Commonwealth

Transformation through Christian Community Development

Jimmy M. Dorrell

• Publisher: 1845 Books
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781481313513
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Today the chasm between rich and poor is constantly widening. While the wealthy seem to acquire more and more, the impoverished struggle to survive and thrive. This problem pervades not only the secular world but also modern Christianity. The Western church continues to spend more of its resources on its own needs than on those whom God calls us to see and to serve. Perhaps worse, the wealthiest church in history has often become complicit with systemic structures that perpetuate poverty in their own cities. Author and pastor Jimmy Dorrell explains that Scripture demands a drastically different attitude and approach from the wealthy regarding the poor.

In Commonwealth: Transformation through Christian Community Development, Dorrell not only explores the cultural entrapment of the modern church regarding wealth and relationships, but offers practical ways that Christians can serve and empower the poor and marginalized in their own communities. Drawing on experiences from twenty-eight years at Mission Waco | Mission World and Church Under the Bridge, and undergirded by a thorough and holistic engagement with Scripture, Christian history, and effective models, Dorrell's team has restored one of the most underserved neighborhoods in his community with programs for the unemployed, the homeless, the sick, the addicted and struggling children and teens. They even created a non-profit grocery store in the food desert, transformed a pornographic theater, and built an economic center in a former liquor store.

Christian community development rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ is how we become neighbors in the biblical sense. Beyond handouts and increased donations, it is only when the poor and marginalized of our communities are empowered that the whole city truly prospers. There is a commonwealth of resources and gifts in all classes, and, if we choose to work together, we can change unjust structures of privilege and favoritism. Dorrell challenges us to see that it is only when we understand how financial prosperity often deepens hardheartedness toward Christ and our neighbors that the Christian church can make the good news of Jesus Christ tangible in our communities and world.

1

Salvation Has Come to This House

I grew up in a Christian home where the Bible was elevated above other forms of truth. I attended church, learned the Bible, and avoided the vices that were most abhorrent to practicing believers. I also learned God cared for the poor, at least I read that he did. But with almost no contact with the poor, the Bible’s teachings about them remained quite abstract and irrelevant.

I was the shortest student in my high school, at least until my brother moved up a grade the next year. If being the shortest kid in those awkward teenage years was not hard enough, my peers constantly reminded me of it. Fortunately for me it was ten years after high school that the satirical song entitled “Short People,” sung by Randy Newman, would hit the charts and add insult to injury. My newest peers seemed to think it was incumbent on them to sing it and remind me, had I forgotten, that I was short. They also enjoyed singing the portions like, “We don’t want no short people round here,” “Short people got no reason to live,” and “Short people got nobody to love.”

In the story from Scripture about Zacchaeus, his physical shortness was just one of his problems. As if the ridicule for his short stature was not already challenging enough, the diminutive Zacchaeus (Luke 19:1-9) was also the despised chief tax collector, a publican, among the Jews in Jericho. Though his name meant “pure,” his peers saw him only as purely selfish. As a Jew collecting taxes for the Roman government, he was viewed as a traitor and considered corrupt by his own peers. Tax collectors were known to be so corrupt that they unashamedly cheated their own countrymen to become wealthy. Sinners and tax collectors were synonymous in this context. No one liked tax collectors.

Climb Up to See: Seeking Requires Action

A rumor began to spread one day that Jesus was coming through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem, for what is now called Holy Week. These were the last few days of the traveling Teacher’s life before he would be arrested, tortured, and crucified. For thousands of years, Jericho was known as an oasis town to tourists on their way to the feasts in Jerusalem. It was also known for its balsam. Years earlier, the same road led to the retreat palace of Herod the Great during the winters. It was the place where Jesus told the parable of the Good Samaritan who helped the man beaten and robbed. And now the city was clamoring to see the miracle worker who had just healed blind Bartimaeus, the persistent beggar.

As in most tourist towns, crowds gather quickly when news spreads of a celebrity coming to the village. Zacchaeus, the local chief tax collector, heard the rumors and wanted to see this Teacher who had performed miracles and confronted the religious Pharisees. Whether from curiosity or a deep desire to see a prophet who could reorient his meandering life toward a better path, he hustled down to the Jericho road. But alas, the crowds were already packed onto the dirt roadsides and the short tax collector could not see anything. No Jew was about to move over for the tax collector. Yet successful publicans get things done, so Zacchaeus ran up the road a few more yards to access the only option that seemed plausible. With sandals off he crawled up a large sycamore tree and found a limb that was just right above the road. As the dust on the road rose higher, he watched and waited among the throngs of common folk, merchants, government officials, and religious leaders. The onlookers murmured, yelled, clapped, and even ridiculed the small band of disciples as they grew closer. And then there he was. Jesus and his disciples were just below the tree.

Come Down to Be Seen: Intimacy Requires Vulnerability

“Come down immediately,” the Teacher said, as he looked up at Zacchaeus. “I must come to your house today.” “Was he talking to me? What did he say?” the publican must have thought. As Jesus focused his eyes clearly on him, Zacchaeus now knew it was him. Realizing this, the small man scurried down the large tree, his hands and feet scraped and scratched from sliding down the trunk, with confusion and excitement that he had been chosen.

The crowd murmured as Jesus reached out to touch Zacchaeus with a gentle gesture of kindness. This was a shocking response by Jesus, especially since Zacchaeus was a rich tax collector who worked for the Roman government, which meant he often cheated the local residents with added taxes for their own pockets. As they began to walk up the hill to the tax collector’s home, the murmuring among the crowd grew louder. “He’s gone to be a guest of a sinner. How could a true prophet of God have the audacity to engage with such a short, little scoundrel as that man?” they screamed. The crowd did not approve of any invitation to share a meal with such a despised tax collector, and they began to wonder if this prophet was a real prophet like everyone said. They hissed and booed as Jesus and Zacchaeus walked up the trail to his beautiful home, paid for by their taxes.

The spontaneous lunch meeting must have caught Zacchaeus’ family and neighbors by surprise. While they left their sandals outside the door and quickly washed their feet before entering the house, a servant boy was sent off to buy bread and wine for the guests. After receiving greetings by the Rabbi on the foreheads of the family, Jesus sat down on the open floor as the disciples joined them. “Shalom to your household. May God’s peace be yours,” Jesus said. And the conversation began. Since Jesus knew the heart of the publican and there was no need or time for pretentious words about the weather and the tourist trade in Jericho, Jesus’ presence likely initiated nervous confession by Zacchaeus. There is no record of excuse making or blaming others for his underhanded work for gain. Zacchaeus understood that Jesus knew him, his motives, and his idolatry of wealth and possessions better than he did. Amidst conviction and shame, Zacchaeus blurted out, “Lord, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount” (Luke 19:8).

As the words gushed forth, the tax collector must have experienced the joyous feeling of being honest before God for the first time. After years of guilt about taking advantage of others, Zacchaeus heard himself say repentant words that would be costly. These were not words of cheap confession by a sinner in the presence of a “holy man.” They came from the core of his soul, which had revolved around money and wealth for so long. The things that he loved the most were now confessed to Jesus as idolatrous gods that had taken him away from his life purpose to be a true son of Abraham. Now he wanted to know God more than he wanted anything else.

Real confession is hard for anyone, especially since justifying oneself is a natural trait for all humans. Confession that opens one’s soul up in front of others is frightening and requires vulnerability. Saving face, blaming, excuse making, and delayed confrontation are normative for all sinners and religious Pharisees. As the Spirit of God deeply convicts those he seeks, our rare moments of honest reflection offering the choice to agree with God about loving other gods more than him quickly get diluted. Like Peter who swore allegiance to Jesus during the last meal they had together before the Lord’s arrest, the later shame after repeated denial of Jesus cuts to the core of our being. It is hard to admit that we are liars, hypocrites, double-minded, and hard hearted. It is hard to confess that what we considered “little sins” of compromise, deceit, lust, and greed eventually emerged as the primary purpose and driver of our being. “I’m not all that bad,” we contend, and the lies continue to be covered up.

Zacchaeus got quiet, his own words of repentance screaming in his ears. He must have almost laughed inside, astounded that he finally had the courage to say out loud what he knew was true. He must have felt fear wondering what Jesus would say. Then with piercing words of truth that almost no one could have imagined, Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost” (Luke 19:9-10).

There must have been a pregnant pause throughout the room. No rich man during Jesus’ ministry had ever been declared saved in the kingdom of God. Would the rich really be able to enter it? Clapping by the disciples in the background may have broken the silence as they heard Jesus’ powerful words. Surely there were smiles and hugs around the room. The reality that this tax collector was now a follower of the Living God filled the room with awe and wonder. Short people do have a reason to live . . . the song was wrong!

The Whole Gospel

I grew up in the evangelical culture that emphasized conversion experiences. We had tracts, revivals, evangelism training, and door-to-door efforts to talk to neighbors about being “born-again.” Every sermon in church ended with an invitation to the unsaved to come forward and receive Christ. In those years, the powerful global impact of the Billy Graham Crusades was celebrated by churches as thousands of attendees would walk forward, prayerfully confess their sins, accept Jesus as Lord and Savior, and then be recognized as new believers. Some were baptized but few joined local churches.

Over the months and years ahead, however, many onlookers began to wonder what had really happened to them other than an outwardly religious experience. Often it seemed that the new Christians would slide back into old patterns of living just like the days before their experience. Though a few attended churches occasionally, gave a few dollars for the offering, and were generally polite to others, a transformation of their values and goals never seemed to take root. Repentance, the biblical word for turning around and going the other direction, was lacking in their supposed regeneration process. Discipleship appeared as optional for the ones who took it seriously, but not nearly as important as the one-time decision to “get saved and go to heaven.”

“Salvation” in my evangelical world meant to describe the experience of committing to God, which includes the assurance of going to heaven someday. Yet the biblical word is so much more than bowing one’s head and praying “the sinner’s prayer.” It is a threefold concept: “was saved” from my sins, “will be saved” for eternity, but also “am being saved” from the sins of my present life. In my evangelical world, the latter sounded too much like salvation by works, or being good enough through daily actions to earn heaven. But nothing could be further from the truth. The book of James, written to second generation Christians who seemed to be less enthusiastic about their faith than the first generation, urges these lackluster believers by saying, “Therefore get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you. Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says” (Jas 1:21-22), and then, “In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by actions, is dead” (Jas 2:17). Good works certainly do not save us, but without question there is no such thing as real faith that does not exude action. They are integrated words in the holistic Hebrew culture. Being and doing are parts of the same salvific experience. To say we believe something that is not accompanied by evidence of that belief is a lie. “If one of you says [to the brother or sister without clothes and daily food], ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” (Jas 2:16). God’s grace of salvation produces fruit in keeping with repentance, John the Baptist preached to the outwardly religious Pharisees and Sadducees coming to him for baptism in Matthew 3. Luke said to all the Jews that having Abraham as their forefather is not enough (Luke 3:8). “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same” (Luke 3:11). Real repentance demands confession and action.

The Cost of Being a Christ Follower

In the century after the resurrection of Jesus, many of those Christians who fled west from local persecution were influenced by the Greco-Roman world. Plato’s idea that the “soul” was distinctively separate for the whole person was different from the Hebraic worldview. Christians mistakenly separated body and soul. Unlike the biblical worldview where body, soul, and mind are all integrated, Gnosticism’s metaphysical approach separated these. The Greeks believed that people could be “spiritual,” unrelated to their human actions. Even today Christians frequently think of their spiritual life unrelated to their human actions. Such a belief is heretical according to the history of the Church and biblical scholarship. God cares about the whole person equally—physical, mental, and spiritual. What we do now on earth matters, even how we eat, drive our cars, and take care of our bodies, which are a “temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19).

In the presence of Jesus, Zacchaeus stood up in his house and renounced his earthly possessions. Then Jesus affirmed his salvation. Never in a million years would my evangelical culture have published an evangelistic tract that included giving away one’s possessions as one of the four steps to accepting Christ as Savior. Instead they would put an asterisk mark on the tract suggesting that this story was a unique situation only for the tax collector types to get saved. In my culture the often quoted “four spiritual laws” had nothing to do with the “physical laws” that included my possessions. Yet how is it that Jesus would not request of us, the wealthiest of the world, the same that he did of Zacchaeus, if not more? John’s Epistle does. “How can you, rich Christian, ignore the needs of the hungry, poor, and marginalized and think you are Christian?” (1 John 3:17).

Unlike the rich young ruler who walked away sadly because selling all he owned and giving it to the poor was too great a cost, Zacchaeus discovers God’s salvation. “Having said goodbye to all his possessions, he has become Jesus’ disciple, successfully passing through the eye of a needle into God’s kingdom, and acquired inexhaustible treasure in heaven” (Metzger 2007, 178). There would be a cost to follow. “Like Jesus’ disciples, now he too can expect to exit on the periphery of society and endure criticism and insult” (179). While it may seem at first that Zacchaeus was seeking Jesus, it turns out that Jesus was seeking Zacchaeus. He was lost in a maze of overconsumption, stockpiling, and depriving others of the most basic provisions. Having repented of his wealth and committed to giving it away, Jesus’ ministry is empowered to continue among the disenfranchised through redistribution and need meeting, even to the blind man healed earlier in Jericho.

Escaping Cultural Christianity

The journey begins with our own pilgrimage to “see in the mirror dimly” the distorted worldviews we embrace as a twenty-first century Pharisee, shaped mostly by cultural religion and preoccupation with being “people-pleasers.” As “good kids from normal homes,” our worldviews were shaped by Christian America, living out the inherent values of the culture. We are from two-parent, middle-income, neighborly households with good schools and a swimming pool. We went to church, sang the National Anthem, and played with other children who looked like us. Janet played the guitar and rode her horse. I played Little League baseball and made “A’s” in school. Life was good.

What I never really saw was the racism of my community, divided by black and white, poverty and wealth. There were two schools at each grade level to separate “us” from “them.” We played in different Little Leagues, were separated by race on the balcony and main floor of the only movie theater, and even drank water from the “white’s only” or “colored” water fountains at the hamburger cafe. It was “normal” life. High school years got confusing. Vietnam was escalating. Hippies were growing long hair and talking about free love. The Beatles sang about “trips” without ever leaving home. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was marching with thousands against racism.

At age seventeen the rumors spread one Sunday morning that the “Negroes” (and other racist nuances of that name) were coming to our all-white church to join in the worship service as a statement that they were equals and that the world was changing. Most all of us were afraid about what that could mean for our safety. To alleviate our fears the deacons assured us that they would not let them into the church. They announced, out loud and without apology, the distorted social value of our culture right there in our big church, the supposed representative of the radical Jesus who called us to oneness.

The Black churchgoers never came, but something happened to me that day that has never gone away. While I too was afraid like my peers of what I did not understand, deep down I wondered why we Christians were not welcoming. Were we really trying to protect “God’s order” of separating people of color with the dominant white culture, or as some said, could it be that the church itself had become complicit in the cultural norms? Despite the biblical words of being ministers of reconciliation that we discussed in Sunday School class weeks before, it was exposed as a façade and made impotent by our visible actions. As a teenager trying to grow in my faith and still respect my elders, I did not have the critical thinking skills then, which I am still embarrassed about today, to speak up. The blend of “Christianized” cultural norms and the teachings of Jesus were diametrically opposed.

Periods of awakening, small and large, have slowly remolded our viewpoints and lives. From a Calcutta slum to a decision to move into an impoverished, racially diverse neighborhood in Waco, Texas, Janet and I have come to see the world and our purpose in it differently than we did during our upbringing. The chapters ahead are a testimony of our slow obedience to God’s kingdom that continued to chip away at the false presuppositions we formerly embraced. Gradually we discovered the joys of having relationships with the poor and marginalized in ways we had never known before. Unfortunately, we also have continued to discover more of the embedded views that often have hurt and disempowered the very ones we came to love.

Out of thirty-one parables that Jesus told in the synoptic Gospels, nineteen of them had to do with the misuse and distribution of wealth, social class, indebtedness, and worker pay. In addition, the encounters and teachings of Christ and the writings from the early church deepened Jesus’ teachings and expanded upon the actions expected of the church. The Good Samaritan, the Rich Young Ruler...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1. Salvation Has Come to This House
• 2. Compassion and the Journey into Pain
• 3. Relationships Change Everything
• 4. Jubilee Breaks Out
• 5. The Bible Is Not a Children’s Book
• 6. The Bible and History
• 7. Who Then Can Be Saved?
• 8. The Church Is Being Coopted
• 9. Poverty of Spirit Is the Beginning
• Bibliography