyone—God surely is with everyone—but rather because God has a particular concern for those who are suffering. As discussed above, the story of the sheep and goats makes clear to us that Christ is seen in people who need things, and in people who are isolated from us. Russell emphasizes that it is not the good works of the poor that bring us close to Christ, anymore than it is any of our good works that bring us closer. It is instead simply being present with the poor (Russell 121).

To be present is not simply to be there to give things away. In fact the act of giving things away is often a barrier to truly being present. To be present is to get to know one another, to hear each other’s stories; to hear not just about today’s need for things, but rather to hear about a life that has both celebrations and sorrows. To be present is to, over time, have shared experiences, shared stories, a shared past, and eventually to imagine a shared future. When we truly know another person we can offer something more important than kindness or food, we can be their neighbor.

As Robert Lupton (Toxic Charity) implies there really is something toxic about our existing forms of Charity. His concern is that people become dependent on our giving but my concern is about how we know each other. Many food ministries have a “necessary story” for entrance. The person who needs the food must tell another person a story that “qualifies” them for the meal, or bag of food, to be given over. In a best case you must only state that you need the food, but in many situations the people in need must submit ID or address or even income information to prove your need. People who need food in fact are as wise as anyone who doesn’t need food, and thus follow those rules to develop a good story. In fact much of the requirement to get by with poverty in the United States is to have a good story.

But relationships are not built with good stories—relationships are built with real stories. If we are not creating ministries where we get to know people in need, get to know people in need over time, over struggles, over successes, where we get to know people in depth, then we are not actually looking for God, we are looking for our own duty to serve, or own guilt about our excess, or own need to have the power to serve others. If our goal is to know Christ in our service, if our goal is to grow in faith, if our goal is to be creating a welcome table, then our ministry must not be about me serving you, but instead must build relationships and create an us.

For our ministry to be about us--those of us with plenty and those of us without enough, together—our ministry must be guided by our eagerness to know the perspectives of those who are living at the margins. “Faithfulness to Christ calls us to be constantly open to those who are marginal in our own church communities and in the wider community and to ask critical question of faith and practice from the perspective of the margin” (Russell 25). The only way we who have enough can learn the perspective from the margin is to get to know the people who live there. For food ministries, that means we must learn get to know, and be in solidarity with, the people who come to get food.

Jesus died in solidarity with humankind. “Jesus freely decides to give his life in solidarity with those who are under the power of death” (Gutierrez Wells 92). It is in solidarity with those who are under the power of poverty, and thus the power of an early death, that Christians with plenty can be, in Gutierrez’ language, converted to solidarity with the poor (Gutierrez Wells 93). In my experience when we have plenty we can be removed from the threat of death, or at least face a sanitized picture of the threat of death. We struggle with finding meaning in life, but not with finding enough food or clothing or housing to prevent death. We are overwhelmed with busy-ness and exhaustion, but not with desperation to hang onto our lives. We plan how to avoid isolation and illness at eighty, but do not worry that the flu will put us out of work, and therefore unable to care for our families. We fear a death in a stark hospital room, but do not watch the slow degradation of our children’s lives as they have their significant meals not around the family table but at the school cafeteria, as they fail to get the education they need, as they fail to get the health care they need.

We can know these stories from the newspaper and from books, but that is not what builds solidarity. Solidarity grows from meeting individuals and getting to know them, and being part of their lives. We build community together, and as such we develop at the same time a spirituality together. “There is no aspect of human life that is unrelated to the following of Jesus. … A spirituality is not restricted to the so-called religious aspects of life: prayer and worship” (Gutierrez Wells 88). Indeed community becomes part of our spirituality. Our meals ministries become spiritual ministries because we are meeting, and knowing, and loving our neighbors.

“True love exists only among equals” (Gutierrez Wells 104). As we get to know each other we become more honest with each other—we who have plenty become more honest about our weaknesses and fears, we who have not enough become more honest about our gifts and strengths. Our stories become shared stories. Over time our love becomes more and more authentic. “Authentic love tries to start with the concrete needs of the other and not with the ‘duty’ of practicing love. Love is respectful of others and therefore feels obliged to base its action on an analysis of their situation and needs. Works in behalf of the neighbor are not done in order to channel idle energies or to give available personnel something to do; they are done because the other has needs and it is urgent that we attend to them” (Gutierrez Wells 108).

Food ministries can engage in authentic love, we do that by sitting down at the table with people in need and eating. Talking. Listening. Engaging with one another until we find that we are neighbors, and friends.
We find God in the food, and in each other. We find that salvation is in solidarity with one another. 

Do you know of a food ministry where people really get to know each other? I'd love to hear about it!

Gutierrez, Gustavo, We Drink from Our Own Wells The Spiritual Journey of a People, Maryknoll NY: Orbis: 2003. Matthew J. O’Connell, Trans. 20th Anniversary Edition.

Lupton, Robert D. Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charity Hurt Those They Help (And How to Reverse It) HarperOne 2011 Kindle Edition.

​Letty Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church, Louisville KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993.