The future and the hope of the Church is found in the poor

In reading through A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, I came across an insight about the Church from his doctoral dissertation The Communion of Saints.  When looking out at the Church in his native Germany, Bonhoeffer encountered a comfortable middle class church that while still offering social programs for the poor, had failed to include them in its community.  He wrote,

"for the church of today everything depends on its once more approaching the masses which have turned away from it, and, moreover; in such a way that the church brings the gospel into real contact with the present situation of the poor working classes, in full attentiveness to how these masses look upon the gospel."

There are some churches, particularly in blighted urban areas, who have successfully brought the Gospel to the working poor and made them part of the Church of Jesus Christ.  Unfortunately, for too many of our churches, this is not the case.  The Church has lost the rich, but it rarely has ever had them anyway, and it has lost the poor.  The majority of my church, and all of our churches, is middle class people.  Here in our county the working poor and the non-working poor are a large percentage of the population, but a very small percentage of our churches.  How did this happen, how can it be solved?

            Bonhoeffer continued with his line of thought by adding, “the future and the hope for our ‘bourgeois’ church lies in a renewal of its lifeblood, which is only possible if the church succeeds in winning over the poor working classes.”  Don’t let the fancy French word “bourgeois” mess you up, just substitute “middle-class” in its place and you’ll be fine.  Finding a way to make the Church appeal to the rich will never be the answer.  The Church in Franklin, in Venango County, in Pennsylvania, and in America will begin to find revival when it finds a way to reach the poor amongst us with the Gospel and truly make them a part of our community.  Hope that we can accomplish this should not be hard to find, for “there is no modern power that is basically more open to the Christian gospel than these poor workers.  These avid, poor workers know only one affliction, isolation, and they cry out for one thing, community.”  I have certainly seen this with my own eyes.  In our work with Mustard Seed Missions we have been able to help hundreds of families with serious physical needs, but the greatest need for nearly all of them is to be part of a community; that is why our organization always makes its last step in helping someone the sending of a church near to them to do follow-up and offer them the chance to be a part of a community.  The idea of belonging to a neighborhood no longer exists as it once did in America.  People move too often, we drive too far to go to work and to church for any neighborhood to exist on its own.

            How do we know if our churches have become isolated from the poor in our midst?

“The best proof is that the poor working classes have turned away from the church, whereas the bourgeois have remained.  So the sermon is aimed at relatively secure people, living adequately in orderly family circumstances, relatively ‘educated’ and relatively solid in their morality.”

Here Bonhoeffer’s wisdom hits us squarely in the chest.  Why do people in our churches deplore the morality of “them” and choose to fight in a social war rather than take the gospel to the poor?  Because we’re comfortable here; because the Church has managed to create a little sanctuary within our community where things are a little better than out there, but only at the expense and with the consequence of making those on the outside no longer feel welcome amongst us.  In such a situation, “The danger of the church’s becoming a mere association is obvious.”  What prevents a group of relatively well off Christians from acting like a social club instead of being on fire for God’s work in our world?  It will only be our connection to, and acceptance of, the poor in our midst.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observations about the churches of Germany in 1930 are entirely relevant for the Church in America today.  When we find a way to make the poor feel like this is their church too, when their problems become our problems, God will truly be alive and well in our midst.