If an outsider dropped by to visit the programs and life-on-life discipleship relationships of UTM, they would soon realize that the overwhelming majority of students to whom we minister are black. They would also recognize that a slight majority of the volunteers and staff within UTM are also black. On account of this fact, the deep relationships with our African-American neighbors, students, volunteers, and staff that we share through UTM long ago opened Sherilyn and my eyes to the ugly truth that racism is still alive and active in today’s culture. Unfortunately, I’ve seen a sheriff’s deputy racially profile UTM’s ManUP coordinator, Davien Fizer. I’ve seen a racial bias by teachers, counselors, and social workers within our city’s public and charter schools in their unfair treatment of young black boys. I’ve seen racial profiling from local, well-known hypermarket stores that sent employees to follow black students that were shopping with me. I’ve seen social workers from government, non-profit, and educational sectors use their power and influence to send a disproportionate number of pregnant low-income African-American teenage girls and young women to Planned Parenthood. In turn, PP referred them to the local abortion clinic because their answer to fatherlessness was to eliminate the baby. I’ve seen multiple churches wrongly address racial problems, struggles, or issues because they were culturally incompetent. I’ve seen racially biased social workers from CPS mishandle cases, through making rash decisions to remove a child from the premises based on wrong, racial assumptions. Or showing too much leniency due to the “soft-bigotry of low-expectations,” which kept the child in harm’s way. These examples only scratch the surface. While racism has not disappeared, it often takes on more subtle forms within the institutions of our nation than it did a couple generations ago.
What’s more, on an even larger scale, the last decade brought about new challenges to the already-strained race-relations within our nation and throughout the church-at-large. No one could have predicted the enormous social impact of social media, which exposed several incidents of racial tensions and injustices. As videos went viral, such as Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, the Ferguson Riots, Eric Garner (I can’t breathe), Starbuck arrests in Philadelphia, Philandro Castile, Sandra Bland, and Laquon Mcdonald, it led to outrage and protests and counter-protests throughout the nation. Sadly, partisan media talking heads and politicians seized this opportunity to frame racial conflict and injustices using the culture-war progressive vs. conservative, left vs. right language. And amidst the chaos, sociological terms such as White Privilege, Microaggression, Implicit Bias, Critical Race Theory, White Guilt, Microinvalidation, Virtual Signaling, Intersectionality, Cultural Marxism, Woke, and White Fragility entered social media and mainstream media debates and conversations. This sheer amount of race-information through Facebook posts and memes, twitter rants, blog post diatribes, and slanted mainstream media programming has many white people back-peddling. And they feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and defensive as they process how to think and respond critically.
In this context, I shall give my two-cents worth and provide a roadmap that White Christians can follow to help repair the racial divide that exists with their black brothers and sisters in Christ. Because I am a follower of Jesus, my frame of reference is rooted in a Christian Worldview, centered on the gospel of Jesus. Although my identity is entirely in Christ, I chose to write this article to my white brothers and sisters who claim Jesus as their Lord and Savior (although I’m sure some of my black brothers and sisters in Christ will be curious about what I have to say). It was our Lord Jesus, who declared that the world would know that we were Christians based on our love for one another. Frankly, many of us white Christians have failed to love our black brothers and sisters in Christ, reverting back to regarding people from a worldly point of view (II Cor. 5:16a) through a socio-political lens rather than a Biblical one. Hopefully, my two-cents worth will bring deep self-reflection, clarity, and unity rather than add to the racially-divisive cluttered chaos that litters the social-media blogosphere.
Steven Dueck being prayed over at his ManUP graduation in 2015
I admit it. Listening to Tupac was one way that God opened my eyes to the pain of those who were fatherless. In the early years of our ministry, I compiled the research. I knew what % of youth in our inner-city neighborhood were poor, what % were growing up in a single parent home, and even more specifically I knew how many of the students that attended our programs had no father-figure present in their lives. For our ministry to obtain grant money to run our programs, it was my job to know all these statistics. But early on, the brokenness of my students living without a father hadn’t really gripped my inner-being, despite so many fatherless kids that were part of the daily rhythm of our lives. From the get-go, Sherilyn and I intentionally opened our home and many neighborhood kids would come over and eat dinner with us, or seek some homework help, and even ask to walk our dog. For several years, Sherilyn even provided after school daycare for three kids in our neighborhood so that their single mom could work full-time at the hospital. But it wasn’t until a few years after Tupac died and I kept hearing how real his music was to my student’s experiences in life that I decided to give him a listen. One of the first songs I ever heard was Papa’z Song. The first verse shook me.
“Had to play catch by myself, what a sorry sight A pitiful plight, so I pray for a starry night Please send me a pops before puberty The things I wouldn’t do to see a piece of family unity Moms always work, I barely see her I’m startin’ to get worried without a pops I’ll grow to be her It’s a wonder they don’t understand kids today So when I pray, I pray I’ll never grow to be that way And I hope that he answers me I heard God don’t like ugly well take a look at my family A different father every weekend Before we get to meet him they break up before the week ends I’m gettin’ sick of all the friendships As soon as we kick it he done split and the whole s*** ends quick How can I be a man if there’s no role model? Strivin’ to save my soul I stay cold drinkin’ a forty bottle I’m so sorry….”
The fatherless story that Tupac communicated was the same story for a large majority of our students who were experiencing the brokenness, pain, and hopelessness of a boy growing up without a father. The more time I took to listen to the stories of my students, the more I gained a deeper and empathetic perspective to what they were missing growing up without a dad. It was also around this time that I became a father myself. As we raised our own children (Tiera, Jalen, Ashlyn, Sahara), the UTM students who regularly frequented our home spent time with them, viewing our kids as their little brother or sisters or cousins. For many years we shared our family’s life with certain students and they shared their lives with our family, and we gradually became extended family to each other. Sherilyn and I did not replace their Mothers or their Fathers (nor did we have any desire to do so), rather we modeled a healthy family relationship in which we invited them to take part. Some of our students from those early years who are now adults refer to Sherilyn and me as their second Mom and Dad. A few have taught their kids to call us Grandma and Grandpa.
Even with our emphasis on discipling them in Christ through life-on-life relationships and many times stepping into a father-role for them, for some it wasn’t enough. The overwhelming majority of UTM students grew up in impoverished homes, without stable housing and without a father. They attended substandard schools that were labeled “drop-out factories,” and frequently faced racial profiling. Moreover, certain UTM students had previously been part of gangs, had chased fast money and easy sex, along with other negativities from the streets until they met Christ. All of this led to many social and economic gaps, compounded by insurmountable trauma that a good number of UTM students encountered. Therefore UTM needed to be intentionally equipping them. For UTM, Equipping means helping urban youth and young adults obtain spiritual, emotional, relational, educational, and economic tools so that they can flourish in every area of their lives.
The ManUP program is a prime example of how UTM equips those whom they disciple. Several years ago, UTM developed the ManUP program as a two year residential discipleship and leadership program for urban young men that challenges and teaches them to become loving and responsible fathers and to develop into Christian leaders in their neighborhoods. It is holistic, teaching basic life-skills in conjunction with developing the spiritual, emotional, relational, and financial dimensions of each resident’s life. Each resident is paired with an experienced Christian individual for mentoring, accountability and discipleship. However, the underlying key to the success of the ManUP program is community. Through one-to-one mentoring, small group class settings, and peer-to-peer accountability, ManUP residents learn how to cultivate a vibrant relationship with Christ, manage their finances, set attainable goals, secure living-wage employment, develop healthy relationships, and establish positive parenting skills. Furthermore, habit-forming life skills such as cooking, hygiene, and cleaning are reinforced along with the teaching of more advanced life skills such as car and home repair projects along with enrolling in a college, buying a home, and starting a business that forms a lifestyle which creates self-sufficiency rather than one that creates dependency. As ManUP grad and Hip-Hop artist Percy Hammons once expressed, The ManUP house “helped him form a structure” in his life that continues until this day. Consequently, the ManUP graduates have already made a significant difference in urban Grand Rapids neighborhoods, including providing living-wage employment for felons/drug-dealers that desire to change their lives, helping run urban youth programs, and mentoring and coaching inner-city youth.
For UTM, equipping urban young adults so that they can flourish in every area of their lives is one of the essential components towards breaking the fatherless cycle. Furthermore, it is our hope for the future that this type of equipping can be implemented among everyone who participates in UTM programs and life-on-life relationships, not only in young urban adult men.
When Sherilyn and I first moved into the neighborhood that we serve over 20 years ago, we observed many church mission groups from the suburbs attempting to establish a ministry presence in our inner-city community. They reached out to the many fatherless children in our neighborhood, especially during the hot, humid summers within its parks and playgrounds. Different churches, depending on which week it was, canvassed the area and invited the children to a park in our neighborhood and entertained them with activities such as puppet shows, block parties with clowns and balloons, sports camps, or music/drama presentations. At the end of their activity, a gospel presentation was shared, commitment cards were signed by the children, and the mission group went back to their church thinking that a dozen or so inner-city children had trusted Christ for their salvation. The problem was that although there were different churches each week coming and going to share the gospel in these parks, the same dozen kids were raising their hands to become a Christian for each church group. A few of the churches attempted to follow up on the kids but had not really counted the cost. UTM staff member Dave-O recently shared with me a childhood story about the pastor from one of these churches picked him up and a few others to go to church. When the pastor left the car to knock on the door of one of the kids he was picking up, Davien and his cousin (who were still in the car) realized the pastor left the keys in the ignition. They proceeded to drive the car down the street, rumbling down a hill even though they’d never driven a car before….with the pastor chasing them on foot! Not surprisingly, this naive pastor gave up on Dave-O and his cousin. But the fact of the matter was, these churches came into our neighborhood with elaborate plans to evangelize urban kids but acted like deer-in-the-headlights when it came to discipling them. Instead, these churches left many of the neighborhood youth as spiritual orphans.
That is why Discipling is one of the primary ways that UTM breaks the fatherless cycle. For UTM, to Disciple means filling the “Daddy-Gap” through long-term life-on-life relationships with urban youth and young adults. Sadly, many fatherless urban kids do not experience long-term relationships with Christian caring adults because these adults do not stay long enough to make a significant impact. Mentors typically do not mentor for more than a year or two and urban youth directors at churches and non-profits usually last on average about 18 months due to burn out. That is why UTM staff and volunteers intentionally minister to neighborhood youth all the way through adulthood through life-on-life relationships. When we use the term “life-on-life relationships,” we mean more than the typical mentoring program. Rather UTM staff and volunteers model the love of God to the students they disciple through normal activities such as eating a family dinner, running errands, playing basketball, studying the Bible or even going camping with the family during the summer. As strong relationships are formed, we model and teach what our Heavenly Father is like and what it means to find our purpose and identity in Christ. We also walk alongside them as they set goals, develop life-skills, pursue their academics, make career choices, and eventually become Christian leaders that will make a difference in the lives of others.
Many of the fatherless kids (such as DD, Lydia, and Dave-O) that we began to disciple some 20 years ago through long-term life-on-life relationships—-now as adults, are discipling fatherless youth in this same way. Whether it is DD discipling his son’s best friends Victor and Jamari (as he disciples his son-little DD), or Lydia discipling at-risk teens that she spends time with from her job at Kalamazoo Central High School, or Dave-O discipling his nephews and nieces who also attend UTM programs, all of them disciple fatherless youth through long-term life-on-life relationships. Like a stone creating a rippling effect in the water, they have set in motion a movement. And the movement is about life-change as the fatherless cycle is broken through the transformative gospel of Christ.
“The mission of UTM is to break the fatherless cycle in urban communities through the transformative gospel of Christ.” (UTM’s New Mission Statement)
In 1995, two weeks after Sherilyn and I exchanged wedding vows, we launched an inner-city youth ministry that eventually became Urban Transformation Ministries (UTM). The idea was to move into inner-city Grand Rapids where we served, form relationships with disadvantaged urban youth, share Jesus with them, disciple them through adulthood (and beyond), help them obtain long-term assets (college degree/skill trade, homeownership, starting a business) that would overcome poverty, and train them as Christian leaders who would come back to the neighborhood to live and lead. In 2003, when UTM became a legal non-profit, UTM’s board crafted a mission statement that reflected what we were trying to accomplish, which stated, “the mission of UTM is to redeem inner-city youth, families, and communities with the transforming gospel of Christ.” Thus, UTM’s mission statement functioned as:
(1) A steady anchor that keeps the organization from drifting from its original purpose
(2) A compass that gives purposeful direction
(3) A template for making decisions
Over the past fifteen years, through the mentoring relationships and programs of UTM, many gang-members and drug dealers turned from the streets and experienced transformation through the gospel of Jesus Christ. Several students from UTM graduated from colleges such as Grand Valley, Western Michigan, Cornerstone, Grace, and Ball State. Others obtained living-wage jobs and reached back to their neighborhoods, helping diffuse the violence while modeling a better alternative to the street life of gangs and dealing drugs. By the grace of God, what we set out to do worked!
The temptation, however, is for UTM to become complacent and revel in its fruitful past, as both the culture and demographics among disadvantaged youth had changed from a generation ago. No longer do the majority of Grand Rapids youth disadvantaged by poverty, racism, and violence live in its inner-city core. Gentrification pushed many of these youth and their families out of the inner-city and into the outlying areas of the city and its older suburbs of Wyoming, Kentwood, and Comstock Park. That is why we changed the “Where” wording in the old mission statement from “inner-city” to a more general term “urban” in the new mission statement.
At the same time, many of the teens that UTM connects with are still wrestling with many of the same issues they did a generation ago, but with the added complexity of technology and social media. This includes: struggling with the effects of poverty, engaging in risky sexual behavior, using drugs and alcohol, struggling with mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, engaging in criminal behavior (carrying guns, selling drugs) and are at risk of dropping out of school. What we realized ten years ago when we began experimenting with the concept of the ManUP house is that all of these issues had the same common denominator: the lack of a loving father in the home.
Current research reveals that youth growing up without a father in the home are: four times more likely to live in poverty, seven times more likely to become pregnant as a teen, nine times more likely to be raped or sexually abused, two times more likely to commit suicide, twenty times more likely to become incarcerated, and two times more likely to drop out of high school. (Sources: National Fatherhood Initiative and National Center for Fathering).
More than two decades of urban youth work had taught us that many of UTM’s young fathers were repeating some of the same mistakes as their absent dads had done.
With all of this in mind, UTM felt it necessary to put all of our time, attention, and resources to address the complex enigma of fatherlessness among urban youth and young adults. That is why we changed the “Who” wording in the mission statement from “youth and families” to “fatherless,” while inferring that an actual cycle needed to be broken.
The only wording that remained the same in both the old and new mission statements was the “How.” In an era where so many Christians are swayed to find political answers for serious moral/social problems, UTM still looks to the gospel of Christ as the ultimate answer of fatherlessness. It is the gospel of Christ that penetrates the heart and produces life-change.
In upcoming blog posts, I will explain how UTM applies the gospel of Jesus to break the fatherless cycle.
Five years ago, I frantically struggled to keep up the blog on the UTM website. Having spent six years composing articles about urban ministry, the gospel, social justice, racism, and cultural issues with erratic inconsistency, writing eventually became a needless pressure-point and heavy burden on me. So I stopped. And I felt good because producing blog articles had not only burned me out but also morphed my writing into the tyranny of the urgent rather than something really important that I enjoyed. While I took an extended official writing hiatus from the UTM blog, I kept writing throughout the world of social media, whether it was commenting on someone’s facebook post or writing a critical response on topics such as social justice within Sharper Iron (a blogging forum of conservative pastors and church leaders).
But then I turned fifty.
Turning fifty made me face up to the fact that I’m not getting any younger. I began meditating on what it meant to “redeem the time” (Ephesians 5:16) and how easy it was to either hurry up time as I furiously worked through my “to do” lists or slow down time as I dwelt on the past, when I should be focusing on enjoying and living in the present. Therefore, I needed to be better at planning my time balancing life and ministry so that I can enjoy my relationships with Jesus, my wife, my family, my church and my neighbors. But this also included redeeming the time so that I can consistently write, especially with all the pertinent issues related to urban ministry that have emerged to the forefront of today’s culture over the past few years.
As I began getting the itch to blog-write again, I prayed. And then I planned out two years of articles (over one-hundred) that I believe are significant to the ministry of UTM and the church-at-large. About half of my future articles were inspired through conversations I penned on Facebook and group blogging forums so I won’t be stuck with writer’s block nor will I succumb to burnout (at least not for the next two years).
Look for a new article from me every Friday. I encourage you to join me on my rebooted blogging journey as I bring almost thirty years of street-level urban ministry to the blogosphere, which grants me a fresh, seasoned perspective on hot-button social topics that the church wrestles with.
When Sherilyn gave birth to our fourth child, Sahara, I felt alive.Everything seemed better when I held and took care of our newborn girl.Since I felt more attached to Sahara, I offered to to do her late night and early morning feedings.However, the nightmares—-which rehearsed many of the traumatic events that I experienced throughout the fifteen years as an urban missionary—-were becoming more frequent and more vivid until it culminated into a time where I put my wife and our newborn in danger.
After one of the late night feedings, I fell asleep with Sahara in my arms.But one of my reoccurring nightmares blended reality with fiction.Yes, the drug-dealer seemed to point the gun with its laser scope at at my head.But my hallucination also included him hurling threats to kill me and the precious infant that I held in my arms.As my nightmare reached its traumatic climax, Sherilyn sauntered down the stairs to relieve me and bring Sahara to her crib.However, I perceived Sherilyn in my dream as the gunman.With Sahara in one arm and my other arm cocked back to strike a blow to her face to protect my infant daughter, I charged after my wife.Only the frantic shouting of Sherilyn pleading me to stop awoke me out of my hellish dream.
I finally came to the realization that I needed professional help. Now that I was open to counseling, I connected to one of our supporting churches, Calvary Church of Grand Rapids.With multiple staff members overseeing their thriving missions program, Calvary church retained a professional counselor that specifically zeroed in on care for its supported missionaries. Realizing that my problem seemed bigger than the one traumatic episode with the gun and suspecting that I was dealing with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, he assigned me to write down every traumatic event that I experienced throughout my urban missionary career.I even visited several of the sites where these traumatic episodes took place, By recalling every incident, it would compel me to seek God and confront my fears and my wrong thinking about what had taken place. As I went through this exercise, I realized something profound. Over the past fifteen years as an urban youth worker and missionary, I reveled in my stories about violence in the ‘hood.I loved sharing about gun-battles, hiding from drug-dealers that threatened to kill me, breaking up gang-fights, pursuing after my students that were now involved in the streets as gang members. Moreover, whenever a crisis relating to violence actually took place, I felt an immediate rush of adrenaline flow through me—-and it felt good!In short, my identity was more in the adventures as an urban missionary than being in Jesus Christ.I made living and telling these glory stories of urban missions my primary identity and eventually they became my idol.Yet now these glory stories repulsed me and I wanted nothing to do with them.
As I visited the site where the gunman pointed his laser-scoped piece at me, I prayed.Praying that my attitude towards him would be forgiveness.Praying that I would harbor no bitterness or grudge.As I prayed, my thoughts began an unsuspected move towards redeeming the trauma. What if we could reach and disciple gang-members and drug-dealers with the gospel and then equip them to become entrepreneur-evangelists? Entrepreneurs that loved Christ and their neighborhood so much that they would return to the street corners as evangelists and proclaim the good news of Jesus to urban youth and young adults that trafficked drugs on the streets.Yet at the same time, also equip them to provide employment alternatives to the illegal drug activity.These entrepreneur-evangelists would serve as a vital link between the hustle of the streets and legitimate living-wage jobs for these so called “thugs.”And several of the young men that I was pouring my life into—Davien, DD, Percy, Peazy, Marquis, Nick, and Mike, were potential candidates for this mission. Maybe God would regenerate and redeem some of them to become entrepreneur-evangelists.
A month later,Sherilyn and I were invited to speak at one of the adult Sunday School classes of our sending church, Berean Baptist of Grand Rapids We shared our testimonies, how God called us into urban missions, and how he brought us together as a coupleWe recounted stories of transformed lives as well as heart-breaking sorrow among the at-risk urban students that we were discipling—-So far so good.
But when they sought prayer for us, I could feel the emotions swell.Sherilyn requested prayer for our safety with a brief mention of the gun episode, which inevitably aroused their curiosity.As I relayed the details of what happened that night, the dam burst.I didn’t just cry—-I wept hard.And I could not stop for anything that day until it gave way to sleep later that evening.For the next week, the tears came and went, and when there weren’t any tears, there were outbursts of anger, often in response to the pettiest circumstances in the rhythms of our life. When one of our close friends suggested counseling, I resisted it because of my prejudiced stigma that I attached to it.Only messed up and broken people need counseling and I didn’t see myself at that point yet.But I did find solace in my final year of seminary, with the research and writing of my Masters thesis and a class on Spiritual Formation.
Dr. Phillip Bustrum, my Spiritual Formation professor, was a seasoned, soft-spoken missionary veteran that served in Kenya, Africa.I felt an immediate connection with him when he made himself vulnerable, opening up about a traumatic event on the mission field where he and his wife were robbed and beaten at gun-point—-and the long road that it took for recovery.In the class, Dr. Bustrum created small-groups of accountability for the purpose of encouraging openness and vulnerability.Although our small group consisted of three other men involved in pastoring or training to become pastors, none of us really looked forward to bearing our souls to each other.However, since the dam had already burst, I began opening up to these unsuspecting pastors-in-training. Over the fifteen week span of the class, our once a week accountability group morphed into the Joel-Shaffer support group, as I began to share stories of violence, crisis, disappointment, trauma, sorrow, laughter, and joy in my life and ministry.I am forever grateful to Zac, Dan, and Kendall for their patience, their prayers, and their probing questions that began a slow journey of healing and recovery in my life.
But I hadn’t healed.I had only prolonged my recovery.
The dam was just about to burst. Feeling such an enormous amount of pressure crushing against every part of my being, I finally reached my breaking point. Pressure to lead UTM (Urban Transformation Ministries) as its founding executive director even though I lacked certain administrative gifts—-Pressure to raise enough funds to support the ministry so that I could provide for our family—-Pressure from doing grief counseling as a result of a UTM student losing his life to gun violence on the streets of Grand Rapids—-Pressure to discover why our third child, Ashlyn, could not talk nor use her motor skills, even though she turned three in a month—-Pressure to make sure my seven year old and eldest child, Tiera, learned how to read, which prompted us to home school her for a year—-Pressure to finish up my Seminary degree, which I dragged out for my fourteenth year—-Pressure to help my wife Sherilyn as she began caring for her mother, whose Parkinson’s disease had taken a turn for the worse—- Pressure to serve my family even more sacrificially because Sherilyn was pregnant with our 4th child—-Pressure because our two best friend couples from our church that we shared life with were reeling from unhealthy marriages. And as we attempted to counsel them, we unknowingly developed a co-dependent relationship with them. All of these pressures created cracks in the wall of the dam that contained and controlled my feelings. Only one more crisis would trigger a flood of emotions from a breached dam within me. The crisis arrived in the form of a gun pointed at me.
On a late December evening driving through my neighborhood, I paused for a stop sign at a corner.As I gazed to the right of me, a young drug-dealer on the corner pulled out his gun with a laser scope and aimed its red dot at my forehead.With a blink of an eye, my entire life flashed before me as every life moment that I lived—-along with every life moment I desired to live in the future (including a vision of my oldest daughter Tiera walking down the aisle arm-in-arm with me for her wedding), I experienced in a couple heartbeats.Since I also happened to be talking to Sherilyn on my cell phone, Iblurted out that I might not live through our phone conversation.Sherilyn immediately interceded for me in prayer with Tiera. With a pull of his trigger I would’ve been a dead man, but suddenly out of sheer terror, my entire body jolted with fear, which caused the gunman to double up with laughter allowing me to drive away.
Unnerved with panic, it took a good while to calm myself down. I thanked God for sparing my life and went on with my business.Regrettably, I did not think to call the police, most likely due to the shock and trauma of the gun pointed at my head.However, I forced this traumatic incident in the deepest part of my brain, hidden from everyone to keep the dam from bursting.
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