Let’s Stop Toy Drives and Really “Rejoice the City”

We’re just past the holidays. I put in a lot of car miles, and passed a lot of churches. Quite a few had signs announcing their annual toy drives for poor kids. Christmas can generate a giving spirit, and for many congregations, that expresses itself in a plethora of programs to help the poor – Angel Trees and turkey baskets and “coats for Christmas.”

Call me Scrooge if you like, but we need to stop this.

Why? Because commodified, short-term, relief-oriented “benevolence” is far too easy for givers and far too inadequate for receivers. It allows givers to remain distant from real need. They get to feel good about giving, without getting their hands dirty or their Daytimers interrupted. Recipients are viewed only in terms of their needs, and never in terms of their assets. And the charity supplied provides just a Band-Aid, no genuine long-term strategy. Our typical benevolence allows us to help the poor, but not to know them. It enables them to manage their poverty a little better, but not to escape it.

Even more importantly, the turkey basket approach doesn’t even begin to embody the principles the Bible teaches about compassion, justice, power, and stewardship. The Good Samaritan didn’t toss canned goods and a religious tract at the wounded traveler along the Jericho Road. He got up close and personal, sullying his own clothes tending to the man’s wounds. Nehemiah didn’t just bring the Jerusalemites some used clothing. He engaged in community organizing – getting everyone to pitch in on the wall-rebuilding project. Then he fought for justice for the poor against the politically powerful folks who were abusing them (read chapter 5 if you haven’t ever heard that part of the story). Jesus’ ministry was holistic—He didn’t treat people as bodies without souls or as souls without bodies. These and other examples reveal key principles that must shape truly Christian approaches to community ministry. They illuminate core values like incarnation and personal relationship as well as strategies like power-sharing and working with others instead of ministering to them.

Proverbs 11:10 offers us insights for a better approach to urban ministry. It says, “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.” The word rejoice is important – it connotes an ecstatic, dancing-in-the-streets celebration that happens when a small people wins an unlikely victory over a stronger enemy who’d threatened to wipe them out. When God’s people—the righteous or “the doers of justice”—prosper, they steward their power and prosperity in such sacrificial, generous ways that the rest of the community rejoices like that. When the righteous use their power, wealth, influence, education, health, networks—all the things that make up “prosperity”—not for self-enrichment but for the common good, they encourage community transformation that leaves the poor singing. We’re not talking about a rich Christian giving her used $100 dress to Goodwill so that a poor person in the city can buy it for only $3 and “rejoice.” The poor person’s smile in Goodwill just isn’t what Proverbs 11:10 is talking about. This is “VE Day” type rejoicing, and the city engages in it only when community life has become transformed by foretastes of shalom—when finally even those at the bottom can enjoy some wholeness, opportunity, and security.

We need to become churches that make our cities rejoice like that. But that won’t happen if we keep sponsoring toy drives. It requires rethinking how we engage the community and how we mobilize and deploy our congregants. Consider this thought experiment:

Suppose there’s a church in City X, with a congregation mostly of middle and upper class professionals. The pastor says one day in early November: “We need to show the love of Jesus to the needy here in City X at Christmas, so we’re going to do a toy drive and provide gifts and groceries to needy families. I want everyone here to participate!” A banker in the congregation heeds the announcement, and donates $20 and some canned goods from his pantry.

At the end of January, some church members are reflecting on their experience delivering the toys. “You know, we really met some cute kids,” says one. “Yeah, it would be great if we could do something more for them.” Well—a bright idea is borne and brought to the pastor: what about a church-based after school tutoring program? After all, helping these kids do better in school could be a key to lifting them out of poverty.

The pastor buys in and announces the following Sunday: “We’re starting a tutoring program, and we need volunteers on Thursdays from 3:00 to 5:00. If you can read and you love kids, why not join us?” Back in his pew, the banker listens and thinks, “Well, I know how to read. And I’m high enough up in the bank to have a flexible schedule to take some time off on Thursday afternoons.” So he volunteers to tutor.

A few months later, the pastor learns about a financial literacy program that some ministries are incorporating into their tutoring programs. The initiative teaches kids money management skills and lets them budget their own virtual currency. He’s hooked—he can immediately see the importance of the youngsters understanding about credit cards, banking, and saving. He stands up next Sunday and asks if there are any parishioners who’d be willing to teach the financial life lessons at the tutoring program.

Our hypothetical banker sits up a little straighter in his pew. Now here’s a service opportunity that’s really up his alley! “I’ve got an Masters degree in finance,” he thinks to himself. “Teaching this class will be no problem.”
 
Fast forward a year. The church has started learning a bit about listening, about doing service “with” the families and not just “to” them.  And the parents of the kids in the tutoring program have shared a big concern. Seventy-five percent of the neighborhood is in debt to the local payday lending stores. The payday lenders charge over 400% interest, and the loans have to be repaid in full—not installments. Most of the families can’t escape the vicious cycle of debt. “That’s terrible!” the pastor and other volunteers cry. They study the issue—and the Old Testament prophets—and decide they must take a stand for justice. “We need to advocate new laws to shut down the payday lending stores,” the pastor tells his congregation. “We need people here with some political clout and connections to help us get organized and our voices heard on this important issue.”

Well, our hypothetical banker is poised to act. He’s crazy about his precocious little tutee, Darious, and knows that Darious’ mom (who works two jobs) is in debt to the payday store.  He pulls out his Rolodex and starts making some calls. Eventually, through his efforts and the church’s partnership in a larger collaboration that is organized to fight on this issue, a city ordinance is passed outlawing payday lending.

It’s a marvelous victory...but then a graduate economics student in the church visits the pastor. “I think it was great we shut down the bad guys,” the bespectacled young woman begins. “But the reason there were so many of them is that there is a demand for their services.” She suggests that protest was insufficient: now the church needs to offer the working poor a creative, fair alternative. The pastor agrees. And who does he call to lead the effort to create a new lending program? You got it: our old friend the banker. (By the way, there are some creative alternatives to payday lending being tried. Google “Good Money” to learn about one initiative by Goodwill Industries.)
 
This fictional—but plausible—tale illustrates the relationship between vision and mobilization. If all the church leadership ever asks its parishioners for is turkey baskets, most of the banker’s power and prosperity remains untapped. He writes a check and wonders once again how his faith should connect to his daily work. But as our story shows, once the church moves toward a more relational, holistic, long-term, development-oriented approach to community transformation, new “on-ramps” for involvement are created for the banker. Now he’s bringing in not just his canned goods but his mind and education, his experience, vocational expertise, professional network, political entree, and cultural capital and laying all that at the church’s altar. His heart is engaged through his personal relationship with Darious and his family, and he’s learning what it can look like to be a Christian banker for the Kingdom. (And just as a side note, I’d be willing to bet his financial contributions to the church have increased.)

I believe the same kind of hypothetical story could be told for all the accountants, journalists, nurses, plumbers, lawyers, architects, business owners, and teachers out there in our pews. Let’s stop asking them for toys and unleash them in creative, strategic new efforts to rejoice our cities.

[Dr. Amy L. Sherman is a Senior Fellow at the Sagamore Institute. She is hard at work on her seventh book, tentatively titled Rejoicing the City: Stewarding Our Power for the Kingdom. She lives and worships in Charlottesville, VA.]