The Spirit and the Prophetic Church

Building Ministry Coalitions for Urban Ministry

Part 2 of 2

Editor’s Note: Read Part 1 in the Spring 2013 issue of The Pneuma Review

The Situation of Post-Katrina New Orleans

The situation of Cradock in Portsmouth is not an anomaly. This is important to note. The city of New Orleans has various relevant examples. During Katrina in 2005, churches in New Orleans were ruined, communities were destroyed, some people were severely hurt and others even lost their lives. Even today—seven years later, churches in distressed communities of New Orleans continue to struggle to rebuild and many of the communities remain discombobulated. Considering the history of the Black Church,³⁵ the Rev. C.T. Vivian, who is a veteran civil-rights activist in Atlanta and former ministry colleague with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., developed a plan. He wanted to bypass the government and organize an ecumenical consortium of churches to work together towards rebuilding the churches and revitalizing the ramshackle urban communities. Rev. Vivian thought that he would be able to pull other predominant African American churches together in the ecumenical spirit of the Black Church to play a key role in revitalizing New Orleans.³⁶

There are thousands of well-to-do churches in America with ministers who are millionaires. Yet, the Church Supporting Churches organization in the hurricane-torn New Orleans has essentially failed in its efforts to revitalize several communities and churches. There is a national disparity of unified support in communities from churches. This problem has become a Christian travesty. The broken communities of New Orleans, like Cradock in Portsmouth, are sad examples of churches missing opportunities for collaborative and prophetic urban ministry.

The Bible, God, and the City

Many seminary and bible school graduates wrestle to connect the theological training they receive in the traditional seminary with doing ministry in the city. Much of today’s theological education system has been irresponsible in providing a necessary bridge between biblical, intellectual, and practical life in the city. This is partly due to stubborn methods for theological discourse. In Urban Ministry: An Introduction, Ronald E. Peters rightly comments that only theology that maintains a bottom-up perspective will continue to be relevant for ministry on the margins.³⁸ Thinkers such as Gustavo Gutiérrez Merino, Juan Luis Segundo, James Cone, Gayroud Willmore, Cornell West, Roswith Gerloff, Jeremiah Wright and others have championed other approaches from bottom-up perspectives. In general, their work has sought to address the painful realities of social, political, and racial disenfranchisement associated with theology that produces inept ministry in distressed, urban-type communities.

Evangelical theology, moreover, struggles to appropriate its focus. One the one hand, it is community-focused in that it places a premium on evangelism. On the other hand, it fails to engage people in their everyday situations. Its top-down approach to theology emphasizes the church’s own agenda in the community to “save souls” but seems oblivious to the biblical call to liberate the oppressed and care for the degraded. God, as perceived by such theology, seems to care mostly about people who read scripture and obey. But how might a distressed and impoverished urban dweller perceive this evangelical understanding of obedience? If getting someone to escape to heaven is all that matters, ⁴⁰ then their everyday cares and chronic desperation means nothing.

As appearing in the Pneuma Review Spring 2013.

Thesis and Introduction

Scholars from disciplines other than the theological guild have observed the value that congregations play in their members’ everyday lives. When churches engage in the affairs of the community within which they are located, their presence and participation as community leaders result in profound community transformation, impact felt far beyond the walls of the church.¹

State officials and community leaders confirm scholars’ research findings that there is a need for churches to play a leadership role in transforming communities that are victims of urban blight.² Brian Gullins, Program Administrator for the Strengthen Families Initiative at Virginia Department of Social Services, comments that “State governments are beginning to recognize that encouraging the faith community to strengthen families is actually a poverty reduction strategy beneficial to all.”³ Gullins concludes that of the social service and civic organizations within urban communities, the most promising institutions to effectuate community transformation are the churches. He says, “If we could get the churches to partner with us, we could address the issue of absent fathers in a profound way.”⁴ Scott C. Alleman, Associate Commonwealth’s Attorney of the Special Prosecutions Trial Team (Narcotics/Vice) in Virginia Beach adds that when the legal team goes onsite to do a criminal investigation, most of the time there are several churches within a stone’s throw from the crime scene. Alleman comments, “It would be great if we could get the churches to get involved. I think there is huge potential for partnerships and cooperation between the church and law enforcement.”⁵

A lack of church involvement in their own neighborhoods, which baffles state officials and community leaders, appears to be the result of a flawed theological framework undergirding the churches’ ecclesiology.⁶ The most salient questions, moreover, are whether or not churches recognize that God has appointed them as viable mechanisms to lead in holistic transformation. Does their practice of theology allow them to be open and involved in community transformation? Also, given the wide-range of needs and need for a variety of gifts, do churches have an ecumenical⁷ theology that gives them reason to partner with churches of different denominational traditions?

In this essay, I will argue that a prophetic⁸ church is not a single congregation working to make right the wrong in communities and in the world but rather the unified ecumenical coalition of churches that together are a witness to Christ in voice and action. Ecumenical ministries are necessary mechanisms for advancing God’s kingdom on earth. This much-needed conversation on ecumenical coalition building has particular implications towards urban transformation.

A Pentecostal Perspective for An Ecumenical Theology

Twentieth Century American Pentecostalism was born as an ecumenical ministry—people from several different denominational, theological, and doctrinal traditions and different ethnic groups came together based on the common denominator that God was moving by the Holy Spirit.⁹ Walter Hollenweger argues that “the Pentecostal Movement started as an ecumenical revival movement within the traditional churches.”¹⁰ Dale T. Irvin points out that William Seymour, founder of twentieth century American Pentecostalism, understood that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit overcomes hate, bigotry, racism and prejudice, as well as doctrinal and theological differences that caused divisions in the churches.¹¹ In the essay “Pentecostalism and Ecumenism: Past, Present, and Future” Amos Yong laments how historically Pentecostals, as an ecumenical movement in many ways have “squandered a golden opportunity to continue as a prophetic voice not only on racial and ethnic issues, but also on socio-economic ones as well.”¹² Since then, Paul Alexander and others have taken up portions of this torch and championed theologies from a Pentecostal perspective that advocate for social activism in regards to acts of war ethnic equality and racial reconciliation. Yet, there remains a need to plant the seeds of Pentecostal ecumenism in a theology for urban ministry.

This essay is a step towards a theology for urban ministry from a Pentecostal perspective. It contributes to the necessary rationale for all churches to minister as a unified Body of Christ for more viable prophetic ministry—addressing, engaging, and transforming urban communities by the power of the Holy Spirit.¹³ Ministry must be both ecumenical and prophetic to be effective in our cities.

Walter Brueggemann describes the impact that results from the lack of a prophetic outlook in ministry. The absence of a prophetic theology in ministry results in churches that are disconnected from the community into which they are called. From a mainline denominational perspective, Brueggemann explains that “ministry most often exists in congregations that are bourgeois, if not downright obdurate, and in which there is no special openness to or support of prophetic ministry.”¹⁴ He seems to ignore the heavy emphasis on the prophetic within Pentecostal Churches.