I went to seminary at Boston University School of Theology because they promoted themselves as the “school of the prophets.” They touted themselves as those who fought for the poor. Having spent a year working for various nonprofits in Little Rock, Arkansas, including one that had me go out several nights a week in a van to give comfort items to folks living on the street, I was eager to learn some actual strategies for getting folks out of poverty. When I spoke with the school’s admission officer about potential for internships with agencies that worked directly with the poor and homeless, it was like I was asking a stupid question. Of course there would be many opportunities for such on-the-ground education. They had a well-established network of relationships with all kinds of agencies, they said.
It turns out these were all lies. When it came time for me to do my internship, no such relationships were in place. Nobody knew where to point me. They expected me to create my own internship position. I didn’t even know what kind of agencies were doing the right work. Here you had all these highly-trained, highly-paid (by my tithes at that time) experts who had no idea who was even turning lives around in the city we lived in. What a stereotype of the ivory tower, right? The seminary I chose instead justified its own label by training their student body to be on the right side of history, to take the right social positions, to proclaim the progressive (social) gospel. Maybe I’ll write about the ridiculousness of what passes for theological education in The United Methodist Church someday.
It wasn’t until I began ministry at a rural three-point charge in southern Idaho that I had my first real prolonged exposure to a family that was under the oppression of poverty. It all began with a man named Joe. I had been advertising a bible study I was leading at the church in local media, including the newspaper. Joe showed up with his King James Version of the bible that he got from his Mormon background, smelling of cigars and sewage, and sat down at a table with me and four or five other people.
It was clear Joe had actually read his bible before, which was more than I could say for at least half of the people I regularly studied with. I noticed, however, that his knowledge was severely complicated by a wild mind (he didn’t think in anything resembling a straight line) and some faulty understandings of the meaning of passages gotten from an admixture of Mormon instruction and The DaVinci Code. The particulars of these things elude me now; it was thirteen years ago. I warmly affirmed the good, corrected the faulty, and a respectful friendship was formed.
Joe came closer to the church, attending worship and meals. It was a tough church appointment, with a good deal of dysfunction and resentment. I remember one Sunday, things had gotten so tense that I asked everyone who was willing to stay after worship and help me to solve this impasse we were at. Joe stayed alongside forty or so other people to hear me lay out the problems as I saw them, rehearse the attempts that failed to bring peace, and ask the congregation directly how it was that we could move forward together. Joe, with tears in his eyes, was the first to speak, standing up to apologize for his part in the acrimony. The man had done nothing; he just internalized the dysfunction of the group and, out of love for me, offered an apology that he knew was probably deserved. I was frustrated. He was one of the only people that I thought owed no apology whatsoever. No other apologies, or even conciliatory gestures, were offered that day. It was a tough crowd. It turns out few audiences have it in them to be confronted, lovingly or not. Joe did, and he responded with humility.
Eventually Joe brought his ex-wife, Laurie, and her grandkids, into the picture. They all smelled bad and were disheveled. The smell of sewage always concerned me. The ex-wife was morbidly obese, she sometimes slurred her words badly because of pills she was taking. She had chronic illnesses that she complained about. No set of symptoms ever lasted very long; she kept things moving. As we learned more about her story, everything wrong was someone else’s fault. Though I talk big, I never had it in me to directly contradict her until the very end. I tried to find ways to gently redirect her towards a better life.
The ex-wife had a daughter, I’ll call her Sabrina, in her thirties. She was in bad shape, in a relationship with an abusive man, going back and forth between her mother’s house (where Joe was now cohabitating with Laurie) and the house of her abusive boyfriend. Early on in my relationship with Joe, I got roped into some drama with Sabrina for the sake of her kids. I went into the house she was living in with a man I did not know, which I later realized was very dangerous. The most remarkable things about it were the smell and the lack of furniture. I later had her come to the church office, as she was asking for space heaters for her and her kids to stay warm. I couldn’t help but notice she had the latest iPhone, much nicer than the phone I had at the time. The church did indeed provide space heaters.
Sabrina had kids, the oldest of which was a girl I’ll call Jaycee. She was starved for attention and relished the people in church giving it to her. She didn’t know how to control herself, often violating boundaries and saying things that made folks uncomfortable. I’m certain that child protective services were called because of things she said several times. A couple of those calls were by me. As she grew older, she learned to avert her eyes and create space. She did things to intentionally make herself look ugly. I strongly suspected she was being molested. Her mother’s habit of bringing men of low quality into her life and the lives of her children surely had many repercussions.
Jaycee also had a little brother, whom I remember less about. There were other characters who came and went from their household, but these were the main ones I engaged and tried to minister to. I was an abject and undeniable failure.
Over time, the issues leaked out, as they always do when people come close to the church. It turns out there was a lot of screaming in the house. Laurie and Sabrina would intentionally mess with Joe, whose response was to blow his top, slam doors, and leave. They would, of course, scream back, egging him on to do something about his anger. He knew they would be delighted to call the police on him. To my knowledge, he never gave in.
He would show up to a church function or a visit with me in a blue polo with blue suspenders, plaid blue baggy shorts, long blue socks pulled up to his knees, and bright red shoes. His stringy hair shooting out from every direction of his head except his bald top and his bulgy eyes often gave the impression of a clown. I don’t think it was a look he was going for. I think he liked colors and wasn’t very self-aware. I hope you have caught on that the guy was an eccentric. His moods and thoughts would shift erratically. He was never dangerous, but he was unsteady. I would give him advice on things to shift in his household that would slowly bring about more order. The other adults in the house would intentionally work against him. He would lose his temper and come to the church feeling discouraged about his own performance but eager to learn from and grow alongside his pastor friend Jeffrey (that’s me).
A lesson I learned from this experience was that expecting a person to change their household when the other adults aren’t on board is setting them up for failure. One’s surroundings all but guarantee their future. For someone to change their lives, there almost always needs to be a change in scenery and company. This is particularly difficult when a spouse and children are involved. So if it is to be done as a group, ideally every single member of the family, or at least all the adults, have to be in agreement that they need to give up on themselves and live biblically oriented lives together. If that can’t be done, then those members who can need to get away from the unit so they can essentially be deprogrammed.
I learned over time that a big part of the reason Joe’s family chose to enter the orbit of my church was because the Mormons were done helping them. In that part of the country, they call themselves Latter Day Saints, and most people refer to them as “LDS.” While I acknowledge Mormons as very nice people who do a lot of good work, I don’t acknowledge them as Christian brothers. I eagerly volunteer that they did more for Joe’s family than my church ever could have. They had more organization, more muscle, and more commitment than us. An elder from the local LDS church one day spoke with me about trying to help them. We were both discouraged about how impotent we had been to affect them at all. They were able to take pretty much every gift, every encouragement, and either ignore it or pervert it into something else dysfunctional. Even so, I eventually chose to baptize Laurie. It was a bad move. I’m certain in retrospect that she was high on whatever pills she was taking that day. She grew in hostility to the church after that day.
Joe and Laurie had, by both of their accounts, both been rich for a time while they were married to each other (she had had at least two other husbands since him). They recalled wanting coffee from a diner in a city 60 miles away over the foothills of the Sawtooth Mountains and simply hopping in their private plane to fly over there for a cup of coffee. As I recall, this wealth was inherited and was gone after a time. Laurie and her dependents had gotten by on a mix of government assistance and income from the men she brought into their lives ever since her divorce from Joe, and Joe spent most of his adult life on the road as a truck driver. It was a day or two after his final drive that I met him. He had retired to come back, patch things together with his ex-wife, and close out his life in peace and quietness. I wish it had gone that way.
One night after blowing his stack, Joe retired to a room in their dilapidated house, had a heart attack, and died. I felt guilty that part of me was relieved. His recurring presence, smelling of sewage and cigars, never seeming to be any closer to peace or holiness, always in a state of abject need, was honestly demoralizing for me. At least now I didn’t have to feel like an active failure. The family insisted that a service for him be held at the LDS building. I held one of my own at church to honor him, even though the body wasn’t even present. I just wanted to acknowledge that he had been a part of our community. Many in his family came and sat through the service with crossed arms.
After that, the other relationships with members of that family deteriorated. Laurie started publicly bad-mouthing me and mocking the ministry of the church. I wrote her a letter in which I called her to repentance. She showed it to her pill mill doctor to try to start drama between him and me. I felt so embarrassed for her.
Her daughter asked for more money at one point. I took her to lunch at a local Chinese place and did my best to just speak the plain truth to her about the damage she was doing to herself and her kids as she continued to run around doing drugs and sleeping with various men. She cried and walked out, which…of course she did. I don’t know what I expected. I just knew my conscience couldn’t bear enabling them anymore.
When this family first came into the church, my wife came to understand their dysfunction only gradually. I was able to have a somewhat professional distance from them, but Sara Beth didn’t. The night after first learning of just a few of Laurie’s problems, she couldn’t sleep. My wife was in anguish for Laurie and her family. In our bed, she whispered and cried to me, “What are we going to do?” It has been so hard for us to learn that there isn’t anything to do for someone who doesn’t want to change.
Ministering to the Poor Today
Today, of course, people still come to the churches I serve, wanting help paying rent or utilities, wanting a place to stay or a ride. Sometimes a family trapped in a dysfunctional generational poverty setup will come close. I now believe that relationships are the primary means of transformation, especially the one a person and his family has with Christ, although money sometimes can accompany the transformation we offer. Even so, we still get burned. People still take on false pretenses, or they refuse to meet the conditions offered with the gift. Many speak ill of me or of the church after having received aid and friendship.
I have found working with the poor to be the single most demoralizing part of ministry. The amount of time and energy I have put into listening to the stories of people, understanding the logistics and dynamics of their daily lives, navigating the legal and correctional systems, credit card debt, car impounds, swallowing my judgmentalism and horror at their daily norms in order to at least validate their humanity, has been met with brokenness and disappointment. I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to transform hearts and lives. I also believe in the worth of reconsidering my biases, learning from others, and spending time searching for faithful and innovative answers. So I have prayerfully consulted works like When Helping Hurts and Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty. These are outstanding books that have profoundly impacted me. When I try to build relationships with the poor, I am informed not only by the biblical authors, but also by people at the front of institutions that are transforming the lives of poor people. I don’t know why He hasn’t chosen to bless my efforts in this area. And even if he is blessing the efforts like Circles, Bridges Out of Poverty, or the Chalmers Center, it is clear that societal trends are powerfully going in the opposite direction. I have no positive explanation for this.
As a youth, I remember the first time I realized the implications of Jesus’ words, “The poor will always be with you.” I immediately hated it. It seemed so defeatist and deterministic. You mean to tell me that in the richest country the world has ever seen, we still cannot end poverty? Well, as it turns out, yes. Even worse, many of our well-intentioned efforts to alleviate poverty actually exacerbate it. I remember one couple I tried to minister to just a few years ago showed me how much money they made off government assistance, and it was almost the same as my monthly income. The problem isn’t money or material; it is spiritual and emotional (and sometimes mental and/or chemical, too).
As a youth, I was reading Locke, Adams, and Nietszsche. I thought humans were rational, smart, and self-motivated. It turns out we are actually largely irrational, stupid, and lazy. Even worse, when one has learned to be content in such a state, it is virtually impossible to convince them that they need to change. Even when there are children involved and debt collectors or police are at the door, pretty much all the chronically poor folks I know have an inner monologue of self pity and self justification. It breaks my heart. The bible warns us that people choose darkness rather than light (John 3:19), and yet we still expect them to choose light because it is the rational, smart, beneficial thing to do. To my former self I have to say: buddy, grow up. No matter how badly I want this for someone else, I cannot make them want it, nor can I do the hard work for them that they have to do.
What is particularly hard about all this is that Christ has an explicit special care and concern for the poor. Yet it is the poor that are largely leaving churches and raising their children outside of the Christian faith. It isn’t for lack of care and concern from churches. Virtually every church in our nation finds a way to benefit the poor with the meager monies they raise. Yet relational separation and alienation continues to rise unabated. Meanwhile the welfare state continues to balloon. Why go to church for life-changing relationships when one can just get unconditional free money from the government?
This is why I left liberalism behind. Seriously, the number one reason I stopped identifying with the left at all is because its anthropology (understanding of human nature) is all wrong and does a lot of damage. With good intentions, efforts to help the poor largely infantilize them and solidify them in a victim, oppressed mentality. Meanwhile, the single organization that is built by God to help them is rendered inert because it often rightly requires relationship in order to get access to its treasures.
What is happening right now is a bunch of people with cancer refusing radiation/chemo because some guy down the block is selling some fentanyl. Why deal with the cancer when one can just be numb to it? It is messed up. Churches continue to internalize the failure, insisting we haven’t been welcoming enough. No. Churches are more welcoming here and now than at any other time or place in the past. Many churches advocate dumbing down, sprucing up, or even inverting traditional teaching or practice to better attract people. Some just straight up give out money or gifts to people to get them to come. All of these things mask the truth: This time and place is really messed up. The people who need the gospel most seem just fine without it. They are whistling through the graveyard, dancing with the devil, and don’t even know it.
It is easy for this sober reality to cause a certain hardness of heart towards the poor. Having had nothing but bad experiences with this demographic, some conclude that they are hopeless, and that the poor of Jesus’ day must have just been different from the poor of today. Perhaps there are some ways in which that is true, but I’m something of a scriptural literalist, and I can’t pretend these words aren’t there:
“Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.”
- Matthew 5:42
or how about this one:
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.”
- Luke 6:20-21
These aren’t the only times Jesus conveys his concern for the poor, nor is he the only person in scripture to make clear that our care for the poor is intimately tied to our relationship with God. This one always gets me:
“Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.”
- James 1:27
We have a whole generation of single-mother homes out there who hate the church, are intentionally raising their kids away from us, and are hostile whenever we try to advocate for fathers staying in the home and parents prioritizing the needs of their children over their own desires.
All this to say: Folks, something has gone terribly wrong. We are acting like the world isn’t falling apart around us, like all that needs to happen is a little cosmetic work. We don’t see that we are surrounded by spiritual carnage and wreckage, and that those tangled in the mess and debris of this wreckage are chasing away the medics who are coming to their aid. Running with this metaphor a bit further, many of the people who are trying to be medics are themselves compromised by these spiritual forces of poverty, as well.
Something else I think is worth sharing at this point in ministry is a realization that I’m only just now having: I don’t miss the money that was spent on the poor. Over the years, I have been responsible for giving out several thousands of dollars to people who asked of it, some coming directly from Rickman household funds instead of the churches’. That is money that could have gone to various other things, including my own pocket. Yet I don’t miss the money. It was never mine. The money in Christ’s church is for the care of the poor. I don’t wish that money had gone to some other ministry, to my household, a college or retirement fund. My sadness only comes from the fact that transformation was not the outgrowth of such expenditure. And I worry that Christ feels about me the way I feel about so many of these people: frustrated that despite all he has given me, I still abysmally fail to show forth a transformed life.
I don’t know what the answer is to the modern frustration to helping the poor, other than Jesus. I just know most of the solutions proposed are bandaids for bullet wounds, and many times they actually compound the problem. I know all of my colleagues in ministry struggle as mightily as I do with how to care rightly for these folks. I guess I think we should pray more about this. I think we should humble ourselves more. The solution can’t be through anything we do; it comes by a movement of the Spirit.
But I don’t think we need more attractional events. I don’t think we need more entertainment or excitement. I think the folks advocating for that stuff are dead wrong. We need sober and serious people to understand the problem and thoughtfully, directly, engage the culture. The days are short and the evil one is feeling pretty good about himself. May God break out the teeth of the young lions and act with his powerful hand to again turn the hearts of the needy towards him, lest the very people Christ died to save be condemned on the last day. Lord, send your Spirit! Work your wonders! Change our hearts! Come, Lord Jesus!
Beautiful article. Makes me realize that caring for the poor may very well be about our own obedience to a compassionate and faithful Lord, and what should drive our efforts is humble submission rather than a sense of success. That the goal is for us to live more like Christ, rather than trying to get the poor to live more like us.
Our great commission is to preach the gospel. The Holy Spirit convicts, the Holy Spirit does the work. We have no control over who is "good soil" or who is not. However, if the soil is good, as Christ followers, we should continue to be involved, mentoring, supporting, and being in loving relationship. How can we talk the talk but not walk the walk? Commitment to Christ requires no less.
Are we not his hands and feet? ❤️