“Are you from the church?” This question startled me as I had been in the trailer park for only a few hours. I knew a bit of the context to this question, so I answered the best I could: “Yes, but it depends on what you mean.”
This question was asked by a resident, who soon became a friend at The Palms Trailer Park in downtown Orlando, FL. The trailer park had a lot going on in terms of “issues,” but it also had some of the most loving and faithful neighbors in the city. They took care of each other and after getting to know them, took care of me. I had recently started working for Polis Institute, a Christian non-profit, which wrote Serving with Dignity and I was in the early stages of learning a new way of loving those in distress through what I have come to learn are called “dignified interdependent relationships.”
A few years before the woman asked this question, a large church in Orlando, FL sent more than three hundred volunteers into The Palms Trailer Park to clean up the trailer park. Many of the residents had their possessions thrown away because the volunteers deemed the neighbors goods to be not worth keeping around. It was painful for the owners of the trashed property and it hurt the reputation of the Church – and of Jesus. It was a mistake. A huge one.
Since that incident, the church has apologized, and they have been on a journey of learning to love their neighbors well. We all begin somewhere and we learn through trial and error that, “Passion without knowledge is not good, how much more will hasty feet miss the way?” (Proverbs 19:2) I know I’ve begun in these places and have made a whole bunch of mistakes. But, when you know better, you do better.
The residents of this particular community had built up so much resistance to the “church” that they didn’t want the church among them. Their experience was that way too many churches had come into the community over the years to “fix” them. Those churches likely saw the visible needs and wanting to be like the Good Samaritan and as Jesus commands, they jumped in by playing the default roles of “hero” and “fixer.” Many pastors and Christian leaders tried unsuccessfully to “convert the pagans” living in this trailer park.
One of the core problems of churches that want to serve the marginalized is that they still want the power in the relationship. Bob Lupton writes in Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life; “There is blessedness in this kind of giving, to be sure. But there is also power in it—which can be dangerous. Giving allows me to retain control. Retaining the helping position protects me from the humiliation of appearing to need help. And, even more sobering, I condemn those whom I would help to the permanent, pride-less role of recipient.”
It’s easy to walk into a place of distress or see someone that’s vulnerable and take over, make assumptions about people living in material poverty or are homeless, and do what we think is right. I had to fight the urge of my false self to constantly do this. I am a doer. I like to get things done. My friend and mentor, Phil Hissom, took a different approach in the trailer park. He waited, was extremely patient as he built dignified interdependent relationships with our new friends in the Trailer Park, and fully understood that God had already been at work before we showed up. Phil authored Serving with Dignity and wrote this statement in it; "The current culture of service in the American church tends towards dysfunction mainly because we sacrifice relationships for the sake of efficiency.”
The false self (sinful person) loves to have control over others when serving, thus retaining power over those we deem need our help. Having control over others feeds the false self and gives us a sense of superiority that we are the hero of the relationship, allowing us to get the glory rather than Christ. Robert Mulholland in The Deeper Journey says, “my false self, like most false selves, is a control freak that manipulates people and situations to protect from disturbances to its status quo.”
Loving Freely is about giving up control to those that we serve, particularly our friends in marginalized places and listening to and following their input. A lot of interior work is needed to be done by the giver to come to this place of receiving. It means dealing with the need to be in control of relationships. My counselor said to me years ago, “When you feel internally out of control, you control the externals.”
Pete Scazzero says in his book, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, “By failing to let others be themselves before God and move at their own pace, we inevitably project onto them our own discomfort with their choice to live life differently than we do.” The question then becomes, what is disconnected in me that I need to be in control? There’s probably something from our family of origin that’s happened where we feel the need to constantly be in control of relationships.
This is the main idea behind the Asset Based Community Development concept from Dignity Serves is that you listen and give up power and control to the community we are called to serve. As I watched Phil live out interdependent relationships we saw the community completely transform from the inside out as the resident owned what needed to happen in the community.
Daryl Ford, lead pastor from Ikon Community Church said in an article for The Repentance Project about gentrification and power and the need for collaboration among the giver and the receiver, “Gentrification doesn’t have to be a net loss for those who didn’t leave if newcomers move with a sense of obligation to learn and build relationships with existing residents. This means when moving into a neighborhood, identify stakeholders. Ask the question “what are these neighbors doing?” or “what do they need?” If you move into a gentrifying neighborhood, and your first desire is to see a Pilates studio and a coffee shop built, it may be time to subordinate your agenda to your neighbors’ more pressing concerns—possibly reducing police brutality and improving housing and education. This means that both the gentrifiers and the gentrified coalesce in communities where trust is engendered and alternatives can be created.”
We want quick fixes when it comes to generational poverty, homelessness, racial-reconciliation or in this case, sex trafficking. But those that have immersed themselves in these worlds know that quick fixes don’t work. It’s long term, committed dignified interdependent relationships, with a full reliance on Christ’s Spirit where the most fruit happens, both in the lives of those we’re called to walk with and in our own lives.
When we allow Christ to a deep work in the interior parts of our lives, we no longer need to be in control when we love and serve others. As Paul says in Galatians 5, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” Christ has set us free in the deep interior part of our lives so that we can now love freely. When we see a problem, we don’t need to jump in and fix it and feel the sense of being a hero. We can be patient, build relationships based on humility, listen to people, and then develop a plan of action together as the Holy Spirit guides the process.
When we engage others across race, culture and class, we come as learners! We come realizing that Jesus is the hero of the story, not us! We come having a posture of truly listening to the gifts of the community and doing what the people in the neighborhood think is best for their environment. Or, as Pastor Sebastian Holley stated, “If you’re going to offer aid, let it be in sync with the solutions that we already understand according to our dynamics.”
If we are the beloved children of God and have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ, then, we are able to give up control, because we realize Christ has come to destroy the control tendencies in the deep interior parts of our lives. We are now able to give our lives away for the other, because Christ has given his life for us. We can now seek the interests of others, because Christ seeks our best interests.
What if we asked different question when we love and serve others?
What if we loved others with their best interests in mind and not our own?
What if we discovered that God was already present and at work in every place and relationship and we simply listened to what Christ’s Spirit is saying?
What if we checked our motives (because they matter), when we love and serve others, and are honest about what our false selves want?