The educational fallout from the COVID19 pandemic exacerbated an already dire situation among the urban youth who are part of UTM programs. Riverside, the school that all of our middle-schoolers attend, was previously struggling before COVID-19 hit. It ranks 769th out of 791st among all of the Middle Schools in Michigan based on M-Step and PSAT English test scores released by the Michigan Department of Education. In 2019:
Only 9% of its students achieved proficiency in Math.
Only 23% of its students achieved proficiency in Reading/Language Arts.
54% of its students were suspended (compared to a statewide average of 8%)
72% of its students were absent 15 days or more (compared to a statewide average of 20%)
86.5% of its students receive free or discounted lunch; it also ranks in the lowest 3.9% of family income in comparison to other Michigan Middle Schools.
This school year, the GRPS district facilitated learning through a 100% virtual model (adding a possible hybrid model on January 19th, 2021). For students from under-resourced and disadvantaged families, online learning from home is an impossible task without wraparound support from the community. Over the semester, many students missed school over half the time while failing to complete over fifty assignments per quarter. What’s more, almost all of our students come from single-parent families. These single mothers (and two single fathers) face a daily uphill grind to meet their families’ basic needs, especially with the continued threat of COVID. Therefore, they cannot put the necessary energy into assisting their kids’ online virtual learning. In partnership with New City Church and Navigators I:58, UTM created an online learning pod center (OLPC) for students that attend Palmer Elementary, Riverside Middle School, and Union High School. In the beginning, UTM experimented with a few different models that emphasized online zoom support or academic tutoring. However, students continued to struggle because they weren’t completing assignments or they failed to attend their virtual classes. We connected with other nonprofits. GRPS teachers and administrators, and neighborhood parents to learn how to create a better OLPC that would meet its neighborhood students’ needs. After much listening, prayer, and reflection, we developed a full-service OLPC that can accommodate between 20-40 students. Goals for the OLPC include:
Every student passing every class
Every student demonstrating improvement in every class
life-on-life discipleship/mentoring connection points from UTM in the lives of every student
But this means hiring two youth development academic coordinators on a short-term basis. They will be responsible for: (1) oversight, coaching, and evaluation of academic tutor volunteers and zoom support volunteers of the OLPC, (2) supervision, safety, and education of students utilizing the virtual learning curriculum approved by Grand Rapids Public Schools (3) providing daily academic and technical support for youth participating in virtual learning.
Several of UTM’s partners are getting behind the full-service OLPC. UTM received a grant of $10,900 from Berean Baptist Church towards staffing needs along with a Christmas offering which will be used towards incentives for learning. Calvary Church contributed $4,000 to purchase air purifiers, plexiglass shield dividers, and misc. items such as face masks, cleaning supplies, and storage containers. New City Church provided snacks, half of UTM’s current volunteers, and free use of its building. Also, HexArmor donated 25 clear face shields, for academic tutor volunteers, as an extra safety precaution. Navigators I:58 staff serves as a liaison between the OLPC and parents, teachers, and students.
Even with the support of our current partners, we need more help. To realistically meet our goals, we need a minimum of twenty people (ages 16 and over) per day for the next six months, to volunteer once a week in the afternoons from 1:00 to 2:30 (Monday through Thursdays) for one-to-one tutoring along with two volunteers (Mondays through Thursdays) each morning from 8:45-11:45 to help with online zoom support. At this moment, we only have ten volunteers. We appeal to all available churches, civic groups, and individuals in West Michigan to sacrifice part of an afternoon once-a-week. Volunteering as a tutor is a practical way to love your neighbor as yourself and will significantly impact our students’ lives. Please text or call at 616-206-8666 or email me at shafferutm@gmail.com if you are interested.
Altogether we need $30,000 to sufficiently fund the OLPC through June of 2021. Although UTM has already raised $16,600 for the OLPC program, we still need $13,400. We also need another $9,000 by the end of the year to keep UTM out of the red for 2020. Will you consider sending a generous gift today to help us continue UTM’s life-transforming work? Your donation will help give hope to under-resourced and disadvantaged youth that might otherwise fall through the cracks that COVID has widened. You can donate online by clicking UTM’s Network For Good donate button at https://utmgr.networkforgood.com/ or send a check to UTM’s mailing address at 214 Spencer St. NE Grand Rapids, MI. 49505.
We also need your prayers. Not only for the personal safety of UTM’s staff, volunteers, and students, but also that the OLPC will help fulfill our mission to break the fatherless cycle through the gospel of Christ! We are so grateful that many of you have already partnered with us through volunteering, financial support, and prayers.
Because of God’s grace,
Joel Shaffer, Executive Director Urban Transformation Ministries
One of the casualties within today’s political and cultural climate is that any conversations about social justice and the Bible are viewed through the polarized political and culture wars lens of the left and right. Too many people, including evangelicals, project biases, and assumptions into discussions about social justice or racial issues without carefully listening and observing what is and what isn’t being said. I am often amazed that people will make far-out speculations and misleading accusations based on a 10-second clip that they viewed on Facebook or Twitter or from a paragraph of someone’s writings—Which gives the subject matter an entirely different meaning than what the author intended.
To illustrate this, in a workshop that I recently taught on Social Justice, I shared a lengthy quote about the 8th commandment (no stealing) of the Decalogue from an unnamed theologian. “I think for most of us…. no stealing is a word that we’re very comfortable with, because we view it as how we as upper-middle-class white people can be protected against lower classes who are constantly involved in stealing. Yet when you read this in the Old Testament, you will find this command normally directed to the rich to protect the rich from overpowering the poor. It is the poor who are protected by this command. It is not the rich so that the scope of this eighth word is rather strong & rather broad…Amos over & over again in his book gives us a very devastating statement of judgment that is going to come on the people of God because they sell the poor for a pair of shoes & that they cheat. They use long measures so that the poor are swallowed up & their houses are taken over…We think of this command as a vehicle to protect us…from robbers. Yet, in the Old Testament itself, it is that which God established for the protection of those who were disenfranchised.”
With the quote’s apparent “class-warfare” language and reference to “whiteness,” I asked if they thought the theologian was influenced by progressive politics and Critical Theory? Or had he arrived at a conclusion through sound, Biblical exegesis of the Bible? Right away, several conservative Christians in the class immediately presumed the theologian had abandoned sound doctrine and capitulated to the Critical Theory “spirits of the age” and embraced progressive-leftism.
I revealed the author of the quote was none other than the late Dr. James M. Grier, the former long-time dean of Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. While some had no idea who Dr. Grier was, others (especially pastors) in the class had heard him speak at Bible or Missionary conferences in years past. FYI, during the latter part of the 20th century and a decade into the 21st century until his death in 2013, Grier was regarded as one of the foremost and significant Christian Evangelical Scholars in the arena of Worldview and Ethics, a fierce opponent of theological liberalism and a champion of Pro-life ethics.
Dr. Grier came to this conclusion based on careful exegesis of Scripture. For instance, although the Old Testament forbids the stealing of people’s possessions while demanding financial restitution for their crime (Exod 22:1;7-9) many more laws restrained the rich and powerful from different forms of thievery, which take advantage of the poor, the needy, the immigrant, the widow, and the fatherless. This included: forbidding merchants from cheating people with dishonest scales (Lev. 19:35-36, Ezek. 45:10, Prov. 20:10; 11:1, 16:11, Hos. 12:6-7, Am. 8:4-8, Mic. 6:10-13), preventing landmarks and boundary markers from being removed (Deut. 19:14; 27:17, Prov. 23:10), and banning usury and lending with interest (Lev. 25:36-36; Deut. 23:19-20, Neh. 5:7;10) especially towards the poor (Exod. 22:25). When the fields were harvested, according to Mosaic law, the corners and edges were left untouched so that the poor, immigrant, widow and fatherless were able to gather food for themselves. Those who refused to obey the gleaning laws for the needy were considered in violation of the 8th commandment (Lev. 19:9-11). What’s even more, defrauding the widow or the orphan of their meager means for financial gain was considered the worst possible form of stealing in the Old Testament and actually incurred the harshest punishment (Exod. 22:21-22).
I imagine some of my progressive-left Christian friends and poverty-fighting colleagues are applauding in total agreement, but I am not finished yet. If one presumes that the Gleaner laws (Lev. 19:9-11) or the year of Jubilee (Lev. 25:8-22) call for socialist distribution of wealth—Or that Matthew 25’s judgment of the Sheep and the Goats is an indictment against conservatives because they don’t embrace a large-scale government intervention strategy—Or find themselves misrepresenting the views of conservative evangelicals within social media because they do not “feel the Bern” or any of the other progressive presidential candidates for office (which leads them to vote for Trump)—You, too, probably brought your personal political and cultural baggage into social justice conversations and projected it on both the Scriptures and the person that you disagree with.
To be honest, I write this because I am saddened by being labeled a “Cultural Marxist” by certain conservative evangelicals that misrepresent and slander fellow social-justice conservative evangelicals (and myself) who cherish the gospel. As if I don’t know how to Biblically discern truth from error! I am also saddened by walking on egg-shells around particular progressive Christians that are so quick to publicly point out everyone’s “micro-aggressions” of those of us in the dominant culture in the absence of any deep close-knit relationships. As if this new form of shaming has the god-like power to change a person’s point of view! I am saddened by the suspicion from conservative Christians who question my pro-life credentials once they find out I am a “Never-Trumper.” And I am saddened by the faulty-assumptions from progressives that negatively stereotype pro-life conservative evangelicals for only caring about unborn babies. I’ve met several hundred upon hundreds of womb-to-the-tomb pro-life Christians in my small network of relationships in churches throughout the Midwest that sacrificially love the fatherless through adoption, foster care, and life-on-life mentoring in their communities without any media fanfare.
So what is the solution? How about joining me in asking God to help us live out a love that is patient and kind? A love that does not envy or boast? A love that is not arrogant or rude, especially on social media? A love that does not insist on its own way and is not irritable or resentful? A love that does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in truth, even when it goes against the cultural tide? What about a love that bears all things, including the hurts and pain of those marginalized in society? Or believes all things by not assuming motive or stereotyping those with whom we disagree? And finally, hopes all things and endure all things? May God help us, because too many times our love for each other and our neighbors has failed. Our current cultural and political climate only compounds the difficulty we encounter living in such a fractured world where all of us, view all of life through a glass darkly. And we are all in desperate need of God’s love and mercy to show love and mercy towards others.
I am currently writing a book on what the Bible says about social justice. It is not the book I intended to write first. I prefer to share stories of former fatherless students of mine whose lives were transformed by the gospel of Jesus through UTM. That would’ve been easier and less controversial and maybe even inspirational. But through numerous face-to-face conversations with fellow-Christians, along with hundreds of online discussions and debates about the myriad of pressing social issues, I realized evangelical Christianity currently lies stranded in a fog of confusion about social justice and the Scriptures.
What’s more, there is no single statement of authority on social teaching within evangelicalism (except for the Bible). Different denominations and groups of evangelicals all agree that the Bible has much to say about social justice and poverty. However, the bigger question is how to interpret these passages of Scripture. For instance, a group of progressive evangelicals that call themselves “Red-Letter Christians” give more importance to the actual words Jesus said in the gospels over other passages of Scripture and different genres in the Bible. Because they view the entire Bible through the “red-letter” lens, they tend to elevate Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom of God as most important for how Christians ought to live. So when Jesus tells his disciples to “seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness (can be translated justice), red-letter Christians believe they are mandated to pursue social justice as the central component and mission of their faith. Since Jesus did not directly address abortion and gay marriage in the gospels, likewise, red-letter Christians ignore or revise verses of Scripture in other books of the Bible that address sexual ethics and the sanctity of human life and adapt to the surrounding culture’s thinking on these volatile social issues.
In contrast, some conservative evangelicals hold to a “dispensational” view of Biblical revelation that mostly interprets the red-letters about the kingdom of God as a future time when Jesus assumes a literal rule and reign on this earth. What’s more, dispensationalists are skeptical and cautious in applying specific aspects of OT law and the words from Israel’s prophets as a standard for social justice in today’s culture. In their view, those passages concern OT Israel, not today’s Christians. Therefore Christians have no mandate to pursue social justice. However, the majority of evangelicals reject and adopt a belief or two from both groups but land somewhere between these two opposites.
The latest fog may have more to do with the hostile political climate of our nation in the past decade. Culture wars between the political left and right have created battle lines between ethnic minorities (especially African-Americans) and the criminal justice system/law enforcement, between the rights of pre-born humans (Pro-life) and reproductive rights of women (Pro-choice), between the rights of the LGBTQ community and religious liberty rights, between the globalists and the nationalists over the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and illegal/undocumented immigrants, and between the 99% and the 1% over wealth inequality. Amid these cultural battles, evangelicals can quickly become political pawns of both the Republican and Democratic parties. They parrot sound-bites from media figures, speaking their truth against the evils of their political opponents, but grow hypocritically silent and overlook the sins within their political tribe. I am not ascribing to the false equivalence fallacy, where both the political left and right are equal in their corruption. Instead, I’m making the point that politically-minded evangelical Christians tend to turn a blind eye towards their chosen party’s short-comings. Thus, social justice becomes a product of personal opinion and self-interest rather than a reflection of the character of God.
At least once a month, I will post articles, thoughts, or quotes about social justice and the Bible. The series will be called “Social Justice Sentiments.” My sentiments do not associate social justice with some sentimental, exaggerated feeling of nostalgia or sadness, but instead, communicate my views on Biblical social justice and how Christians can and should apply social justice to today’s culture. Some of my articles may end up in my book, and others will not. However, feel free to join me in this discussion. Maybe together, we can dispel some of the fog and confusion that surrounds social justice.
For over half my life, I’ve lived in urban communities on the North Side of Grand Rapids that at one time or another, were characterized by poverty, drugs, and violence. In America today, choosing to live in such a neighborhood is not that uncommon like it was a couple of decades ago. Some people are drawn to urban communities filled with blight nowadays because they see the potential of making a buck off of flipping houses or because they love the location, with its close vicinity to their job or to the city’s vibrant nightlife. However, if you turn back the clock to a different time and culture back in the 1990s, most people considered living in the ‘hood as outlandish, dangerous, and lacking wisdom, especially in the height of the drug wars and gang violence throughout our nation’s cities, which the media sensationalized. In my early conversations with suburban white folks, many used adjectives to describe Sherilyn and my choice to live in our particular high crime urban neighborhood as foolish, brave, irresponsible, cool, dumb, crazy, and ill-advised. One person even questioned whether I really loved my wife because of my commitment to living and raising a family in the neighborhood where we did ministry. But Sherilyn and I understood that the best way to love the people that we served started with becoming their neighbor.
The father of Christian Community Development, Dr. John M. Perkins, calls this concept of establishing a neighborhood presence by moving into the neighborhood, Relocation. For Dr. Perkins, relocating into a community of need is the essential first step for anyone who does substantial ministry in a disadvantaged, under-resourced community. So as newlyweds, we followed Perkin’s example and relocated into the neighborhood where we served. A few years later, we purchased a duplex in the Belknap-Lookout community on the NE side of Grand Rapids. When we relocated to the community, we came face-to-face with the actual reality in urban communities and the people who lived there rather than the media and political stereotypes which create racial and cultural bias.
For instance, the overwhelming majority of single, black moms in our neighborhood were not “Welfare Queens” that refused to work and purposely had kids out of wedlock so that they could receive more government benefits. Instead, most were like Terrie Grice, a hard-working, single mother of four who labored full-time plus any extra overtime she could get at Spectrum Health. As a committed Christian that loved Jesus, Terri made sure her children attended church each Sunday and that they regularly participated in UTM programs. She loved her kids so much that she also enlisted the help of my wife Sherilyn to take care of her youngest three kids (Alicia, Christina, and Marquis) while she worked her less-than-desirable 2nd shift position at the hospital. So for five years (until she was able to move to 1st shift) the Grice family and ours were inextricably intertwined as Sherilyn and I came alongside Terri when she needed practical help with her kids when they were in Elementary and Middle School.
The longer we lived and ministered in our neighborhood, the more we realized that certain urban issues were not necessarily what they seemed on the surface. For example, when students that attended our after school programs grew into older teenagers, several fatherless teenage boys that I coached in elementary school turned to selling drugs and joining gangs. Given the fact that I nurtured deep relationships with them over a long period of time, I also knew their stories as to why they turned to the streets to supplement their income. They weren’t thugs or criminal monsters like Nino Brown from the crime drama movie “New Jack City” or Ray Ray from “South Central” which sensationalized crack dealers. Rather, many of these students of mine were poor, fatherless and trapped into a survival mentality which then lured them into selling drugs by an older sibling or relative in a similar manner as Dave-O (Current UTM staff member) by his older brother with a luring sales-pitch that many fatherless 12 year olds wouldn’t refuse: “Since we don’t have a daddy to provide for us, crack cocaine will be our daddy.”
In response to listening and seeing the needs from an insider perspective, we created a family-like community within UTM built on life-on-life relationships that introduced these students to their Heavenly Father and discovered their identity in Christ. Eventually, several young men left the sin and negativity of the streets and gave their lives to Christ. Athletic programs such as the ROCK were initiated and staffed by those who had recently converted to Christianity from the streets. What’s more, the entrepreneur-spirit that we witnessed in our students became the idea and catalyst for current programs of UTM such as ManUP and Hustle City, While others saw them as “Thugs” and “Monsters,” we saw them as future community leaders that were not beyond redemption. Several young men and women that grew up within UTM programs and experienced life-on-life discipleship are now Christian leaders in their urban churches and communities scattered in particular cities of Michigan (including our neighborhood) and Pennsylvania.
Looking back, “Relocation” turned out to be one of the wisest things we ever did. While we experienced some hardships related to living in our community, they weren’t any different than what our neighbors experienced. And those hardships drew us closer together as we worked together to overcome them. Whenever Dr. John M. Perkins talks about the principle of Relocation, he often quotes this ancient Chinese poem:
Go to the People;
Live among them;
Love them;
Learn from them;
Start from where they are;
Work with them;
Build on what they have.
But of the best leaders,
When the task is accomplished,
The work completed,
The people all remark:
‘We have done it ourselves’
Since UTM also adopted the principle of Relocation from the philosophy of CCDA, the overwhelming majority of our staff and volunteers are now “home-grown” leaders that came from the neighborhood itself. They are the ones God raised up to lead. As we continue to move forward, it is their ideas and vision that God is using to break the fatherless cycle. And one of the main reasons it rings true is that we valued the principle of Relocation.
Twenty-Seven years ago, I was at my wit’s end. Having recently moved into an urban community on the NE side of Grand Rapids to do ministry, I was overwhelmed by the violence, brokenness, and despair, and I didn’t know what to do. A month earlier, a shootout between a crack dealer and one of his customers whom he cheated (by selling him dial soap made to look like crack rocks) took place right above the apartment where my college roommates and I lived. A shotgun blast from the crack addict left part of the drug dealer’s hand embedded in the wall while leaving a weird burning smell in the upstairs hallway.
As a first-year seminary student that desired to share the love of Christ with the urban poor, we reserved a large room in our apartment to help homeless people in need of housing. At the same time, I had just begun working at the elementary school across the street from me as a supervisor of an after-school recreation program, which allowed me the opportunity to build relationships with many fatherless children trapped in poverty within my neighborhood. Right before the shootout, we recently brought in Jon, a homeless man who previously lived in a broken down El Camino under the Grand Rapids S-Curve. The shooting scared Jon so much that he observed: “it was much safer living in my old car than around here.” But after the gun battle, I became much more acutely aware of my surroundings. Until the shootout, I hadn’t noticed the bullet holes that littered our house’s front siding from a previous drive-by shooting (before we moved in). And I hadn’t paid attention to students within the rec program that I supervised were selling in front of my house or kiddy corner across the street at the neighborhood park. From that point on, I began working with the Grand Rapids Vice to rid the apartment above me, along with several other houses on our block that were trap houses for crack dealers.
Amid all the turmoil, I heard about an urban ministry conference sponsored by CCDA (Christian Community Development Association) held in Detroit. Several hundred pastors, community developers, and urban ministers converge to fellowship and help each other how to rebuild and restore communities of need that were broken by poverty, violence, and despair. The visionary leader of CCDA was Dr. John M. Perkins, a seasoned evangelical civil rights leader who had developed several successful ministries among the poor (both rural and urban) in Mississippi and California. Having read “With Justice for All: A Strategy for Community Development,”https://www.amazon.com/Justice-All-Strategy-Community-Development/dp/0830759549 I was familiar with Perkin’s philosophy of ministry but had not seen it in action…until the conference. So I drove to Detroit and was blown away! On both Friday and Saturday mornings, I went on tours to visit urban ministries in Detroit that were effectively reaching Detroit neighborhoods that resembled war zones in the Middle East.
Amid all the brokenness and violence, Detroit churches and ministries rebuilt communities, as the gospel of Jesus transformed lives. I witnessed churches and non-profits investing in the lives of fatherless children by partnering with public schools. I saw flourishing drug-rehab centers. I toured housing programs that helped the poor own their own homes, along with job-training programs that effectively placed participants with living-wage employment. I observed an army of volunteers and staff sharing Jesus as they serviced these neighborhoods. On Friday evening, I listened to the testimony of a nurse that managed the Voice of Calvary health center in Jackson, Mississippi. She shared her life experiences growing up without a father, experiencing poverty, attending poor-performing public schools, and living in a shotgun shack of a house. She spoke of attending VOC ministry programs, coming to faith in Christ, yet having three children out of wedlock, and how the staff and volunteers of VOC mentored her through adulthood, walking alongside her through college. She ended her testimony with the charge: “Don’t give up on that fatherless teenager, that young single-mother or jobless young father! That was me 15 years ago. Don’t give up!
At that moment, it all made sense to me. There was no quick-fix to the multiple issues that were devastating the neighborhood where I was living! My response was to live a life faithful to Jesus for the long-haul as I loved those around me. Yet certain guiding principles that aligned with Scripture were needed to act as a scaffolding to support doing ministry in my inner-city community, which I discovered at the CCDA conference and the writings of Dr. Perkins. Thus UTM, since its inception, has sought to live out these eight guiding principles of Christian Community Development. Over the next several weeks, I will be identifying and explaining each principle of Christian Community Development and how UTM lives them out on a day-to-day basis.
David Rodriguez manager of Lake Michigan Credit Union speaks to the Hustle City participants about banking
“I love Hustle City because it has opened my mind up to many avenues within business. It’s teaching me how to take a Hustle that I love and am interested in and turning it into a legitimate business that I can profit from. It’s also teaching me about the importance of budgeting and allocating funds in order to be able to save. Since joining Hustle City I have opened a secondary bank account with LMCU and have deposited a bunch of money into a savings account that I plan to add to. I am also more aware of my spending habits and looked into how much money I waste on useless items. My spending has gone down and I think a little harder now when I spend money and am now better with saving. I am also excited about all the opportunities Hustle City provides including a Goal-Oriented Savings Account and their ability match funds for us to be able to startup the business we want. I was also able to shadow Dave-O and see first hand how his online business works. He is very successful and happy with how it’s going and my goal is to get to that point as well. With everything I learned, I have also recently started an online business of my own and I am hopeful to be able to run it successfully enough to do it full time and end a dead end job.” — Salia Kellah, Hustle City participant
This past fall Crosswinds Church and UTM partnered to launch a new ministry called “Hustle City.” The Purpose of Hustle City is to disciple men and women in the urban context through financial and entrepreneurial training. In the urban context, while unemployment has fallen, at the same time underemployment is ruling the day. Many people in our neighborhoods are working two or three jobs just to make ends meet. Combined with housing costs that take up to three-quarters of an urban dweller’s income, we recognize that there is a serious problem. At the same time, we also recognize an opportunity. So many of our neighbors are incredibly creative and gifted. The goal of Hustle City is to partner with participants to help them develop and maximize these gifts in a way that will not only lead to stability but also lead to the kind of life that allows them to be a blessing to others and their community.
Hustle City aims to train people in two areas:
1. In entrepreneurial skills: So they can start businesses and make money.
2. In financial competency: So that they can build and maintain wealth.
We do this through various entrepreneurial exercises, guest speakers, financial management curriculum, and just recently we have partnered with Choice One Bank to offer a Goal-Oriented Savings Account for those in the program. Goal-Oriented Savings Accounts are a joint account between the participant and UTM that can be used only for long-term assets such as college/trade school, to buy a house or to start/expand a business. These accounts encourage savings by matching each dollar the participant deposits at a 2 to 1 ratio. A participant can save up to $2,400 dollars and it will be matched so that they will have $7,200. They cannot withdraw any of the money until they have saved the entire amount. This all due to the generosity of donors and Choice One. This is a big deal because learning to save is one of the biggest elements of the program. We often say in class “it would be of no value to make a lot of money and then spend it all on new shoes.”We are trying to build young men and women who will impact the world, beginning with themselves, their families and community for Jesus, and learning to hustle in a positive way is step one.
Furthermore, Hustle City is a key component for those in the ManUP program. Hustle City functions as the financial management and entrepreneurship classes that each ManUP resident is required to complete in order to graduate from the ManUP program. ManUp graduates are given the opportunity to utilize Goal-Oriented Savings Accounts with Hustle City as well.
If you are interested in becoming a financial coach with Hustle City, please contact Joel Shaffer at 616-206-8666 or e-mail him at utmgr1@gmail.com. Also, we are looking for additional donors and donations for each Goal-Oriented Savings Account to match what the Hustle City Participants and Choice One are contributing. If you are interested in specifically investing in the life of a hard-working young man or woman that we are discipling through Hustle City, please designate your gift with a note indicating the Hustle City Program! (post written by Rev. David Drake, lead pastor of Crosswinds Churchhttp://www.windschurch.net and UTM board member)
Teens from Rock Point Church of Crawfordsville, IN Serving on a UTM Urban Immersion Trip
In the last blog post, I explained how UTM breaks the Fatherless Cycle through Training by teaching churches to minister to the fatherless/poor through training workshops, seminars, college-level classes, articles, books, blog-posts, curriculum, internships, consulting, and urban immersion trips. I also shared a future vision for how the Urban Transformation Institute will eventually expand its teaching opportunities through increasing its social media presence, adding more urban immersion trips, creating a ministry symposium, writing curriculum and books, and developing more ManUP sites throughout the Midwest. As UTM utilizes Training more and more to Break the Fatherless Cycle, I will eventually look to sharpen my teaching, writing, administration, and research skills through pursuing a professional doctorate so that I can more effectively train and equip UTM’s staff, volunteers, emerging leaders that were discipled within UTM programs, and UTM’s partner churches.
The M.A. that I earned in Intercultural Studies at Grand Rapids Theological Seminary coupled with almost 30 years of street-level urban ministry experience laid a foundation so that I could facilitate workshops, teach college-level classes, write articles, lead urban immersion trips, and oversee the discipleship process of the fatherless urban youth and young adults. However, the technological revolution through social media brings a new set of challenges, including interacting with post-modern sociological theories and tools which have made their way into the public eye. Therefore, I am looking to pursue a Doctor of Education in Intercultural Education (EdD). This degree will help me develop a better mastery of intercultural education disciplines and research methodologies so that I can become a more effective teacher, administrator, and researcher in order that UTM can better serve the community and partner churches within its diverse, urban context. The program that I am looking into is non-residential, where I can take back-to-back, week-long summer classes five different times over a span of several years. I can stay in Grand Rapids and continue serving with UTM without moving our family across the country as I obtain this post-graduate degree. I am certain that my dissertation will involve the expansion of the Urban Transformation Institute that we are slowly developing at UTM. However, I am waiting at least a year to pursue my EdD in Intercultural Education so that my wife Sherilyn can take the necessary time to establish her personal counseling practice (Sherilyn Shaffer Counseling LLC) along with the counseling she does with the Journey Christian Counseling LLC.
If you or your church are interested in receiving specialized training on how to break cycles of fatherlessness and poverty through more formal avenues such as workshops, seminars, consulting, or through practical field experiences such as internships and immersion trips, feel free to contact me at 616-206-8666 or email me at utmgr1@gmail.com or message me through Facebook. UTM will go the extra mile by walking alongside you to make sure you are well equipped to do ministry among the fatherless and poor in your specific context.
UTM Staff Joel Shaffer (far left) and Davien Fizer (far right) Participate in a Panel Discussion on Racial Equity and Justice
Twenty-seven years ago, I felt frustrated. As a recent college grad that was drawn towards ministry among the poor, I moved into an apartment above a small Baptist church located in an inner-city storefront. From then on, I began to use my gifts of mercy, leading worship, teaching, and evangelism within the church’s fellowship. But the church was not healthy. Its leadership (all of whom lived in the outlying suburbs) had brought their cultural baggage and assumptions about the urban poor whom they were serving and in many ways, they were doing more harm than good. And as I reached out regularly to alcoholics, drug addicts, gang members, and homeless individuals, I was left to fend for myself without any wisdom or guidance from the church’s leadership. Until I met Don Tack from Servants Center. In his lifetime, Don pastored urban churches in Arizona and Missouri and taught at two different Bible colleges. Through several conversations, He invited me to attend a course that he developed for Christians called, “Biblical Foundations for Helping the Poor,” which I enthusiastically pursued. In the class, we examined many of the 2000 verses of Scripture which demonstrated God ’s heart for the poor, the oppressed, the needy, the widow, and the orphan and the response of God’s people. From that moment on, Don mentoring me. Like a shadow, I followed him everywhere, trying to absorb as much of his wisdom. Whenever he spoke at churches, I was there. Whenever he taught these poverty ministry classes, I was there, Whenever he took small groups of people on “hood-hikes” to open people’s eyes to the needs of the poor and homeless, I was there. Whenever he consulted with churches about how they could help poor people in their community, I was there. Don’s extensive knowledge of poverty issues, his stories, his compassion for the poor, and his gospel-centered, practical Christian response that truly helped the poor without creating dependency deeply impacted me, especially as I transitioned towards ministry among urban, fatherless youth. So much so that years later when I started UTM, training volunteers, our supporting churches, and the church-at-large in doing poverty ministry and breaking the fatherless cycle was essential in making sure that we could fulfill UTM’s mission.
Therefore, when UTM uses the word Training, we mean “Teaching churches to minister to the fatherless/poor through training workshops, seminars, college-level classes, articles, books, blog-posts, curriculum, internships, consulting, and urban immersion trips.” In UTM’s fifteen and a half years of existence, we sporadically focused on all of these vehicles of instruction (except for book-writing) under the program that we call the Urban Transformation Institute (UTI) The UTI has enabled churches such as College Park Church of Indianapolis, Kent City Baptist, Rockpoint Ministries of Crawfordsville, Cornerstone Baptist of Ludington, and Northpark Community Church of Ft. Wayne to send high school youth groups and family groups on urban immersion trips where they helped UTM with programs and projects, while learning how we break the fatherless cycle within an urban context. Through the UTI, the staff of UTM and I led and facilitated workshops throughout Michigan, including: “Can We Talk? a Candid Conversation about Race Relations and the Church;” “Empowering People out of Poverty within your Benevolence Ministry;” “Mentoring Fatherless Men to be Godly Fathers and Leaders;” and “Gospel-Centered Compassionate Ministry.” I’ve also written an article for the Baptist Bulletin on the topic of Social Involvement. https://baptistbulletin.org/the-baptist-bulletin-magazine/social-action-without-the-social-gospel/ and an article for Sharper Iron blog forum on the War on Poverty. https://sharperiron.org/article/was-war-poverty-too-ambitious? Under the UTI umbrella, I’ve been used as an urban ministry consultant and trained volunteers from both Berean Baptist Church, City View Church and New City Church of Grand Rapids and Crosswinds Church of Godwin Heights. Past volunteers and interns that were trained within the Urban Transformation Institute of UTM are serving the urban poor throughout the United States and the world, including: Patterson New Jersey, Nepal, and South Africa. And I’ve taught college-level classes on Poverty Ministry at Cornerstone University and lectured on the topic of urban youth ministry at both Grace University of Wyoming Michigan and Grand Rapids Theological Seminary. Recently the Urban Transformation Institute of UTM has sponsored “lunch and learns” to connect with church leaders that are doing ministry among the fatherless and the poor within Western Michigan as a place to talk about their struggles and share ideas with each other.
But UTM wants to do even more training of churches to minister to the fatherless/poor. UTM is looking to expand the Urban Transformation Institute to include a more powerful social media presence. Besides my weekly blogging on the UTM website, The UTI is in the process of developing a panel-based discussion Vlog, especially to tackle the difficult subjects such as racial reconciliation, poverty, and justice as it relates to the Gospel. The UTI is seeking to develop its capacity to host 2-4 urban immersion trips a year for churches that not only desire to serve UTM and our urban church partners but also desire to learn effective gospel-centered ministry among the fatherless and poor. The Urban Transformation Institute is also toying with the idea of developing a speakers bureau, expanding its Lunch and Learns to include a yearly symposium on Urban Ministry and writing curriculum and books that will benefit the Church-at-large. And if God provides the funding, the UTI will be the catalyst for developing satellites of the ManUP program in cities throughout the Midwest (we’ve already had inquiries from churches within Chicago and Detroit) in partnership with like-minded churches.
To be honest, UTM wishes it did not have to exist. We wish that every gospel preaching church had formed loving redemptive relationships with the poor in their community, that these same churches were at the forefront of mentoring fatherless youth and young adults, and were actively pursuing racial reconciliation and justice with their black and brown brothers in Christ. And while several gospel-centered churches are doing these things, many churches are like I was twenty-seven years ago. Frustrated. Not sure what to do next. Looking for someone to walk alongside them to provide some wisdom and guidance as they do ministry among the fatherless and the poor. And UTM will be there….ready to help.
Nine years ago, Percy, Dave-O, and I were walking to the neighborhood party store to put minutes on Percy’s phone. The night before, Percy and his family barely escaped a grease-fire in their home from the downstairs neighbor’s apartment, which silently engulfed the whole house, forcing Percy’s entire family to jump out of a second-story window into a snowbank. As we approached the corner store, a GRPD cruiser came alongside the three of us, and the officer, a gray-haired gruff white man in a dark blue uniform, inquired as to where we were going. Percy answered, “to the store to put some minutes on my phone.” But then in all seriousness, the Police officer pointed at me and sarcastically asked them, “Is this your Fiend?” (for those who aren’t familiar with the street vernacular, a “Fiend” is a derogatory word for a drug addict) Both Percy and Dave-O immediately defended me, “No! He’s our Pastor!” I was in shock. Did a Grand Rapids Police officer stereotype me as a drug addict? I had to ask Percy and Dave-O what the officer said again to make sure I heard it right. And then it hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though he never met Percy and Dave-O before, the police officer profiled both of them as neighborhood drug dealers. After all, in his mind, why else would two young black men walking down to the corner store in their hoodies hang out with a middle-aged bald white man that was 20 years older than them? What’s more, the officer profiled me as the stereotypical crack addict that drug dealers in our neighborhood make their money.
I was Livid. Furious. Angry. How could the officer think this about me? I felt a deep sense of dehumanization like I was being viewed as “white trash” in his eyes. At that moment, I also realized this dehumanized feeling was what Dave-O and Percy felt living as black men in a white man’s world. Every time a store employee followed them in a mall while shopping, every time a police officer pulled them over for no reason, every time employees and landlords rejected their job applications or housing applications (some of which had to do with the color of their skin), Dave-O and Percy felt degraded. Yet, they were expected to bridle their deep-seated frustrations or else risk even more stereotypical profiling and passive-aggressive repercussions from the majority white culture.
Although I was their pastor, at that moment, it was Dave-O and Percy, who ministered to me by showing me empathy. They listened and allowed me to vent my angry emotions. Both of them put aside their deep-seated frustrations, even though minutes ago, the police officer had racially profiled them as the stereotypical drug dealers to help me process what had just happened. What’s more, Percy just lost every possession that he owned, and yet his focus was on how he could help carry this burden I was experiencing. I saw empathy and love in action. And likewise, that small, brief shared experience opened my eyes and helped me become much more empathetic to their struggles dealing with racism in America.
Which leads me to the first of three things that White Christians can do to help bridge the racial divide. We need to show empathy; empathy towards ethnic minorities in our personal day-to-day interactions; empathy towards black and brown folks when real acts of violence and injustice take place towards people of color that turns into the next viral sensation; empathy when a black brother or sister in Christ shares with us a story how they experienced racially profiling. Our first response should not and cannot be suspicion, antagonism, and fact-checking as if racism magically disappeared as a relic of the Jim Crow past. (see the endnote below) Instead, our first response as Christians should involve active listening and compassion towards our hurting brother or sister in Christ. Active listening with empathy takes a considerable amount of effort, patience, and humility to hear what is and isn’t being said in conversations about race and racism. For instance, when a black friend opens up and shares that their white boss overlooked them for a job promotion due to the color of their skin, whites should not view the situation as if blacks are “playing the victim card.” Instead, it is giving our friend the benefit of the doubt with their narrative because that’s part of what it means to love according to the Bible (I Cor. 13:7 “believes all things”).
However, empathy doesn’t come easy. It takes a Crucifomed attitude and posture as we live out our faith in Christ. With the Spirit’s enablement, the cross shapes our lives as an “ongoing pattern of living in Christ and of dying with him that produces a Christ-like person” (Michael Gorman). In the context of race relations, it means dying to ourselves and our presumptive attitudes about race and racism because our union in Christ produces a sacrificial love for our ethnic minority brothers and sisters in Christ. It means dying to our natural defensiveness when a sister brings up “white privilege” in the conversation, that we don’t automatically assume that she succumbed to the perils of Cultural Marxism nor that she is downplaying the hard work that contributed to the white person’s success. It also means humbly accepting the premise that many of the politically-motivated primary sources that previously informed us about race and racism, although they may contain some truth, are also full of flaws when held to the light of scripture. Too many folks blindly accept progressive unorthodox social theories and tools from secular universities such as Critical Race Theory and Intersectionality. Blindly accept the naive conservative arguments from PragerU and the Jordan Peterson types that deny any systemic racism or structural injustices within our nation, (while they belittle anyone who critiques their ideas as a socialist or post-modern). Instead, a Cruciformed life is rooted in the ancient Christ hymn that Paul quotes in Phil. 2:5-11. “In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Imagine if we approached our relationships with our black brothers and sisters in Christ with this example of Jesus. Jesus gave up the power and rights that he had with being God and become a servant. What’s more, out of a self-giving, self-emptying love, Jesus humbled himself and offered himself as an atoning sacrifice for sinners through his death on the cross. What if we put others ahead of ourselves rather than resorting to our self-protecting tendencies when minority Christians plead for social justice in regards to overcriminalization and mass incarceration in our criminal justice system? What if we took a back seat and made sure that black voices are at the forefront in debates about race and racism, especially when some issues specifically pertain to black folks? My good friend Ivory Smith made this observation when people argued whether the black-face “Coon Caricature” was right or wrong. “Once again, black people are being argued over by collective groups of whites as if we are non-existent and voiceless while they decide what is or is not acceptable to/for us.” What if the first impulse among us white Christians moved us to learn spiritual growth, evangelism, discipleship, preaching, social justice, and missions from Godly black Christians? This includes attending ministry conferences-I highly recommend Legacy Discipleship Conference https://legacydisciple.org, where whites are the minority, and the majority of speakers and workshop presenters are non-white or reading books written by ethnic minority Christian authors? What if we actually held self-aggrandizing national political leaders accountable by calling them out when their words or actions negatively affect our non-white brothers and sisters even if we voted for that same leader in the last election? Could it be that the often-frosty race-relations might begin to unthaw because it would be apparent that something was different? Maybe it would be the first step towards whites and blacks no longer passing judgment on one another (Rom. 14:13), but rather showing love to one another (I John 4:11-12), striving to be patient, bearing with one another in love (Eph. 4:2), carrying each other’s burdens (Gal. 6:2), serving one another in love (Gal. 5:13), in humility, considering others more significant than ourselves (Phil. 2:3), and striving to be kind and compassionate (empathetic) to one another (Eph. 4:32). So with a cross-shaped (Cruciformity) mindset, may we begin to show empathy through our thinking, feeling, and acting.
By the way, here is a group of pastors that I believe is living out Empathy with Cruciformity when it comes to addressing the racial divide. https://www.facebook.com/charles.ware1/videos/10156978923244860/
1 We also need to be aware that since everyone possesses the sin nature and if one’s story doesn’t line up with obvious facts such as with the Jussie Smollett racism hoax, we are to embrace truth rather than lies. That is why active listening is so important.
I’m sure most of us have heard the adage, “It’s not what you know, but who you know.” This pithy slogan is not meant to minimize a person’s competency and hard work as part of their success, but rather explain how social relationships play such a vital role in providing opportunities for their success. When I look back on my own life, so many doors of opportunities opened because of the “social capital” I already had. My first job as a cashier and stocker at Kmart came about because its store manager was the father of a close friend of mine that I grew up with at church. My father’s connections as an alumnus of Grand Rapids Baptist College (now Cornerstone University) and my church’s connections to an association of Baptist churches (so that I could enter and win a national music contest that they sponsored) helped me receive significant music scholarships so that I could afford to go to college. My first career job in the non-profit world as a homeless shelter manager for Servants Center came about twenty-six years ago because of my mentee relationship with its executive director at the time, Don Tack.
As parents, Sherilyn and I teach our kids to leverage their social connections to open doors of opportunities. Last summer, my son Jalen pursued a job and was hired by one of his distant cousins (a landlord of approximately 200 homes in West Michigan) where he learned home repair and construction. This summer, Jalen most likely will work for a furniture factory that is owned by the fathers of a couple of his former football teammates from high school because the job is flexible in allowing him to take a college class at GRCC as well as to keep up with the strength and conditioning demands that it takes to play college football for Wheaton College.
In contrast, urban youth in my neighborhood who are growing up fatherless are also growing up without the positive social connections and relationships that many of us take for granted. Because of broken relationships within families for several generations, fatherless youth and young adults are cut off from their fathers, especially among men of color. This includes “Friend of the Court” custody battles which keep some UTM students from enjoying positive relationships with their fathers as well as overcriminalization and mass incarceration among fathers of UTM students for petty, non-violent crime. Furthermore, neighborhoods with a high concentration of fatherless youth continue to experience a steady loss of positive role-models. Many of the best leaders that became businessmen, doctors, lawyers, pastors, general contractors, and tradesmen escaped ghettoized inner-city neighborhoods for the suburbs, which left a role-model gap for fatherless youth. What’s more, in gentrified urban neighborhoods such as mine (which still contain a highly concentrated number of fatherless poor youth because of section 8 housing). the majority of upper class whites that moved in to replace poor minority families that couldn’t afford the rapid rise of rent view neighborhood, social problems (including fatherlessness) to be primarily solved through the Grand Rapids Public Schools and government welfare programs: thus most do not involve themselves in the lives of fatherless youth and young adults.
That is why UTM has made Connecting such a vital part of its strategy to break the fatherless cycle. When UTM uses the word connecting, we mean “Creating social capital for fatherless youth and young adults through connections to mentors, business people/entrepreneurs, counselors, educators, and etc who offer skills and resources to empower them in every area of their lives. Specifically, within every activity and program that UTM oversees, we purposely encourage our students to connect with multiple adult mentors with different skill sets. These mentors, in turn, share their gifts, skills, and resources which create numerous opportunities and empower fatherless youth and young adults to govern their lives without becoming dependent on charity or the government. For instance, many (not all) of the living-wage employment that ManUP residents attained while in the ManUP program came about through business connections that UTM had developed over the years. Although the majority of ManUP graduates are not currently employed by these same businesses, they benefited greatly from these job opportunities through learning different trades and skills, not to mention how it strengthened and improved their resumes for their future living-wage employment. In UTM’s newest program, Hustle City (which all of the ManUP residents are required to attend), participants learn how to manage their money and are taught what it takes to build a business from the ground up. What’s more, they are introduced and mentored by business owners and others that help take their business ideas and give them tools to make it a reality.
At the youth level, UTM staff and volunteers leverage their social capital to help create opportunities for UTM youth as well. Over the many years of mentoring fatherless youth, UTM staff and volunteers have used their natural web of social relationships to meet entrepreneurs, doctors, and nurses in the medical field, social workers, lawyers, and general contractors. They pulled strings with the people they know so that fatherless teenage youth could obtain their first job or take part in a job internship to discover their future career.
To sum up, the same connections that all of us UTM staff and volunteers leverage for our own personal families, we also leverage for our UTM family of fatherless youth and young adults. After all, isn’t this what it means to “Love Your Neighbor as Yourself?”
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