The Invisible Barrier

We moved to our new home a little over a year ago. Like most small towns in the South, it is still quite segregated. There are two distinct cultures, and there aren’t many places that they overlap. The public elementary school is an exception. Not only do black and white children attend together – they also mix socially.

When we enrolled our son in the public kindergarten, we were delighted to find that he made friends easily in his diverse class. He is now best friends with Marcus, a black kid who lives in one of the run-down, destitute trailer parks that lie on the edge of town. It's obvious to adults which kids come from the trailer parks and which don't. At least at that age, the kids don't seem to notice.

Every day, our son comes home talking about how Marcus did this, and Marcus said that. They clearly have a close bond. He knows nothing of the different reality that Marcus goes home to each night. They truly are from different worlds. At this young age, however, those different worlds have not yet erected that invisible barrier that keeps segregation and all its consequences in effect - even 40 years after schools were integrated.

When it came time for us to have a birthday party, we realized just how strong that invisible barrier can be. Naturally, our son wanted to invite Marcus to the party. We were dismayed to discover, however, that we had no way to get in touch with Marcus’ parents to extend the invitation.

School regulations prevent the giving out of any personal information about a student, such as a phone number, and the children aren’t allowed to pass out invitations for private parties. We didn’t even have a way to find out Marcus’ last name, short of relying on our son to ask him and remember it when he got home (which didn’t work). And even if we did have his last name, in this day and age, there is a strong chance his legal guardian has a different name.

If it had been a child from our “side of the tracks,” we could have used our social connections to find out who the parents are and extend the invitation – but we simply don’t know anyone from Marcus’ world. The segregation is still that profound. So profound that in a town of a few thousand people, we found it impossible to make a connection with the parents of a child our young son had made such a strong connection with.

As I read books and have conversations with colleagues about how to do effective outreach ministry, the common theme that emerges is “building relationships.” We must get to know the people we wish to reach out to and build friendships and trust. These different worlds will always be separated by that invisible barrier if we can’t share our lives and not just our resources. What better way to begin building such relationships than by celebrating a child’s birthday together?

When we told our son that his best friend couldn’t make it to the party, he cried. My prayer is that this experience isn’t already building his barrier.

From the Pulpit: The Other Side Of The Boat

(This excerpt is from the sermon I preached at Clarksville Presbyterian Church on August 21, 2011. It is based on John 21: 1-14)

It is a good thing to have some self-awareness about the traditions we keep and why we keep them, and to be willing to update some of them when it is necessary. That is the lesson that we learn from today’s story from the 21st chapter of John.

All night long, the disciples have been out on the lake, and they’ve brought in absolutely no fish. Their nets are completely empty haul after haul. But then, just as the sun is beginning to come up, they see Jesus standing there on the shore. Being unusually honest for fisherman, they admit to him that they’ve caught absolutely no fish. Jesus tells them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat. And as soon as the disciples move their nets, they began to catch more fish than they can haul into the boat.

Now as I’ve already suggested, I don’t know much about fishing - especially about fishing with nets from a boat. But obviously, something had happened in that lake that night. Something changed. Whether it was the wind, the temperature, or the water currents – conditions were different than what they were used to, and the fish weren’t where they had always been. The techniques that had worked in the past were no longer working. The solution was not to completely change what they were doing. They were still going to be fishing in the lake with nets from a boat. But they did need to makes some adaptation, some updating of their technique, to continue catching fish.

In the same way, we as the church are in a time of changing conditions. And because of this, we are struggling to balance tradition with the call for new practices. And it's hard for us, because we are a body of believers that is steeped in tradition, some going back as far as 2000 years or even longer.

What has made the church so strong and so resilient throughout its history is its ability to resist every trend and fad that comes along in culture, and to instead stay true to our beliefs and our core practices. As a result, even as the world is rapidly changing around us, and even as other institutions rise and fall, we can always count on the church being here as an authentic and consistent witness to the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ.

So our calling is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater and abandon everything that has made the church great. But in these changing times, we are being called to update some of our techniques. If we want to give the most effective witness we can in today’s world, we can’t be completely tied to “the way that we’ve always done things.” We must be willing to fish from the other side of the boat, because like or not, the fish that we are meant to catch are not where they used to be...

... In our particulr time and place, when Jesus calls on us to fish from the other side of the boat, he is calling us most urgently to update the way we do evangelism and outreach. Those are the areas where, despite a lot of hard work and a lot of good efforts, we are pulling up empty nets. It’s not that our church and other churches in the community have not already been doing good outreach ministry. We have many very dedicated people who put in a lot of hours at places like the food pantry, Project Care For, the Ruritan’s thrift store, Madeline’s House, and other places that have helped a lot of people. It’s not that these ministries have failed. Not in any way.

But the reality is that these efforts are no longer enough. I don’t have to quote a bunch of statistics for us to realize how tough the economy is – and we are now entering the fourth year since the bottom fell out. Many people who used to have good jobs are facing the unimaginable strain of long-term unemployment, and many others are learning to scrape by on a fraction of what they used to earn.

In Mecklenburg County, these increasing economic needs seem to be especially urgent, and the structures we have in place to help people are being strained to the breaking point. Here in Clarksville, Project Care For has been shut down since June for lack of funds – which is not the first time this has happened - and the food pantry has burned through all of its reserve supplies.

The fish have moved, and our traditional nets of outreach ministry are no longer adequate. As a church and as a community, we are being called to cast our nets on the other side of the boat. We are being called to dig deep not just into our financial resources, but into all of our talents and skills and energies, to come up with new and more effective ways to help those who are struggling in these difficult times.

This summer, I have been in conversation with the other three pastors in our downtown area about ways that our community can better meet these needs – and our own Mission Committee has discussed this as well. We all agree that it’s going to take a different approach than just handouts of food or money. What people need the most are things like jobs, education, childcare, and transportation – things that are not as simple as paying an electric bill, but that in the long run provide a much greater benefit.

Over the course of the coming months, my hope is that these conversations can continue and that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, something can begin to come together - some type of new ministry. I can’t say what this new ministry should look like. It’s going to require a vision that is much broader than one pastor or one church. But I can say that it will require us to cast our nets on the other side of the boat, to do more than “what we’ve always done.”