Next Wednesday, Nov. 19 Corriente Ministries will be hosting a luncheon for Mission Year at 12:00 Noon in the Parish Hall at Christ Episcopal Church - 510 Belknap Pl. - one block north of San Antonio College. John Piercy, the Director of Development for Mission Year, will be coming from Chicago to present the Mission Year vision at the luncheon.

Mission Year was started in 1996 in Philadelphia by Bart Campolo on the simple idea of Christian young adults giving a year of their lives to Christian ministry in the inner cities of America’s urban centers. Twelve years later, Mission Year has 16 teams operating in 6 cities - Philadelphia, Camden NJ, Wilmington DE, Chicago, New Orleans and Atlanta.

Mission Year is a year long urban ministry program focused on Christian service and discipleship. They take teams of young people, place them in an area of need, and help them to serve people and create community. They are committed to the command of Jesus to “love God and love people,” by placing the needs of their neighbors first and developing committed disciples of Christ with a heart for the poor.

When I first began this conversation with John Piercy about 6 months ago, I was excited to learn that San Antonio was already on Mission Year’s wish list of cities they wanted to expand to. This is a God-given opportunity for churches and ministries in San Antonio to partner with Mission Year to expand the Kingdom of God in our city. A Mission Year presence in San Antonio will provide a pool of gifted, highly committed, high energy followers of Jesus Christ to work in and with urban ministry partners already established in some of the neediest and most underserved neighborhoods in San Antonio.

Working with Mission Year is a great example of the Corriente philosophy of developing strategic partnerships to do Kingdom work in San Antonio. Our simple mantra, “Don’t reinvent the wheel, connect the dots,” is more than just a slogan, it’s a core value that we seek to implement in every relationship we cultivate.

A Mission Year presence in San Antonio would be able to provide Corriente partners such as San Antonio Youth for Christ, Urban Connection and Agora Ministries with workers who will be more than just volunteers to work in programs, as important as that is. Mission Year volunteers will all spend a year following Jesus’ command to “Love the Lord your God, and love your neighbor as yourself.” By partnering with a local church, volunteering at a service site, and living in the neighborhoods where they serve, Mission Year Team Members effectively impact their communities while catching a deeper vision for what the Kingdom of God is like.

One of the most effective Mission Year groups in the country is in Atlanta, where they work very closely with Bob Lupton’s FCS Urban Ministries. When I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Lupton a few months ago, he had this to say about the impact Mission Year has made on his work in Atlanta:

Here in Atlanta we’ve had the advantage of having Mission Year as one of our partners. Many of the Mission Year kids, a good strong core of them, have decided to stay here in the city and they’ve been good leaders. Our current COO is a Mission Year grad. Finding a way to get younger people immersed in inner city/urban work will be a key to the long term success of this kind of ministry in any city.

Beyond just a one-year service commitment, Mission Year represents the opportunity for long-term sustainable transformational ministry in San Antonio neighborhoods, schools, ministries and churches that for too long have been overlooked, underserved and written off.

Please join us next Wednesday, November 19 at 12:00 Noon in the Parish Hall at Christ Episcopal Church as we hear from John and learn what it will take to bring Mission Year to San Antonio. This is a unique opportunity to learn more about Mission Year and how you, your ministry and your church can be a part of a new era in Urban Ministry in San Antonio.

Please RSVP by Monday, Nov. 17 to let me know you’ll be coming - and feel free to invite others from your church or place of ministry - especially any young adults who are college-aged or recent college graduates and who would be good candidates to be part of our first San Antonio Mission Year Team.

This is a free event an our lunch will be provided by Swede’s Restaurant - which guarantees it will be a physical and spiritual feast you won’t want to miss.

If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me at u2wesley@yahoo.com or on my cell at 210.262.0342.

Grace, Peace and Dirty Fingernails,

Tim Adams
210.262.0342

We always walk a fine line when we try to talk about politics and religion in the same conversation. Click on this link to read my latest attempt at walking that tightrope. And feel free to leave a comment here or at the Express-News website. Thanks for reading.

I’ll be getting back to blogging on a regular basis next week. Click on this link to read an article I wrote for today’s (Sat., Sept. 13) San Antonio Express-News.

In additon to the writing I do on this blog, I also do some occasional freelance work for various newspapers, magazines and ezines.

Click on this link to read a short article I wrote for the San Antonio Express-News. It was in this past Saturday’s (August 16) Religion Section.

At the bottom of the article is a Comments Section. Feel free to add your comments there - reader feedback will encourage the Express-News to feature more writing of this kind. But please, no comments about my mug shot that’s featured rather prominently.

Thanks for reading and commenting.

Tim Adams

My 73-year old mom is like a lot of parents from her generation. She still lives in the same house where she raised her kids, the only house she’s ever owned. It’s the same house she’s called home since October of 1964.

But, the neighborhood where my mom put down her roots is a very different place today than what it was 44 years ago. When I was growing up there, I don’t remember anyone who rented rather than owned their home – it’s always been a working class neighborhood, but during my formative years it was a stable and secure place to live.

Today the neighborhood is probably one third to one half renters – very few of the families that had kids who were my peers are still around and transience has become one of the defining characteristics of what was once a modest but solid neighborhood.

Back in the day my friends and I did engage in some occasional pranks that usually involved water balloons or eggs. But today there are the constant reminders of gang activity - the paved drainage ditch that divides her street and the street signs and yard fences in the area are regular targets for tagging – one of the ways gangs stake a claim to their turf.

A few weeks ago, my mom asked me to take a look at a spot on the side of her house where the paint was flaking off – she’d just had the house painted a little over a year ago, so that sort of wear seemed to be premature.

When I went over to look at the area she was concerned about, I wasn’t sure what to make of it, at first glance. The paint was coming off, but it was in small spots sprayed in a circular pattern and confined to a small area near one of the front windows. As I looked closer I could see small silver bb’s embedded in the spots on the siding where the paint was coming off.

Then I realized what had happened - my mom’s house had been hit by a shotgun blast, most likely fired from a passing car.

When I called the police the first officer who arrived confirmed my suspicions. A report was taken and later a crime scene team arrived to take photographs. As the team was doing its work I had a long conversation with one of the officers who stated they’d been closely monitoring the steady rise in gang activity in my mom’s neighborhood.

But, I’m not going to try to talk my mom into moving to a “safer” neighborhood – she values her independence and my older sister and I have had those conversations before and we know she’s happy where she is.

But, I’ll admit, my motives for wanting her to stay are also somewhat selfish. A big reason why I wouldn’t want my mom to move is that I don’t want to lose a great next door neighbor.

For the past three years my family and I have lived in the same neighborhood where I grew up. We own the house next door to mom, the house built by Norm Hastings, who was my Little League Baseball coach when I was in the fourth grade. There were five kids in the Hastings family and Norm added a second story to the house to accommodate his large clan, which makes it a great fit for our four kids.

Rare is the weekend night that we don’t have at least one and often two extra kids spending the night, testing their skills on Guitar Hero or Rock Band into the early morning hours or working on a script for a new video to upload to YouTube.

I like the fact that kids like to come to our house. When you live in a rough neighborhood, it’s important to have places to go that are safe – and fun.

But, regardless of where you live, there are choices to be made. I can’t tell you how many times people who live in more affluent, often gated communities, have confessed to me that they worry that they’re raising their kids in a cocoon – an artificial world of homogeneity and Stepford-esque conformity.

I tell them they should be concerned because not only is such an environment out of step with reality today, it will be even more of an aberration by the time our children reach our age.

By the year 2015, white people like me will no longer be in the majority in the State of Texas. By the middle of this century, that will be true of the entire U.S. population. Before the middle of the third decade of this century, the economy of China will be larger than that of the U.S. There are already more internet users in China than in the U.S.

The Christian Church will continue to shrink in Europe and North America while at the same time continuing its exponential growth in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The face and flavor of World Christianity is going to change in dramatic ways that will expose the ethnocentric biases that have too often been taken for granted – but had little or nothing to do with the Gospel.

Oh the times, they are a changin – and if Jesus were here today (physically), I just don’t think he’d be trying to run away from these realities. I don’t think he’d be very interested in churches that are little more than lifestyle enclaves – regardless of how big they are. I don’t believe that he would be impressed by a church or ministry that grew by taking the path of least resistance, or that could only measure its growth in numbers of bodies and the size of its budget.

We are moving into a time in history when the long overlooked - the last - will truly be first – and those who have been first for so long will be moving further down the line.

And if the Church of Jesus Christ doesn’t repent and truly become the new humanity that God intended it to be, where faith in Christ Jesus is what makes each of you equal with each other, whether you are a Jew or a Greek, a slave or a free person, a man or a woman (Galatians 3:28 CEV), then I do not believe that the ultimate outcome of such a demographic shift will be achieved with justice for everyone involved.

The Church’s obedience to its calling to be a house of prayer for all people will determine the course of history. We have gone down the path of comfort and conformity toward Babel, but God is calling us to the difficulty and diversity of Pentecost.

If we will take the road less traveled, it will make all the difference.

Above the fireplace in our home is this framed, three-panel print of the painting Lord, When Did We See You…? by San Antonio artist G. E. Mullan. The picture was a gift to my wife Jennifer and me on the occasion of our first anniversary from my lifetime friend Jeff Vollmer, who was the best man in our wedding.

It’s been a little over 17 years since Jeff gave us that gift, and in that time it’s always hung either in our bedroom or living room in the numerous residences we’ve occupied. Getting married while I was still in school and then trying to find a place of ministry where we could put down some roots has made for a vagabond existence, at times.

If you look very closely at the picture, starting in the upper left hand corner of the canvas, you can see the text of Matthew 25:34-40 running along the edge of the painting:

Then the King will speak to those on his right. He will say, ‘My Father has blessed you. Come and take what is yours. It is the kingdom prepared for you since the world was created. I was hungry. And you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty. And you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger. And you invited me in. I needed clothes. And you gave them to me. I was sick. And you took care of me. I was in prison. And you came to visit me.’ Then the people who have done what is right will answer him. ‘Lord,’ they will ask, ‘when did we see you hungry and feed you? When did we see you thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you as a stranger and invite you in? When did we see you needing clothes and give them to you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ The King will reply, ‘What I’m about to tell you is true. Anything you did for one of the least important of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’

When you make the connection between the text and the painting, you understand Mullan intended it to be a calculated epiphany. Life should imitate art.

Lord, When Did We See You…? represents everything I know God has called me to do as a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For anyone seeking to live a life of discipleship in obedience to the Gospel, the text that inspired this beautiful work is one of the Scriptures that form the biblical basis for such a life - as basic as John 3:16 or The 23rd Psalm.

But, there have been times when its presence in our home has been unsettling rather than inspiring. In particular I remember a time 13 years ago, as I was serving my first church as senior pastor, when I was tempted to relegate it to the attic.

My first church had been through 12 straight years of decline before my arrival. The steady decline in members, programs and giving was, for the most part, caused by several layers of deep-rooted systemic dysfunction. There had been at least three major splits with large numbers of families leaving each time - a familiarity with Systems Theory was a definite necessity for anyone who would serve there. Of course, none of the conflict revolved around anything of significance in terms of Christian doctrine or practice.

As the church was losing members, the neighborhood was also changing and had reached a critical tipping point, going from a 90/10 ratio of whites to blacks to a 60/40 split with African-Americans by then in the majority.

Crime was on the rise, property values were dropping, white flight was rampant and four churches, previously located in our community, had set the pace by selling their properties to African-American congregations and relocating to the more affluent more white and less black suburbs.

From my days in bus ministry as a high school kid in San Antonio and the inner city of Chicago as a college student, to the ways I’d been challenged by people like Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis and Ron Sider to read Scripture differently when I was doing youth ministry in my 20’s, answering the call to that church seemed like a natural step of obedience.

When I understood in greater detail the kind of demographic sea change that was going on in that community and how other churches had chosen to leave rather than change with the community, I saw it as a test of our willingness to be obedient to the Gospel rather than take the easy way out.

Unfortunately, a large portion of the church leadership didn’t see it that way.

A short time after our arrival, I convened a long range planning committee to study what options the church should consider. I spent hours on the phone with consultants and other experts from around the country, read the current literature, sought the counsel of other pastors in the area, visited churches that had relocated and some that had chosen to stay, looked at the ever-increasing needs of our community, had a thorough appraisal done of our church property, looked to the Scripture for guidance and did a lot of praying.

The conclusion reached by a majority of people on the long range planning committee was that the church should sell its property and use the proceeds from that sale to relocate the church to the suburbs. When the day came for the church to vote on whether to accept the committee’s recommendation, I presented it to the church and stated that I would not vote for it.

The measure failed to pass – not even getting a simple majority of the congregation’s votes, with the most common comment being “Come up with a better plan.” I was naïve enough to think we would.

When I went by my office one Saturday afternoon about four weeks later, I found several envelopes slipped under my office door. Inside each envelope was a letter of resignation from a key leader in the church, stating that they and their families would not be back.

I wish I could tell you that others stepped up to fill those leadership vacancies and that the church became a witness to the community through its willingness to stay rather than leave, that new members came and that the church grew, breaking out of the downward spiral it had been in for 12 years. It would be nice to be able to say that their departure removed obstacles that the church needed to get past in order to fulfill its mission and calling. But, before long, others left and some of those who stayed were convinced that I should be next.

We held on there for three long years - there were never enough votes to get rid of me, just enough to make me miserable. We made every sacrifice we could to try to make it work but never really developed any sort of traction in terms of ministry. That was one of the loneliest and most miserable times of my life.

Looking back, there are certainly things I would do differently, if given the chance to do them over. I was young and naïve and certainly didn’t walk on water – but there is nothing I could have done, other than compromising the convictions I had then and still have now – in order to create a different outcome. That’s what bothered me the most.

Wasn’t God supposed to grant us success in exchange for our willingness to be faithful? We did what was right, so why wasn’t God keeping up His end of the bargain?

Of course, life and ministry are much more complicated than some sort of simple exchange of sacrifice for success, because obedience isn’t always measured in sacrifice (I. Samuel 15:22). And there are no bargains to be made with God.

If you’re called to the kind of ministry described in Mullan’s painting and Matthew’s Gospel, don’t expect an immediate return on your investment. But don’t despair, either (Galatians 6:9), because the end of the story is full of surprises.

I believe “Lord, when did we see you…?” is a real question that will be asked by genuinely surprised people. Jesus wasn’t just using a rhetorical device to make a point, He was giving us the clearest account of the Last Judgment found anywhere in Scripture.

Be prepared to be surprised.

rel•e•vant \ˈre-lə-vənt\, adj. having some bearing on or importance for real-world issues, present-day events, or the current state of society

Relevant is a huge buzzword among North American Christians.

Traditional mainline denominations, most of which have been hemorrhaging in their memberships since the 1960’s, are desperate for ways to be relevant in order to attract new members.

Evangelical churches, whose memberships have grown considerably in that same time period, often credit their ability to thrive with their ability to be relevant – adopting strategies described as user-friendly, seeker-sensitive and contemporary.

The worship service has been the primary event that Evangelicals have placed their focus on in their attempts to be relevant. While almost all Mainline churches still follow a traditional order of worship with a few offering the option of one with a contemporary theme, many Evangelical churches have no traditional service but provide different services that appeal to different tastes – contemporary, praise & worship, hard rock, rap & hip-hop, etc.

Churches spend large amounts of money and time in the pursuit of using just the right theme, technology and talent to keep people coming back. Close attention is paid to market analysis, demographics, cultural trends and other parameters in order to insure that a church is getting it right in terms of the target audience they’re trying to reach. If you’ve ever read Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Church, you’re familiar with “Saddleback Sam,” the poster child for lifestyle enclaves everywhere.

So, I have to wonder, what would happen if we put that much attention, energy, creativity and money into local missions and outreach?

Now, by local missions and outreach, I don’t mean a church’s TV ministry, radio ministry, website or anything else related to institutional promotion. I’m not even talking about evangelism, if by evangelism you mean strategies to get the unchurched into church.

What I’m thinking about is what churches often refer to as compassion ministries, benevolence ministries or community ministries - the ways we are willing to spend and be spent without any real prospect of a return for the institution. The food pantries and clothes closets we operate, the turkeys we give away Thanksgiving, the toys we collect at Christmas, and the occasional help we provide for someone behind on their rent.

The same things that churches were doing, in one form or another, 100 years ago.

I propose that it’s time to bring ministry to the poor into the 21st Century. I wonder what a cutting-edge community ministries program would look like?

What would happen if, rather than just trying to make the institutional church relevant, we tried to make the Kingdom of God relevant – if we poured our passion into rethinking what it means to minister to the poor?

With all of the emphasis we’ve given to being relevant in our presentation of the message, why are we so out of touch in terms of how we apply the message? In my lifetime, we’ve gone from the fuzzy felt of flannel graph to NOOMA videos. With all of the creativity, energy and money that continue to be poured into Sunday morning why haven’t we tried to rethink our strategies for the other days of the week?

Too much of our work in the area of ministry to the poor, as well-intentioned as it may be, is nothing more than a rip-off of failed government programs – poor imitations of a lot of bad ideas. Bob Lupton puts it this way:

Take people who are able and strong. Place them in the wealthiest land on earth. Surround them with unparalleled opportunity. Then pay them not to work, not to strive, not to achieve. Pay them to accept nonproductivity as a way of life. Agree to subsidize their families with food, shelter, health care, and money if the fathers will leave. Do this for two or three generations and see what you produce. (Theirs is the Kingdom: Celebrating the Gospel in Urban America, p. 72).

But, before any of my conservative brothers and sisters interpret Lupton’s words as a stab at my liberal brothers and sisters, please answer this question – What are you or church doing in the area of ministry to the poor, community outreach or anything else that resembles obedience to the Great Commandment that is any different than what Lupton has described?

Just as responsible evangelism demands follow up discipleship, responsible ministry to the poor has to be more than one-way charity. Jesus has called us to be fishers of men and He’s also called us to be fishing instructors – to the whole person – body, soul and spirit.

The Great Commandment should not be the red-headed step child of the Great Commission. Because without the Great Commandment, the Great Commission is only a fraction of the Gospel, a shell of the fullness God’s Grace replaced by the emptiness of cheap grace.

If we can agree that 40 years after the beginning of the Great Society programs of the 1960’s, many of those programs have become part of the problem - that the Left got it wrong, then we can also say that the Right still doesn’t get it.

Many of the people who abandoned traditional Mainline churches in favor of more conservative Evangelical churches (this migration accounts for some of the growth of conservative church groups) did so because they disagreed with the support that Mainline groups gave to liberal social causes.

But, rather than formulate an alternative vision for how to speak to our social ills, most conservative churches have ignored the least of these as if the Great Commandment had never been given. Those that have tried to develop a social ethic have tended to concentrate their efforts on a narrow range of issues and their approach has often looked more like a secular political agenda rather than a ministry of Spirit-filled justice and compassion.

But, there is cause for hope. There is a new reality emerging – one that is neither liberal nor conservative, one that represents what is best about each but transcends both. I believe that it’s time for the Church to proclaim the whole Gospel – that God’s ultimate act of self-disclosure has happened in the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ – and that through God’s action in Jesus He has initiated the redemption of not only our souls but of all of creation – that the Good News we proclaim in obedience to the Great Commission and the Good Works we do in obedience to the Great Commandment are two sides of the same coin.

I believe there is a new consensus emerging, one that will no longer emphasize charity over dignity, dependency over self-sufficiency, entitlement over empowerment. One that will place just as much passion, energy, creativity, resources and conviction into the Great Commandment as we have into the Great Commission. One that will not only bring healing and wholeness to the least of these, but to the Church of Jesus Christ as well.

$5.00 a gallon gas hasn’t made it to Texas yet, but all indicators say it’s on the way. How will that impact the way we “do church?”

If you’re like me and you grew up in the 1970’s, you remember the original Energy Crisis.

Following the Yom Kippur War of 1973, OPEC informed the supporters of Israel that the party was over. Almost overnight we were told that without the oil we’d been getting from OPEC we’d be running out of the natural resources that drove our economy and underwrote our lifestyle. We were completely caught off guard. Most Americans had no idea how dependent we had become on foreign oil.

Conservation became a buzzword. A popular bumper sticker of the time said it all – “Energy: Use It, But Use It Wisely.”

Within a short time the oversized cruising vessels made by Ford, GM and Chrysler were replaced by Pintos, Vegas and Gremlins (oh, the humanity!) – and they soon had serious competition from the much better made products of Toyota and Datsun.

None of this really made much of an impression on my 12-year old mind until one Saturday morning when I made my usual trek up to the corner Ice House (that’s what we call convenience stores in San Antonio) to buy a gallon of gas for the lawnmower and three pieces of Super Bubble to enjoy as I cut the grass.

But, much to my shock, the quarter (as in 25 cents) that had covered the cost of the gas and the gum in the past no longer would suffice. Suddenly gas was over 40 cents a gallon. It was the end of the world as I knew it. Certainly the Rapture was near.

Besides the drastic downsizing in the wheelbase of the cars rolling off of Detroit assembly lines, there were other obvious ways that life suddenly changed. From that point on, the 1970’s became a time of shortages and runaway inflation. Adding to that were the looming Watergate scandal and the slow, tortured end of the Vietnam War. It was like a fog had settled in.

And there’s a lot going on in our world right now that is eerily similar – and much more dangerous.

About the same time as gas was doubling and tripling in price in the 1970’s, churches all over America were using buses to bring people in. What seeker sensitivity, user friendliness, mission statements and praise choruses mean to today’s megachurches, the Bus Ministry meant to the 1970’s practitioners of church growth in America.

Long before there were rear screen projectors, auditoriums without crosses and Rock Band for the Wiis in the Student Center, there were bus workers swallowing goldfish, giving away colored baby chicks at Easter and hiding money under the bus seats (sometimes referred to as Baptist Bingo).

With the rise of gas prices in the 1970’s, Bus Ministry became a larger line item for churches but more feasible for the riders, most of whom came from low income neighborhoods and apartment complexes. For all of its superficiality and focus on entertainment, Bus Ministry was, for the most part, a good way for poor people to get to church - most of whom were kids whose parents were thankful for the weekly respite.

I was one of those bus workers in the 1970’s and early 1980’s. When I was 17, a good friend of mine and I started a bus route from scratch, making cold turkey door-to-door visits on the Southside of San Antonio. Within three weeks of our first visit we had 61 kids on the bus and headed for Sunday School at Huisache Ave. Baptist Church.

As a college student I worked in the largest Bus Ministry in America at First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana from 1980-1982. First Baptist leased over 150 buses every weekend to pick up riders throughout the Chicago area and bring them to downtown Hammond for a taste of the old-time religion.

Like most methods, Bus Ministry ran its course. It’s still used by some churches (First Baptist Hammond still operates on about the same scale) but has seen its popularity wane since the early 1980’s and the ascendancy of the commuter megachurch.

But, as we head toward $5.00 a gallon gas, I can’t help but wonder if the clock is ticking on the commuter megachurch as well.

The megachurches on the outlying edges of suburbia are a 15-30 minute Sunday morning drive for many of their commuter members. Add to that men’s groups, women’s groups, youth group and other functions that keep a family going back to the campus three to four times a week and all of a sudden they’ve gone through a full tank on the SUV – roughly $100 a week.

What if, rather than drive past 20 churches on the way to the church with the big screens American Christians decided it would be better stewardship of God’s money to find a church within a reasonable driving distance or even walking distance from where they live?

What if, as a result of the money they saved on gas they could contribute more to the previously struggling neighborhood churches they had been driving past? Not to mention how much healthier we would all be if we walked to church.

What if one of the unintended consequences of $5.00 a gallon gas was a greater emphasis on the communities where we live as the place where we minister in the name of Jesus rather than seeing a building or an institution as the focus of our devotion?

What if, through this surge in membership and resources, neighborhood churches shifted out of survival mode and became agents of community development and change?

What if, over time, a new paradigm of church emerged, one that emphasized Christians as givers rather than consumers? What would it be like for American Christians to choose a church on the basis of what they could do for it, rather than what it could do for them?

Imagine the possibilities.

Dream out loud.

At high volume.