Reconciliation Across Social Class - Ministry Exchange (MX)

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Reconciliation Across Social Class Andrew Sears

One of the most common topics in the Bible is God’s compassion for the
poor. In the Old Testament almost every time Israel left God, they were
rebuked for two things: serving idols and mistreating the poor. Jesus also
clearly showed strong compassion for the poor. Yet despite the fact that
the Bible talks frequently about the poor, Christians often still have a
hard time talking about class and issues of poverty. The focus of this
document will be to help promote a more significant dialog to aid in
discussing class and serving the poor. For the purposes of this document,
when we use the term “the poor” we are referring to the lower classes.

Class is something that is hard to define and even harder to understand.
Many academics focus only on objective measures of class such as family
income, assets, education and job type. Other people might focus more on
cultural elements such as lifestyle, language, dress, food, spirituality
and values. Some might view it as your status level in society and your
access to social capital (resources that come from relationships). Others
may define it based on your community, your level of exposure to group
trauma and oppression and the class that those closest to you that you
identify with (friends, neighborhood, community, family). Class includes
all of these things. It is also important to recognize that class is only
one lens through which to understand injustice. Other lenses like race,
gender and ethnicity are also extremely important. Exploring the lens of
class does not discount those perspectives, but in fact enriches them.

Why We Don’t Understand Social Class
To understand social class, you have to first understand that nearly all
the discussion on class has been distorted by the lens of the dominant
culture. The best way to understand this is to remember back to when there
were once “Negro Studies” programs at universities that were taught
entirely by White professors, as if they had a better understanding of what
it was like to be Negro than even the “Negros” did. These academics
paternalistically defined the “Negro” using majority culture terms, values
and methods. These days something like that seems absurd because we now see
how paternalistic and condescending such an approach is. There are many
African American Studies or African Studies programs that are led by people
of African decent. In short, society has made progress toward a general
understanding of the importance of a people to self-define. Groups across
the world have begun to self-define and to replace, for example, the
“Oriental Studies” programs of White people describing Asians with Asian-
led Asian Studies or Chinese Studies, etc.

However, the one area where this trend of self-definition has not made much
progress is in our understanding of social class. This is because the
institutions that could enable this expanded understanding are dominated by
the middle and upper class. To become an academic, even if you come from a
lower-class background, you essentially must assimilate to the dominant
class (middle/upper class) values. The same is true for media, publishing
and other major institutions. In our understanding of social class, we
still live in the “negro studies” era.

Our understanding of social class is defined using the dominant class lens
with their terms, values and methods. This is seen most in academia, where
class is defined through the majority culture lens, which emphasizes the
objective, quantitative, analytical, theoretical and individualistic
approach. It is like putting on green-tinted sunglasses, and suddenly the
world looks green. Using this lens, the only things that look real are the
objective, quantitative, analytical, theoretical and material. The problem
is that these values are entirely opposed to the dominant values of lower
class communities which think much more in terms of the subjective,
qualitative, holistic, practical and nonmaterial.

What is needed is an understanding of class that is self-defined by a
community from the non-dominant class. The problem is that in order for
someone from a lower class background to get to a position to be able to
communicate this perspective, they almost always have to assimilate to the
dominant class values. It is almost impossible for someone in academia will
keep their job and get tenure unless they learn to comply with the dominant
class values of academia. There have been many books written about this
class assimilation process in academia, but in all my reading of them, I
have yet to find a story of someone in academia who came from a lower-class
background and still self-defined as lower-class after staying in academia.

The result is that the entire dialog on class is from the majority culture
lens. Usually the first thing people think about when they hear the term
“class” is the communist and socialist perspectives on class. One of the
many problems with those perspectives is that they defined class in the
objective, material terms of income and job. The whole capitalism-communism
debate was a debate using the dominant class lens of materialism. It
reminds me of an old quote: “The best way to win an election is to own both
candidates.” Regardless of which side won the debate, materialism (the
dominant class value) would win.

Class Identity
One of the most significant things to understand about class is a person’s
class identity. It is important to recognize that many people will have
very complex class backgrounds and avoid oversimplifying class into
objective definitions. Class identity is one of many elements that make up
your identity, including your personality, gender, race, ethnicity,
geographical background, etc. For each element of class identity, I’ve also
listed the direction a “Godly goal” of growth. Class identity has four
components which include:

. Class Background: your past class background while growing up including a combination of family income, assets and job type; education and access to social capital; level of exposure to group trauma and oppression; class culture (lifestyle, language, dress, food, values, etc.): status level in community and society; class identity of those closest to you that you identify with (friends, neighborhood, community, family). Godly goal: to understand class background and its implications on your unique role in class reconciliation. . Current Class Access: your current access to class community, resources and power based on income, job type and assets; education; appearance, speech and cultural fluency; access to social capital. Godly goal: increase class access to all groups to be able to bring class reconciliation. . Class Consciousness: the ability to perceive, understand and consciously address the following: systems of classism; your class role culturally and in systems; class as culture and cultural class conflicts; your own class identity; all other aspects of class. Godly goal: to increase class consciousness. . Class Identification: which class group(s) do you identify with based on the following: the class identity of those closest to you that you identify with (friends, community, family); allocation of resources toward class groups (money, work, time); your accessibility to a class group based on your culture, appearance, language, location, etc; your role in addressing (or perpetuating) classism. Godly goal: to identify with the lower classes (“the least of these”).

Class as Culture
Probably the most significant thing missing from the common understanding
of class is being able to perceive class as culture. While objective
measures of class are important, the subjective understanding of class is
central to providing a perspective that is self-defined by the non-dominant
class. To simplify the discussion I will use the terms “non-dominant
class,” which includes the lower and working class, and “dominant class,”
which includes the middle and upper class.

The intent of this document is to help bridge the dominant and non-dominant
classes by providing language that the dominant class can understand using
a framework that emphasizes lower-class values. My own perspective is that
I come from a lower class-background. While I have received the benefits of
a strong education and now have high class access, my identification is
with the lower class. In other words, I am bi-cultural and fluent in both
dominant and non-dominant cultures, but I still prefer non-dominant class,
which is reflected by life, values, friends, work and community. Living and
working in a non-dominant class community for nearly all of my life, I have
worked with hundreds of volunteers, staff and friends helping them to
bridge the dominant and non-dominant class worlds. From this, I have
observed the most common cultural/values clashes that occur across class.
To satisfy people coming from a majority culture perspective that strongly
value academic research, I’ve sought out secondary research on hundreds of
studies of class as culture to verify that my observations apply more
generally.

Based on this, I’ve developed a list of the most common value differences
that people of different classes experience. This list generalizes the
value differences that often apply across class-indicating where people
from the dominant and non-dominant classes often have differences. While
understanding a culture is helpful, making generalizations applied to
individuals is not. Many individuals will have values different from those
commonly held by others in a similar social class. Class is only one
component that makes up an individual’s culture and values, so often
individual personality type, race, ethnicity, religion, community or other
factors will trump class. Race or ethnicity may play a more significant
role in a given cultural area than class, but that class tendency might
still be true within a given ethnic group. Understanding generalizations of
class as culture is helpful especially when identifying whether a conflict
may have a class component related to class culture. However,
generalizations of class as culture can be damaging if you use them to make
assumptions about an individual based on those generalizations.

Contrasting Class Values
Your Value Preference

Dominant Class Value (D)	N	D
Non-Dominant Class Value (N)
Relating to Others	Relating to Others
Spontaneous	Structured order & planning
Relational	Objectively Detached
Intense	Reserved
Community/Family Reliance	Self Reliance/Independence
Friendliness	Privacy
Cooperation	Competition
Relating to the World	Relating to the World
Respect for	Egalitarian
Authority/Hierarchy
Patience	Efficiency
Trauma is common	Trauma is avoided
Ministry to Middle Class	Ministry to Lower-Class Needs
Needs
Work is a Means	Work is an End/Identity
Sharing	Strong Property Rights
Contentment	Active Problem Solving
Marry earlier; more children	Marry later; fewer children
Lower class food, dress	Middle class food, dress styles
styles
Thinking/Perception	Thinking/Perception
Subjective	Objective
Qualitative	Quantitative
Holistic	Analytical/Compartmentalized
Experience/Practical	Theoretical
Non-materially Minded	Materially Minded
Community	Individual
Communication	Communication
Honesty and Directness	Politeness and Tact
Oral Tradition and	Written Tradition
Storytelling
Simplified/Slang Vocabulary	Larger/Standardized Vocabulary
Most Common Sins	Most Common Sins
Antisocial Addictions:	Socially Acceptable Addictions:
substance abuse and sexual	Control, Work, Power
Antisocial behavior	Narcissism, Perfectionism and
Superficiality
Increased aggression, rage	Overemphasize physical
and violence	appearance, having it together,
career accomplishments
Increased Crime	Legalized exploitation
Less Church Attendance	Use Church for Status
Lower Value on Education and	Materialism, Excess and
Stewardship	Intellectual Elitism

Middle Class Ministry and Lower Class Needs
One example of how our class culture lens causes problems is when middle-
class ministries try to serve the poor, but instead focus more on middle-
class needs. One way of understanding this is from a concept called
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (see adjacent).

The basic idea is that some needs that a person is experiencing can take
precedence over others-if you are about to die of dehydration or hunger,
then you aren’t worried about your social calendar on Friday night. The
issue is that the primary needs of members of the middle class churches
(social, esteem, self-actualization) are different than the primary needs
of under-resourced communities (physiological, safety, social). Most of the
programs, tools and ministry of most middle-class churches are focused on
middle class needs, so when they serve the poor, they use a ministry model
that serves middle class needs. For example, I once came across an upper-
middle class church ministry that was a job program for the homeless. The
entire focus of their program was based around asking the participants, “If
you could do anything you want, what would you do?” and then helping them
prepare for a career in that. The problem is that this is a self-
actualization question, one that is a great question to ask if you already
have a home, food, friends and savings that might allow you to pursue self-
actualization. Effective job programs for the homeless almost universally
focus on preparing them for a limited range of entry-level jobs that will
enable them to quickly gain employment and get off the street.

The most common ministries in middle-class communities are ones that help
members find their calling (self-actualization), peer leadership
development and personal identity development (esteem) and small groups
(social). Some of the most common ministries in under-resourced communities
are often after-school programs (safety), educational/job programs
(economic security), food pantry/soup kitchens, housing and medical care.
It is easy for middle class communities to say that their needs are the
“spiritual needs,” while the more practical needs of under-resourced
communities are not spiritual. The reality is that they are all spiritual
needs because Jesus was always holistic in his ministry, meeting both the
physical and spiritual needs of people. He fed the five thousand; he didn’t
tell them not to worry about eating because he was meeting their
“spiritual” needs.

Ministry needs is just one value difference between dominant and non-
dominant class cultures. There is a lot of depth in just this one value
difference, and there are many other value differences. The only way to
really understand all these cultural differences in full depth is to
experience them directly by immersing yourself in under-resourced
communities (and resourced communities), but this document will attempt to
provide an introduction to these differences by providing some examples of
cultural conflict across class. To protect individuals, these examples do
not represent any particular person, but rather represent caricatures based
on an amalgam of people that I’ve had experience with over the years.

Cultural Conflict across Class: Sam
Sam is a recent college graduate with a middle class up-bringing who goes
to work in an after-school program in an indigenous organization that
serves children from a lower-class community. He is used to an orderly
environment, where people are emotionally reserved and are isolated from
frequent exposure to trauma. Each day in the after-school program he can
barely handle the chaos of the children running around. He constantly
judges the organization for not doing things with enough quality-the
building is not well kept, the lessons with children are not well-planned,
things are constantly changing and there is little organization. When the
after-school program director speaks to the children in a very stern, loud,
commanding voice, he can’t believe how rude the after-school program
director is being to the children, but he observes that the children do
respond. There is loud music playing in the staff office every day, which
initially seems “cool” to him , but later begins to drive him crazy after
listening to it every day. He judges the organization for how disorganized
it is, and blames it on the staff. He finds it very difficult that he is
not given much direction and views that as bad management. He is frustrated
that it seems like his job description changes every day.

He also judges the other staff for insisting on wearing dressy clothes
every day, because he goes to a church that considers itself progressive
because most people wear shorts and jeans. He also judges the other staff
for not eating healthier foods. He judges the staff for following a strong
hierarchy that makes it clear that the children are below them in the
hierarchy. Initially he tries to meet the children “on their level,” acting

very polite and encouraging them to have “open” time where they can do
whatever they want, but he quickly loses control of the children. He is
shocked by the trauma of finding out that another staff was robbed. He
feels out of place because most of the other staff have a traumatic
background and have family members that are in poverty, jail or are
addicted. He is having a hard time sleeping at night, and is not sure what
to do.

This is what interpersonal class conflict looks like. What should he do?
Should he just “suck it up” and take everything as it is even if that means
barely being able to keep his own sanity? Should he just leave? Usually
what happens in this scenario is both-he is so overwhelmed that they just
suck it up initially until they can’t take it any longer and then they just
leave.

The short answer is that Sam needs to find his role in the Body of Christ
in addressing injustice (understanding his class identity), stretching
himself cross-culturally (identifying more with lower class communities),
but staying within the limits of how God has made him to serve sustainably.
Middle class people who have travelled abroad understand that when visiting
another country, they should just try to take the culture as it is without
trying to change the country to fit their needs. They might find a group of
friends to help ease the transition either from their cultural background
or natives that are good bridge-builders. They will be intentional about
learning the culture and language and immersing themselves in ways to grow
cross-culturally. They might also moderate their exposure to elements of
the culture that they can’t handle in order to make their experience
enjoyable and sustainable. They will understand the historical reasons why
others in the country might be initially hostile to them and act
accordingly while calmly drawing a firm boundary against abuse. They will
try to find a niche in the country where their own cultural background and
skills are an asset.

The problem is that while many middle-class people understand these ideas
in approaching another country, they somehow don’t understand that the same
principles apply when operating cross-culturally within their own country.
They miss the concept that in moving from a middle-class white community to
a lower-class minority community, they are likely making a cultural shift
that is at least as significant as if they had moved to a European country.
The same cross-cultural principles above apply.

It is important for people from middle and upper class backgrounds to try
to stretch themselves to find an area where their skills and cultural
background can be an asset in serving lower-class communities. Lower class
communities are often desperate to have more people with the skills and
cultural competencies of those coming from the dominant class.

Social Leprosy
We are living in an epidemic of social leprosy in the Body of Christ. The
way leprosy works is that the body loses its ability to feel when other
parts of the body are damaged. The reason why lepers end up losing parts of
their body is that a body part will get injured, but because they cannot
feel it, they cannot take care of it. The result is that a finger or toe
could receive a crushing blow that will end up destroying it because the
wound is not cared for. This is the social condition of the Body of Christ
when different parts of the Body do not feel the pain of other parts. It is
caused by isolating the parts of the Body experiencing the pain from the
parts with the resources to heal that pain. There are intense spiritual and
systemic forces that drive the world and the Body apart. This is what
happens when we become relationally and socially isolated from the pain in
the world through suburbanization, segregation, geographic detachment and
cultural and other barriers.

It is helpful to understand how the Body of Christ is intended to work
across class, and how to fight the systemic tendencies that most often
perpetuate injustice. The basic principle of healthy missions is that
people are most effectively served when they are being served from within
their culture. This is just following Paul’s principle of “being a Jew to
the Jews and a Greek to the Greeks.” Most progressive Christians
understand this principle in theory, but it is something that you can’t
really learn until you’ve experienced it. It is from the experience that
you understand the depth of the systemic reasons for this principle being
incredibly difficult to apply.

This is how the system works to unintentionally perpetuate injustice. A
lower-class community will be most effectively served by those sharing
their lower-class cultural values. In short, often the most effective
organizations in serving the “poor” will be those with non-dominant class
values. The challenge is that because they have non-dominant class values
it becomes very difficult for the organization to access the resources of
the dominant class. The very things that make them so good at working with
under-resourced communities are things that are at the other end of the
value spectrum in terms of what the resourced communities are asking for.
The spontaneous street-culture personality needed to adapt to the chaos in
under-resourced communities is very different from the organized, orderly
personality needed to manage accounting, write grants, relate to funders,
track detailed outcomes and provide the structure needed to retain dominant
class staff and volunteers. What most organizations will do to adapt is to
have different staff, but even with that, the challenge is that usually one
class-culture or the other dominates. Most often it becomes a question of
“Will you adopt a culture that is good at serving the community or a
culture that is good at attracting funders?”

This tendency can also keep much of the resources from middle-class
churches from reaching the poor. Middle-class churches will often set up
volunteer programs where it takes more resources to manage the volunteers
than the volunteers are providing to under resourced communities. The end
result is that the volunteer programs are serving the volunteers rather
than under-resourced communities. This is fine because programs like this
are needed to connect people to the needs of the community to change their
hearts. It becomes a problem when the church considers these resources
meeting middle-class volunteer needs as their primary means of “giving”,
and does not focus more of its resources for the poor in ways that actually
reach the community. There is a similar tendency of middle-class churches
to give most of their resources to middle-class missionaries serving the
poor. This helps the poor only if those people receiving the resources are
able to multiply that gift into more resources for the poor, otherwise it
would be better to give directly to effective indigenous ministries serving
the poor (where “indigenous” means reflecting the class culture and ethnic
culture of those being served). My guess is that for most progressive
middle-class churches that try to give resources toward the poor, about
half of their resources go toward middle-class volunteer programs and about
half go toward middle class missionaries, with less than 20% of that making
it to actually serving the poor.

The end result is that the vast majority of resources go toward
organizations that have the dominant class culture organizationally, but
are not very effective in serving under-resourced communities. The reason
is that program participants have to essentially operate cross culturally
in order to receive any services. A recovering addict, for example, might
have to learn how to act “middle class” to be able to receive treatment
services. On one hand, this is helpful because some of these skills will be
needed to make it in the world, but on the other hand, it raises an
unneeded barrier that combines cultural class assimilation with becoming
sober. The same principle could apply to kids in an after-school program or
other programs.

The solution is for both sides to value the other. When working in an under-
resourced community, the dominant culture person needs to respect that they
are essentially “in another country” and to accept that for the
organization to be most effective, it needs to be close to the culture of
those it is serving. That person will have to stretch themselves to adapt
to many uncomfortable aspects of the organization. Similarly, the leaders
in the organization need to realize that if they do not stretch themselves
to accommodate people from dominant class backgrounds, then the
organization’s effectiveness will be limited because they will not be able
to access the resources they need.

While this is easy to describe in theory, the process of actually doing
this is extremely painful. Usually the problem is that the cultural divide
is so wide that both sides are stretched to their limits (meaning sleepless
nights, effects on marriages/families, depression and rage). Usually one
side or the other wins, and the organization either ends up being close to
the community but without resources or very resourced but culturally
distant from the community. What is needed is to stay in this cross-
cultural tension within the limits of what we can handle-in other words we
are called to a path of suffering for the sake of others to the extent that
God has enabled us.

How Systemic Forces Isolate the Poor: Sherry
Sherry comes from a middle class background. In college, she has a powerful
experience with God related to serving the poor, and decides to pursue that
as a calling. She moves into the inner-city with an idealistic view and
attends a Black church in an under-resourced community. After a few months
she leaves the Black church, judging the pastor for a number of reasons.
She has a hard time receiving much in the worship because it is different
and more expressive than she is used to. When she goes to a Bible-study it
more often feels like a mini-sermon than the inductive Bible study that she
is used to and enjoys. She also feels like they put too much emphasis on
the Holy Spirit and experience in their relationship with God and wavers
between judging them and feeling ashamed for not having as many personal
experiences herself with God. She is offended by such strong appeals for
giving during offering time at church. Her understanding of class has to do
with income, so her primary effort in class reconciliation is to spend
hardly anything, causing her to become bitter at others in the church who
don’t do this. Sherry starts thinking her thriftiness makes her more
authentically “lower class” than others who grew up in the community.
Finally, she leaves the church, and moves to another church and has a
similar experience and leaves again until finally she finds a community of
people with a middle class culture living in the city. She invests her
resources there and almost none of these resources make it to indigenous
leaders in the community. Her own ministry shows limited success, and the
net effect of her effort is that little or no resources end up going to
those who are having effective ministry.

The challenge is that Sherry only had the dominant culture lens for
understanding class, and was not able to see that most of the issues she
was judging others on were class related (she was not fully class
conscious). If she had understood that, she may have explored further. She
may have observed that the things that she didn’t like about the church
(strong leadership, experience/Holy spirit, worship style) were exactly
what attracted the local community and made the church effective. She may
have found out that the offering appeals were because the church was about
to lose its heat and electricity because of lack of funds. Because she was
not fully class-conscious, she could not identify with the poor in ways
that counted the most (respecting their cultural values and sharing her
social capital and resources). She may have realized that limited spending
and lifestyle is only one aspect of class culture, and she might have put
more of her effort into adapting her values to match the class culture of
the community. Her problem is not that she eventually ended up in a
community of middle-class people. Many people with a middle-class
background serving the poor will eventually end up in a community of bridge-
builders that may come from a middle class background or are currently
middle-class. The key issue is how that community of bridge-builders use
their high class access to bring resources to indigenous leaders in under-
resourced communities. Class reconciliation involves fighting the systemic
tendencies to limit resources that go to lower-class communities, and to do
that they need to give out more resources than they are taking in. She
needs to understand that the systemic tendency is that often middle-class
groups serving the poor can become a net loss of resources serving lower
class communities. This is because while they may get donations from
churches that are giving to groups “serving the poor,” the middle class
community still takes in more resources than they give out to indigenous
leaders. If the middle class community serving the poor is not multiplying
the resources it receives to give more to indigenous leaders, it would
probably be better to just let those funds go directly to indigenous
organizations.

One challenge is that there are strong systemic currents that strongly push
people to live almost exclusively in either the dominant class or the non-
dominant class culture. Even for those who try to bridge this divide
between resourced and under-resourced communities, there is an intense
current that drives them apart. Here is how it works. Often, a dominant
class individual will volunteer or intern in an under-resourced community.
During that period they experience the strain of living in two worlds with
two different value systems. As they become more immersed in under-
resourced communities, they may experience a moderate feeling of being
crazy as they try to internally reconcile the different worlds. Eventually,
they will have to decide which community will be their primary community
and which class culture they will primarily operate in. This is fine, and
the way it should be, because people can serve the poor from both resourced
and under-resourced communities. What is important is learning how roles
change depending on which class environment you are immersed in and how to
effectively play your role in the Body of Christ in serving the poor.

Another challenge is that often someone from a resourced background will
serve in an under-resourced community and adopt many of its values. Later
they will realize that they are not called to be immersed in that community
long-term and return to the dominant culture, but sincerely desiring to
retain the values they gained from their experience. As they are re-
immersed into the dominant class culture, there will be a heavy current
that will try to re-assimilate that person back into the dominant culture
values. Their values and lifestyle may gradually change back to what they
were before, and they might live with a nagging guilt that they sold out.
Because of that guilt and the fear of conflict, they might avoid their
friends who are still immersed in under-resourced communities. The end
result is that they have lost touch with the pain of under-resourced
communities.

Class Reconciliation for Those Living in Resourced Communities: John
John is a professional graphic designer who feels called to serve the poor
and comes out of a church that strongly emphasizes relational ministry. He
once had a great experience for a week of working at a camp for inner-city
children. He tries working on the “front lines” in a low-income Latino
community. Each week seems to get worse as he is having difficulty
connecting with the children and gaining their respect. He keeps trying
harder and harder until finally he burns out. He decides that serving the
poor just isn’t for him, and moves to the suburbs and makes a lot of money
as a professional graphic designer. As he goes to a suburban church, he
quickly gets caught up in the cultural momentum of the church and loses
touch with his friends in the city. A few years later, he gets married and
has two children. They buy a house that stretches the limits of his income
and buy two new cars that put them in significant debt, so he has to work
overtime to pay the bills.

The issue for John is that he needs to realize his unique class background,
and not feel guilty if God has called him to live most of his life in a
dominant class setting. Being in full-time ministry is not the only model
for serving the poor, but often that is the expectation that people are
taught. John needs to recognize that his life is about following Jesus and
ministering to others regardless of his class environment, and a
significant part of that is serving the poor. He needs to understand his
role in class reconciliation in the Body of Christ given his class identity
and the likely difficulties that he will face. In following that path from
within a dominant class environment, he should go into ministry with an
understanding of how intense the pull will be to assimilate to middle class
values. He should make an intentional effort to surround himself with
people, books and video that reflect his values for the poor in order to
offset the materialism he encounters in in the rest of his environment. He
should be frugal with both his money and time in order to give both
monetarily and of his time to effective indigenous ministries serving the
poor. He should recognize that God doesn’t call everyone to work at the
front lines, and he is still following a relational ministry model if he is
resourcing those on the front line who are building the relationships. He
could provide volunteer or discounted graphic design to indigenous
ministries serving the poor. When he works with those ministries, he should
have a lot of patience and tolerance for any shortcomings, recognizing that
the organizations most effective at serving the poor will often not match
his own class values.

The following are a few key learning points from these stories for those
coming from resourced communities.

. Build and Maintain Class Consciousness. The most important step you can take is to stay connected relationally with people immersed in low- income communities. This could mean going to a multi-class church or small group (a multi-racial church without the multiclass element doesn’t really address this). It could mean seeking out a friend who is involved in serving the poor and asking how you can support them. Recognize that there are systemic forces that keep the resources from getting to those who are have non-dominant class culture and are effectively serving the poor. Continue to immerse yourself in relationships, books, videos and activities that keep your heart connected to the pain in the world. . Identify with the Poor. Live a frugal lifestyle in order to have more money to give to the poor. It is important to recognize that resourced communities are often the “mouth” in the Body of Christ, and if the mouth uses all the resources, then the body won’t function very well. Provide professional skills that are greatly needed in under-resourced communities like accounting, grant writing, web/graphic design, computer skills, construction, legal support, serving on boards, securing corporate donations and connecting organizations to potential funders. It is important to start with what the community needs by asking leaders, and see where there might be a match with your skills.

I provide a more thorough description of the steps involved in the process
to build class consciousness and identify with the poor through a Class
Identity Development process described in “Ethnic Identity Development for
Christians.”

Class Reconciliation for Those Serving in Under-Resourced Communities
For those that choose to be immersed in under-resourced communities, often
they will experience a cultural “tipping point” where they essentially “go
native” in terms of their values. At this point, they will often get into
conflicts with their friends in resourced communities out of anger because
the dominant class values now seem crazy. This person will then lose most
of their dominant class friends, and have more and more friends in under-
resourced communities. After this initial season of anger is over, they
find that they have lost most of their old friends both because of their
own initial anger and because their friends avoid them out of guilt. It is
in this way that social leprosy is perpetuated.

Mary is from a lower-class background, and later joined a middle class
church where she started leading their outreach ministries. As her passion
for the poor increased, she started working full-time in a Christian
community development ministry and moved into a low-income neighborhood.
Each time she commuted back to her church, she would experience culture
shock because of the differences between her church and her work
environment. She spent her days working in an environment where if there
were only a few thousand dollars more available, she could help keep a
family intact and off the streets. Then she went to her church where she
could not relate at all to their concerns. The stress of living in two
worlds started to keep her from being able to sleep and was affecting her
marriage. She did not want to leave the church, so she angrily confronted
her friends to try to get them to understand where she was coming from.
Finally she decided that the stress of living in two worlds was too much,
and because she knew God had called her long-term to serve the poor she
left her middle class church to serve the poor. Because her friends in her
church felt guilty and judged by her, she lost most of her resourced
friends. Since most of her new friends were under-resourced also, she lost
most of her connections to bring resources into her community development
organization. Her work in the community is transforming many lives, but she
is concerned that the utilities might be cut off to her community
development organization for a lack of resources and they are having a hard
time making payroll.

It would have been helpful for Mary to realize what was going on for her
during the stress of living in two worlds. She should have focused more on
her own needs rather than trying to change her friends. She should do her
best to keep her resourced friends connected with what she is doing, and
not be ashamed to tell them about the financial needs of the ministry and
ask for help. She should be intentional about maintaining and rebuilding
her relationships with those in resourced communities, without fully
expecting them to adopt her class culture. She should develop a
relationship with the leadership of her former church where they might
bring her in as an expert with some authority to help the church understand
class. She should use that authority to then explain to the church how
systems of classism work to isolate the poor, and to recruit their help and
suggestions of how to work against those systems.

The common theme across all of these cases is that what is needed is for
each side needs to understand how the system and spiritual forces work
against reconciliation and to be intentional about working against those
tendencies by keeping the connections alive.

Megachurches and Middle Class-Ministries
Another issue is understanding some of the class implications of the
emerging megachurch model. The issue is not so much about the size of
megachurches as it is about allocation of resources because they are often
made up of the middle/upper classes. Most megachurches in the USA follow
business models which are costly, involving expensive equipment, buildings,
staffing structures and marketing budgets. Most lower-class churches
follow much more thrifty models of ministry. The result is that for the
middle class megachurch business model to work, the average member must
have at least a middle-class income. If a middle-class church were to
become class diverse to the point where half its members were poor, then
they would have to significantly change their model to make more efficient
use of resources. What is more common is that middle-class churches that
pursue racial diversity, often do so without pursuing class diversity.
These churches end up being accused of “cream skimming” the high income
members from Black and Latino churches serving under-resourced communities.

The result of this well-intentioned push for diversity could be that the
resources of the middle Christians that were going to a church primarily
using those resources to serve the poor, are now going primarily to serve
the middle class.

This is not to condemn megachurches, because they have many advantages.
Many megachurches in developing countries are more thrifty than smaller
lower-class chuches in the USA. The important thing to recognize is the
systemic tendency to keep resources from the poor and to work against that
tendency. This also isn’t an argument against megachurches pursuing
diversity. The point is if they are going to pursue racial diversity, they
need also pursue class diversity in terms of the members, the culture of
the church and the background of its leaders. If they cannot achieve
authentic diversity across members, culture and leadership, then they are
better off partnering with ministries that can. The key questions for
middle-class churches pursuing class diversity are:

1. What portion of their resources are going to serve the poor? Is this enough to offset the systemic benefit they get for being a middle class church? 2. For ministries they are supporting (or running) that are serving the poor, how closely do they match the culture and needs of those being served? 3. For volunteer and short-term missions programs, what portion of the resources actually make it to serving the poor? Do the volunteers provide more resources to the poor than it costs to coordinate the volunteers?

The best megachurches are those that know their role in the Body of Christ.

They recognize God’s gift that they have 2 to 10 times the resources per
church member than churches of the poor, and recognize their stewardship
roles based on this. They may recognize that given geographic and cultural
factors, they may not be able to achieve the full-depth of racial and class
reconciliation that they might like. They recognize that the very culture,
values and methods that make them successful in serving middle-class
communities would make them unsuccessful in serving the poor if they were
to do it on their own. They recognize this class cultural barrier, and
respect and support the different culture, values and methods of ministries
with a lower-class culture serving the poor.

Based on this recognition, they make their ministry model as thrifty as
possible so that they can give the majority of their resources away. They
are intentional about focusing the majority of their giving on indigenous
ministries serving the poor, and they give without trying to control those
ministries to get them to match their middle-class values. The majority of
their volunteer programs intentionally focus most of the resources on
reaching the poor through indigenous ministries. They have some “middle-
class” volunteer programs that are primarily serving the volunteers, but
recognize that most of these resources are not reaching the poor. They
encourage their members to “tithe” their skills to charities by providing
pro bono work for nonprofits. Their members also are intentional about
extending their social capital to the poor by connecting others with
relationships that could provide jobs, grants or donations. For any
resource or service that they offer to the wider body of Christ that they
may charge for, they provide scholarships and discounts for those coming
from low-income communities.

While this trend of middle-class dominance often applies to megachurches,
it is also frequently true in other churches and ministries. One of the
most significant reasons for this dominance of middle-class ministries,
especially among parachurches, is the pervasiveness of individual
relational fundraising. Many parachurches have been able to grow to have
thousands of staff because they require that each staff raise their own
support from their own network of relationships. The problem with this
model is that it effectively limits staff to be those who come from middle
or upper-class backgrounds. One main advantage of this model is that it
scales well to thousands of staff and it works well with the human dynamics
of fundraising. Some progressive parachurch ministries have started to
allocate a percentage of every staff’s fundraising goal to go toward
funding staff from under-resourced communities. The problem is that these
goals are often too small (2-3%) to make up for the systemic forces of
class. If the goal of the parachurch is to have their staff match the
demographic of those they are serving, then most ministries will need to
set much higher goals to achieve this staff diversity (likely 10-50%
depending on the demographic they are serving).

Whether it is middle-class megachurches or parachurches, what is important
is that these ministries are stretching themselves to serve the poor. The
pastor is responsible for leading the organization and should at least push
hard enough that the organization feels moderately stretched. In
parachurches, this may mean that each individual feels stretched in their
individual fundraising goals rather and bearing some of the burden for
those from less resource background. This is not some demand that a church
or ministry ignore all of their other goals and priorities for the sake of
the poor, but it is a call that we each stretch ourselves to so that we two
can feel some of the suffering of the poor.

Vision for Class Reconciliation
While all of this may seem hard, there is enormous potential for God to
move as we pursue reconciliation. In the 20th century, over 80% of the
growth of the Christian church has come from the southern hemisphere and
Asia, and in the future, over 95% of the growth of the church is projected
to be in these areas. Over 70% of this growth has been in urban areas,
which is projected to be 75% of future growth. The problem is that the
majority of the resources of the Body of Christ are trapped in the suburbs
of the Western world. Imagine what could happen in the next century if the
resources of the Body were connected to the life and growth of the church
in under-resourced communities. I believe that the Global Body of Christ
could rapidly increase its ability to transform the world, and revive the
Western church. I’m convinced that class is the most significant barrier to
that happening.

People often like to disparage the Church, but they often fail to see its
potential and past successes. I recently read a prominent secular historian
who was asked, “What was the most significant historical event of the 20th
century? Was it the world wars, the cold war with communism or what?” His
answer was that if you project the long term impact of historical events,
probably the most significant event was the growth of Christianity to over
1 billion new Christians, largely of the poor.

While Communism claimed to be “for the poor,” it was essentially rooted in
a focus on materialism (a middle class value). The poor have decided that
what is more important to them is a movement that they are leading, one
that reflects their values and is bringing transformation to their
communities. That movement is the spread of indigenously-led Spirit-filled
Christianity in under-resourced communities. Many sociologists have noted
that a major side effect of becoming Christian is that people then become
“upwardly mobile” in terms of their class resources. Reflecting on the 20th
century, Christianity has had the effect of lifting hundreds of millions of
people out of poverty, while Communism ultimately failed (and arguably put
more in poverty). Indigenous local churches represent the most effective
institutions of the lower-classes, and they have shown the most significant
results in advancing their own cause.

If you look at the global Body of Christ and the fact that Christianity is
shrinking in the West, but growing in the Southern Hemisphere and in Asia,
we can begin to understand which parts of the body are alive, and which
parts are stagnant or dying. If we as Western Christians do not pursue
class reconciliation, God’s Kingdom will still continue (though more
slowly), but we will become irrelevant. In the words of General Shinseki,
“If you don’t like change, you are going to like irrelevance even less.”
One benefit of class reconciliation will be to bring more resources to the
parts of the Body that are growing, but the other benefit is that class
reconciliation will enable Western Christians to connect with the rest of
the body in ways that will bring life back into the church. This is already
happening in places like Boston, which has served as a symbol of the
declining church in America. Boston is now experiencing its largest revival
in a century-largely in ethnic churches planted by movements originating in
other countries.

Historically in the Bible, when the Israelites turned away to other gods
and cared for the poor, there was revival and God blessed them. If we
believe the promises of the Bible, then as we pursue class reconciliation,
we can expect that not only will we help bring the Gospel to the poor, but
we will also experience revival ourselves.

Questions for Discussion

1. Go through the list above of contrasting values in Class as Culture.

For each value, mark what your personal preference is. Mark each box either Dominant (D) or Non-dominant (N). Try to list what your actual preference is, not what you think it should be. Discuss what you found out about yourself.

2. For those of you who have had experiences either in under-resourced

communities, what has been your experience of the issues of class conflict and reconciliation discussed in this paper?

3. How do you think Paul’s principle in missions of “being as a Jew to the

Jews and being as a Greek to the Greeks” applies to class as culture?

4. What are the common areas of “strain” that you have in relating to lower-

class communities?

5. What would happen if organizations took on either all non-dominant class

values or all dominant class values?

6. Understanding your community. Does your community of people closest to

you consist primarily of people with lower-class access or higher-class access? Does your community primarily match with dominant class values or non-dominant values?

7. Given your unique class identity and the class identity of your extended

communities, what could be the unique role you could have in class reconciliation? How can you serve as a bridge between communities with high class access and those without? How could you stretch yourself to more effectively work toward class reconciliation?

8. What are ideas you have in how you could grow in your own class

consciousness and your connection with the pain of the poor?

9. What can you do to direct your class identification more toward the poor

in your lifestyle, resources, use of skills, time, etc?

10. What are some ways that your church can grow in class reconciliation?

Are their ways that your church can adapt its models to increase the resources reaching ministries with lower-class culture that are effectively serving the poor?
———————————- Class Identity

Area of	Steps of Growth
Identity
Class	Understand unique
Background	background and purpose
Class Access	Upwardly mobile
Class	Downwardly mobile
Identification
Class	Grow in class
Consciousness	Consciousness