1 night on the street

On November 15th and 16th, WCRF will broadcast live from “the street”…the corner of West 30th and Lorain in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. During the broadcast, the listeners will hear the scope of city ministry…from feeding the hungry, to clothing the homeless, to tutoring, English as a second language classes, and so much more.

This event’s purpose is drive the church to consider coming back to help our brothers and sisters who are working very hard, with very little, in city ministry.

In this essay, WCRF’s Mark Zimmerman talks about how his “academic faith”, turned into a more active faith…

The street festival was getting more crowded, the rappers were getting louder…and all around me were young Latinos and African-Americans who were reacting more than listening to what was happening on the platform. Standing next to me was Pastor Max from Nueva Luz, and we were talking about this neighborhood on Cleveland’s West Side – where it had come from, and where it was going – when he caught me by surprise by completely reversing Acts 1.8 on me…

I know…hold on…by this point, those of you who know me have already said (maybe twice), “Mark…at a West Side street rap festival? What’s a nice suburban white boy like him doing in place like that? Well, it’s actually a “not so long” story…

In May of 2006, my oldest daughter was preparing to leave for the summer to be a counselor at her aunt and uncle’s Bible camp in northern Minnesota. As she was getting ready to go, she handed me a book, and asked me to read it. I said I would.

And I did…within 48 hours.

The book was Shane Claiborne’s The Irresistible Revolution (Zondervan-2006), and needless to say, once I picked it up it was hard to resist the audacity of this 30-ish country boy from Tennessee who was now in full-time ministry at a ‘community’ of believers known as The Simple Way (www.thesimpleway.org) in the poorest neighborhood in Philadelphia.

The audacity? It came in the form of a simple question: What if Jesus meant all the stuff He said in the New Testament? Which brought on his next question: What if Jesus meant everything He said about the poor and marginalized in society? And that sent me back three more years.

I was outside the United States for the first time in November 2003. On my first day in the Dominican Republic, I was standing in the middle of the worst barrio in Santo Domingo. The noise of the motorbikes, the meringue music coming from the speakers in the windows, the cross-street shouted conversations…

The smells…cooking, sweat, gasoline exhaust…and urine. It was an assault on the senses.

Moments before, I had been inside a 10’x20’ concrete block ‘home’ with no electricity or plumbing where the gutters in the alleyway outside served as the only sewer system for the neighborhood. Now, I was standing in a traffic island as the barrio symphony pounded away at me from all directions, and I remember the only thought at the moment that could find room inside my head:

My life has just changed.

And I honestly felt it had.

When I returned from the DR in 2003, and from Guatemala in 2005, I told my listeners what I saw, what I felt, and what to do about it. I made nice photo presentations and spoke at whatever church would have me about my experiences.

But by May 2006, there was an uneasiness in my spirit. I knew I’d done good, but I also knew there was more…much more. Something was right in front of my face…and I was missing it. And then came ‘that book’. As I dug deeper in The Irresistible Revolution, I knew exactly what was missing, and I knew that it was right in front of my face. While my short-term mission experiences had been fruitful in one sense, I knew that there was always that ‘high’ upon returning that faded quicker than the memories of the places I’d been and the people I’d met. It was missing before I stepped off the plane home.

What was right in front of my face was there every day when I drove home from work. It was the skyline of my hometown…Cleveland.

The ‘poorest city in America’.

By June of 2006, I had walked in the front door of Building Hope in the City - www.buildinghopeinthecity.org - a ministry of Trinity Lutheran Church at West 30^th and Lorain in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood. There are many inner city ministries in Cleveland. Certainly lots of bigger ones that get most of the press coverage between Thanksgiving and Christmas (the time the poor and homeless are most noticed…and tolerated), but I wasn’t looking for the biggest or the shiniest…I was looking for where I fit…and at Trinity…I fit.

I committed to bring a team from my church down to Trinity one Saturday a month to handle the “Community Dinner”. I was told that about 100 people usually showed up. Some were working poor from the neighborhood, some were just looking for a freebie, and some were homeless.

I was excited. And I shared this excitement with my wife.

“But,” she said gently but realistically, “you can’t cook.”

Details.

Have you ever been inside a GFS? Wonderful place for someone like me. We started slow, and “GFS-ed” our way through the first few months of feeding whoever came in the doors.

I walked in that first Saturday knowing absolutely nothing about these people. Who they were, where they lived, how they lived. I just grabbed a plate once everyone had been served, and sat down…to listen.

It was the usual…politics, sports, the neighborhood. Within two months, I knew who the “know-it-all” was, who the peacemakers were, and who was always trying to get ‘thirds’ when they tried the con that they hadn’t had ‘seconds’ yet.

My wife played hymns on the keyboard as people ate their dinner. It had a calming effect on the place…the conversation changed. They started talking to me.

“That’s my favorite hymn.”

“My mother used to sing that to me.”

“She plays that so beautifully…”

Connection.

A bedtime song. A confirmation day with a beautiful dress and a party at home after church. A family photo long ago lost.

I started asking questions. About them. About life. About faith. And I kept listening to their answers, their opinions, their ‘street theology’.

I asked for permission to pray for them and with them.

I asked them their names. And I remembered them (miracle). When they walked in the door, I would greet Ralph, Juanita, Paul, and “Red”.

I would make sure 8-year-old Maria would find one of my daughters to start a game going for the kids, and that her older brother Josh would find something to do to help me.

I would make sure to tuck away some of the unsold bread Panera would send over, and save it for Angie. Angie didn’t eat the bread, mind you, she lugged back across town to feed the birds and the squirrels of Cleveland’s near East Side. (Hey…the girl can hike…we found her once with her pull cart surrounded by pigeons at CSU…50 blocks from the church!)

The number of people at my church who wanted to help was growing. “Hey, can I come back with you again next month?”

We started experimenting with the menu selections. “What if we did meat loaf next month?” I asked.

“Does GFS have meatloaf?”

“No…what if everybody just made their own recipe? Let’s try that.” It worked.

“This tastes like my mom’s…hey, can your wife play I’ll Fly Away next?”

Connection.

Mom in the kitchen. Dad coming home. The aroma that meant ‘homework can wait’.

Over one year into my time volunteering with Building Hope in the City, I’ve learned a lot:

• How much food 100 people can eat
• How to find a “comfort food”…something homemade…for every menu
• How a homeless person can turn a church bathroom into their personal shower stall (yuck)
• How to pray a meaningful blessing before a meal
• How to keep peace when Angie’s jamming a half-dozen loaves of bread into her sack before anyone else has taken any (“C’mon man, she’s just gonna feed it tuh the birds!!!”)

And so much more… As I’ve met others in the neighborhood, talked to other ministries in the area, attended seminars, and looked at web sites I’ve accumulated some interesting information. (Like www.census.gov – the U.S. Census Bureau can give you some very interesting stats other than people and income…like whether English is the primary language spoken in a state, or a city, or a neighborhood) So, with about 18 months worth of volunteering, and a dangerously low amount of accumulated knowledge rattling around in my head…here’s what I think I’ve figured out:

The government isn’t going to “solve” poverty. If the economic/industrial expansion of “The Gilded Age” of the 1890’s didn’t do it, if the “New Deal” didn’t do it, if the gazillions of dollars of LBJ’s “Great Society” didn’t do it, guess what? The solution will not be found on Capitol Hill, at the Statehouse in Columbus, or at Cleveland City Hall.

Is Cleveland “the poorest city in America”? By the terms of measurement used by whoever’s controlling the stat sheet in DC…yes.

But…

Great question.

I’ve admired my Mennonite friends for a long time, and in the last year, I read a short book on Mennonite theology – and I came away more impressed. Mennonites have the audacity to believe that James was right when he said that “faith without works is dead.” In fact, if you don’t show the evidence of “works” in your life, a Mennonite will question whether your faith really exists.

What I’m saying is simply this: the suburban church needs to take the focus off itself, and retake the cities it has fled in the last fifty years…for Jesus’ sake. Not with donations and programs. But with our hands and feet.

You get more out than you give. From the steaming barrio in Santo Domingo, to a lonely country orphanage in a cold, dark-at-4pm northern Latvia, the formula stated above works. I look forward to my Saturdays at Building Hope in the City as much as any day of the month…because I get out more than I give. From the people that serve with me, to the people I serve, I’ve discovered another piece of the Gospel: The parable of The Good Samaritan. The answer to Jesus question: “Who is my neighbor?” Understand…my discovery came not because I hadn’t read that passage before…I had. Dozens of times. My discovery came this time because I chose not to ignore the passage. It echoes how I saw the homeless for many years. When I worked in Downtown Cleveland, they were always there…I just chose not to see them. Even though (I said) I was a Christian at the time. Years of saying I was following the Lord…only to realize that’s it’s a lot harder to walk next to Him when you keep crossing back and forth across the street to avoid the people you don’t want to touch…or see…or smell.

As I’ve said, I would make no boast that I have figured out a special revelation for God, I’ve merely figured out that opening my eyes and ears is resulting in an opening of my heart as well.

We need to go “back to Jerusalem” Let’s go back to that rap festival on the West Side with Pastor Max. As I was looking at this scene of a church meeting that neighborhood’s generation where it lived – in the street – Pastor Max was talking about Acts 1.8. You know the verse…Jesus is talking to his followers before He ascends into heaven. He tells them to take the Good News from Jerusalem (the city), to Judea (the “close by”), to

I can’t turn my hometown around all by myself. Neither can you.

Could a few dozen of us turn around a neighborhood school? Could a few hundred of us help a few hundred adults learn to read…get their GEDs…and help them become truly employable? How would that affect the caseloads at social service agencies? How would a neighborhood where people watch out for each other allow police officers to be assigned differently in the city? No new taxes. No extended curfews. No big speeches. Just Christians…one by one…ten by ten…coming into the city on a regular basis, and being Jesus hands and feet.

Okay. So where do I start? On November 15^th & 16^th, WCRF will hold an event called 1 Night on the Street. During this live broadcast event, direct from West 30^th & Lorain, listeners will hear about the needs and opportunities in the city. By way of a web database, and a phone bank at WCRF, listeners will be able to connect with and commit to city ministries of all kinds:

• Feeding the hungry
• Clothing the poor
• Tutoring children
• Tutoring adults
• Teaching English as a second language (ESL) programs
• Helping with senior & nursing home programs
• Job training

…and many other ministries in the city. What makes this event different is that there will be no fundraising, and no “stuff-raising”…

We’re “raising people”.

The city ministries will take good care of you, and be assured, they have plenty for you to do. You think your suburban church staff is overworked and understaffed? Just come to the city. If you’re good at something, you’re needed. Take a chance. Choose a ministry. Come to the city…just once. If you’re like me, you’ll go back for more.

It’s time to go back to Jerusalem.