A Church That Matters

A ringing phone after ten p.m. in a pastor's home is a sure sign that someone is in trouble. They need help fast. It might be a frustrated parent, a frightened spouse, a discouraged police officer; anyone.

This time, though, the voice was a rural Mississippi pastor. I had met him several months earlier. While looking at the lowest income rural counties in the U.S., I had visited with him for a few hours about his community. It was perhaps in the bottom ten rural counties in the nation for personal income.

Personal income within the community is incredibly important to the local church. The church lives on contributions of its members and non-member supporters. It can and should focus its mission work on factors that impact the economic life of the community. By attempting to comprehend the thinking of Jesus, the Church will search for ways to support individuals, families and communities in economic development.

Now several months had gone by. My report to the General Board of Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church had been turned in. It rested securely and comfortably on a shelf in New York City. It would probably never see the light of day again. But the pastor needed help now. "What is the Church prepared to do for us? We need help. Our people are starving. We pay in all that money for mission work. That is a part of being United Methodist. Then it goes to either New York or some other overseas place. We are getting tired of that."

What he didn't say rumbled through the conversation. I did not know then that the community was deciding whether or not to allow and support a local casino gambling industry. He may have been primarily looking for some hope of stopping the gaming tables. It is pretty hard to resist the lure of casino industries when the actual common unemployment rate runs above 70%. When I told him the results of the study, he became terrible depressed and tearful. He mourned the wasted money for the study. I had to agree with him. The money seemed to have been wasted. I told him I would try to find out what I could. He just hung up the phone without words of good-by.

Since that time I have spent much time revisiting and studying these counties. My wife, Donella, and I have also visited many more counties with common needs. The counties in the original study were situated in a great circle of major poverty around the US. The states involved were Arizona, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kentucky, South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana.

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