I suspect that this will be my final post, at this time, about the Choco mission. But, I wanted to point out that there is a relationship between the Choco mission and the work that my wife and I were involved with in the inner city. Unfortunately, it is a sad relationship.
I am talking about the inner city in the Birmingham, Alabama area. You see, after we finished a decade in South America, we decided to return to the United States of America to be with our daughters as they wended their way through college. It is another set of stories how I ended up working in that inner city area.
But, this I did notice was in common between the two areas. When I went to Choco, I found out that I was the first non-Catholic clergyman to visit that village in nearly 30 years. What about the previous missionary that had come through? Well, he had managed to split the town and cause a major relational problem. But that is another story. During my time going to Choco, and to this day, as best I know, there have been no others from outside the mission with which I was involved who have come through the area.
During my time in inner-city Birmingham, in the area in which I was involved, I only ever saw one other church involved and I never met them. Once in a while I was in that area on a Sunday, and I would catch a glimpse of a van driving through the area and picking people up to take them to worship. While this was good, I never saw, or heard of, that church being actually involved in the neighborhood. They only harvested it.
So, what did the two areas have in common? The lack of involvement by other Christians. In both cases, there were no others making the hard decision to put time and money into reaching out to those who are hard to reach, whether by geography or because of the problems they have. It is always so much easier to try to start the church in the middle-class neighborhood. It is always easier to say that someone else will reach out to the “fringe” groups. Somehow, there is never enough money to use to finance missions to areas that may never have a fully self-supporting church. It is so much easier, and there are always more reasonable sounding reasons, for starting works in the “right” areas.
One of the reasons why I support centralized missions is because there is more of a likelihood that they will sponsor a “money-loser” than a local congregation. They often will maintain interest for only a while and then want to “move one” to other “new starts.” This is also why I support missionary monastics. Monastics have a good record of going on missions and sticking with it. Their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience make them perfect for the inner city.
But, monastics do not excuse the rest of us from our regular indifference to way too many of the people around us.
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