On Monday, I met with the case manager of a local nonprofit that has served families in our community for generations. As we discussed ways our congregation could partner with their organization to help the neighborhood, she explained how their funding has been cut across the board. She no longer has resources to assist families with rent or utilities, diapers, food, or even bus passes.
Many families who have depended on this organization in the past are now being turned away because there isn't enough support for this reputable and trusted organization to continue its work. Funding for this case manager’s position has also been cut; she now works two other jobs to make ends meet.
Later that day, our church held a backpack giveaway at the neighborhood library. We had prepared sixty backpacks beforehand to distribute to families in need. We thought this would be a low-key event and we would have plenty of supplies. The event began at 4 p.m.; by 3:30, nearly 100 kids were lined up, with dozens more arriving over the next two hours.
Despite their many differences, my Muslim, Latino, Black, White, and Asian neighbors in line for backpacks and snow cones shared one thing in common: they need help. In a time when the cost of living is rising and access to resources is decreasing, our vulnerable neighbors are increasingly struggling to meet their basic needs.
Where will they turn?
In response to these urgent needs, many Christians have asked me how they can help. That feeling of being overwhelmed can be paralyzing, stopping well-meaning people from taking any action at all. I want to share four practical principles you can start applying today to care for your vulnerable neighbors: proximity, partner, provide, and pray.
Proximity
Humans are finite creatures. We are not designed to bear the weight of the world's troubles. Until recent generations, most people didn't have constant, easy access to news about events outside their community. But today, every time we turn on the news or scroll through social media on our phones, we see tragedies and injustices occurring in communities all around the world. Our hearts break, and our minds are shattered. Our emotional energy is often exhausted before we even leave the house in the morning.
This exposure to large-scale societal needs worldwide can lead us to think that we have nothing meaningful to contribute. We believe that unless systems and laws change, lives won't improve. What can one person do in a world filled with so much tragedy and need?
Don’t get me wrong; we do need systemic changes. However, your vulnerable neighbor down the street still needs help today, and they cannot wait for a more merciful future that may or may not come to pass.
In her book Empowered to Repair, author and professor Brenda Salter McNeil emphasizes our proximity to real needs as a crucial step toward healing our neighborhoods. She writes,
Being in solidarity with others demands getting close to the problem, seeking to really understand the issue, and acting to help address the situation… our proximity breeds care while our distance from people breeds fear. Find the people who are hurting and listen to them. You can’t tell the story or empathize with people if you don’t know the story.1
You simply cannot care for and contribute to every need around the world, or even in your city. You can give your emotional energy, time, and resources to your vulnerable neighbor down the street. You can create a safe space at your dining room table for your immigrant neighbor to feel they’re not alone. You can help the family down the street whose single mother just lost her job.
Turn off the news, put down your phone, and get local. I promise you won’t have to look long before the needs reveal themselves.
Partner
I am thankful for churches and other organizations that want to help meet the needs in inner-city neighborhoods. Yet, often, these efforts are a big flash that makes little long-term impact. We thank you for your turkeys at Thanksgiving and toys at Christmas. However, when you go back home at night in the suburbs, our residents are still hungry and unemployed. We need resources and support 365 days a year, not just for a few hours on major holidays.
These efforts, though well-intentioned, often begin with an assumption that outsiders have something to give and know what our neighborhood needs. Because outside institutions do not take the time to learn what vulnerable communities really need and how they can help, these efforts can create one-way relationships of dependency that take away the dignity of marginalized communities. As Soong-Chan Rah has said, such actors, in their attempt to be urban missionaries, are actually urban colonizers.2
Rather than imposing solutions from the outside, Christians and churches should collaborate with organizations already working in vulnerable communities. It is more likely that churches and nonprofits serving neglected communities have already done the social and cultural analysis (ethnography) needed to address the root problems in their neighborhoods.3
Find a local organization dedicated to asset building in the community. Green and Haines describe asset building as a commitment to developing the gifts, skills, and capacities of individuals, associations, and institutions within a neighborhood. This approach emphasizes growth within the local community rather than seeking help elsewhere. These organizations will best know how to direct your time, resources, and talents.4
When vulnerable communities rely on outside aid, other groups and individuals gain the power to determine the community's future. True justice and equity require that residents in vulnerable neighborhoods participate in shaping and imagining their own future.
Provide
Organizations dedicated to serving marginalized communities often lack the resources needed to fulfill their mission. Although this scarcity in the inner city has been a problem for generations, recent policies from our administration have cut funding that organizations in our neighborhood have depended on for years.
Within Christian networks and denominations, urban and rural churches that serve poor and marginalized communities do not have equal access to resources that suburban churches enjoy. Church planting funds go to those who want to reach secular and dechurched elites and middle-class populations, while those who want to serve the poor are often dismissed because they cannot meet suburban growth metrics. Meanwhile, suburban churches solicit funds for multimillion-dollar building campaigns, whereas urban and rural churches frequently lack the resources needed to meet the basic needs of their children.
Churches and nonprofits committed to serving their vulnerable communities need your support. You might not have a lot to give, but you can contribute something. What can your family sacrifice this year so you have more to offer to vulnerable neighbors down the street? Where can you reduce your family expenses to increase your donations to a church or nonprofit in the inner city?
Consider the words of the Scottish minister Robert Murray M’Cheyne (1813-1843) as he exhorted his congregation to a deeper concern for the poor:
Oh, my dear Christians! if you would be like Christ, give much, give often, give freely, to the vile and the poor, the thankless and the undeserving. Christ is glorious and happy, and so will you be. It is not your money I want, but your happiness. Remember his own word: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”5
Pray
It is common for Christians to be criticized for their commitment to prayer in the face of tragedy and injustice. Prayer alone is not enough, to be sure. Those who pray but never take action to help those in need are unfaithful stewards of their Christian faith. St. Basil (330-379) lamented,
I know many who fast, pray, sigh, and demonstrate every manner of piety, so long as it costs them nothing, yet would not part with a penny to help those in distress. Of what profit to them is the remainder of their virtue?6
Yet, as Christians, we also know that without prayer, our efforts are in vain. Prayer is where our social and spiritual concerns merge as we submit our every need to the throne of grace. The urban missiologist Harvie Conn (1933-1999) wrote,
The answer to our tendency to be one-sided and short-sighted, the answer to the energy crisis of the spirit, is prayer. Prayer’s asking is not wishing. It is demanding that people come to Christ because Christ has come to us. It is demanding that the world be changed because Christ has come to change it.7
What might such prayers look like?
Jesus taught us to pray “Your kingdom come” (Matthew 6:10). The Westminster Shorter Catechism explains that in this petition, we pray,
That Satan’s kingdom may be destroyed; and that the kingdom of grace may be advanced, ourselves and others brought into it, and kept in it; and that the kingdom of glory may be hastened.8
Prayer, then, is an act of resistance against a sinful and satanic status quo, where we petition Jesus to save sinners and to bring his kingdom of justice and righteousness to influence our social order. Through prayer, we bear witness that there is another King, Jesus of Nazareth.
In a world overwhelmed by need, Christ does not call us to do everything but to do something. By drawing near to our neighbors, partnering with those already serving, offering what we can, and committing ourselves to prayer, we bear witness to the kingdom of God breaking into our streets.
We don’t need to wait for the world to change before we live as if it already has.
Brenda Salter McNeil, Empowered to Repair: Becoming People Who Mend Broken Systems and Heal Our Communities, 63.
Soong-Chan Rah, foreword to Race and Place: How Urban Geography Shapes the Journey to Reconciliation by David Leong, 10.
As a starting point for ethnographic research, see chapters 14-16 in Urban Ministry by Harvie Conn and Manuel Ortiz, Social Analysis for the 21st Century by Maria Cimperman, and Ethnography as a Pastoral Practice by Mary Clark Moschella.
Gary Paul Green and Anna Haines, Asset Building and Community Development, 9.
Robert Murray M’Cheyne, Sermon LXXXII.
St. Basil, On Social Justice, 46.
Harvie Conn, Evangelism: Doing Justice and Preaching Grace, 74.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism, Question 102.
Thanks for this piece, Ben! It's equal parts actionable and constructive. You're helping provide focus as I lead our family, and pray that these 4 principles can be contagious in our church!