I’m not one to lose hope. I keep on hoping. I still have faith in the future. But I’ve had to analyze many things over the last few years and, I would say, over the last few months. I’ve gone through a lot of soul searching and agonizing moments, and I’ve come to see that we have many more difficult days ahead. And some of the old optimism was a little superficial, and now it must be tempered with a solid realism. And I think the realistic fact is that we still have a long, long way to go.1 —Martin Luther King Jr.
There are pervasive pressures, fierce forces, and competing interests confronting urban ministries today. Hitting brick walls and encountering forced options come to mind.2 How often a ministry runs into a virtual dead-end and faces the dire possibilities of having to end the whole mission or admit that the actual options of a ministry are a lot more constrained than those touted during a year end fund-raising campaign. There is also the issue of weariness and for some of us, an eventual burnout. As one veteran urban ministry commentator has frankly noted, there come times when there are obvious signs of “success” although outcomes are less than predictable, shortcut temptations are rife, and the possibilities of falling into weariness and cynicism are close at hand. Barbara Brown Taylor expressed it well:
Those of us in urban ministry read and hear a lot about professional burnout, that creeping deadness of the soul that narrows our vision and extinguishes our energy until it is all that we can do to get out of bed in the morning. We are sitting ducks for it [. . .] for at least four reasons: 1) our jobs are never done; 2) our results are hard to measure; 3) our expectations are high—not to mention the expectations others have of us; and 4) most of us do not get to choose whom or even how we will serve. 3
In what follows there are reflections on realism, then hope, and finally a commentary on the combination of hope and realism and its illumining value for a steadfast urban ministry in the service of a faithful public and prophetic ministry. These reflections provide an interpretive framework for this book.
On Realism: Finitude, Ignorance and Sin
Human beings are finite, ignorant, and sinful, and hence we are certainly vulnerable; these characteristics provide the parameters and contours for the meaning of realism. Being finite, we are limited—limited by space, time, activities, influence, and the incapacity to control outcomes. Being ignorant, we do not know enough on any one subject to present all of the material on that subject. Being sinful, we think and act with our flaws, failures, and competing self-interests, rooted as these are in our egocentricity. Pretension is another way to name the propensity of human sinfulness. Pervading these realities, there is also the plain vulnerability of the human condition and the vulnerable institutions we create and that in turn, shape us.4 The first two of the above, which depict realism, are readily accepted by urban ministry practitioners, but further elaboration on sin is necessary.
Sin can be generally understood as the human inclination to be more concerned about the self than about others and the health or fate of the earth and its support systems. More particularly, theologians have depicted sin as rooted in a primal act of mistrust and ensuring disobedience of the Creator/Redeemer. Niebuhr among others has depicted sin fundamentally as undue pride or arrogance and has related it to a pretentious if not willful disregard of human finiteness, of pretending to be more than what we really are. He relates the latter to the former: we are mortal, that is our fate; we pretend not to be mortal, that is our sin.5 When we act as if we are less than our human nature, sin may be manifested and depicted as sensuousness, apathy, or perhaps, acedia.6
In terms of urban ministry principles and practices, sin might be evidenced in the ministry’s charitable acts and services. That is, if/as charity is used as a guise behind which to hide or deny a ministry’s or church’s relations to power in society, then the sin of withholding justice by the substitute action or service of charity is operative. This will be found in the writings of Augustine and Niebuhr.7 When society and the planet’s massive imbalances and resulting inequalities are rationalized as if they are givens and must remain so, then sin is operative. Some urban ministry practitioners have named this phenomenon as “toxic” charity.8 When urban ministers deny their limits or pretend in some incidents that such limits can be defied, then we court an eventual bone-weariness and unnecessary burnout.9
All of the above could well lead to the sad conclusion that there is little point to embracing and engaging the practices of hope since the realistic limits and sins of one’s ministry are confined to the status quo with little room for serious changes. To risk change is to risk a loss of support from and marginalization by one’s peers, volunteers, board members and most threatening of all, one’s funders. Year end and Christmas time funding appeals draw upon the seasonal sensitivities of their supporters and attempt to attract new supporters. The year end is also a last chance for charitable giving to be eligible for current year tax receipts. The Christmas season is timely because it ties the supporter to an appeal to practice some level of incarnation. As Merton aptly expressed it: “the time of the end is no room in the inn.”10 In any case, charitable giving might well mask the avoidance of any challenge to those in power to initiate and practice a deeper and wider change that could reduce if not eliminate the very need for Christmas season charity as substitutes for justice withheld. It is, of course, not only organized religion that engages in this practice. Mass media such as my city’s Vancouver Sun newspaper also reminds its readers of serious need and of its own Adopt-a-School program appeals for funding to make up for government cutbacks to poor students needing food and transportation tickets to attend school.11
On Hope: Pressing the Limits
The practices of hope suggest a wide and deep range of inter-disciplinary activity or even a sensible relaxation of activity for the sake of pacefulness and restored harmony. The linking of meditation, contemplation, and/or prayer to the spheres of being active in ministry has come of age though it has been present in and among the monastic traditions for centuries. Not alone, the new monasticism has retrieved and compellingly given fresh expressions.
A basic phenomenological rendering of what hoping engages in is the following. When one hopes, one shows up, and gives of one’s time, energy, money, and surely patience. As one stays involved in a cause or a ministry, near or distant, there is evidence of perseverance, a bearing under the strains and burdens of what it means to remain dedicated and committed to a cause or ministry.12 Such perseverance or endurance attracts, in turn, the presence of helpers or helpmates. Hope on its own, students aptly discern, is not an absolute but is relative to what is being hoped for, with whom, and the kind and range of help that hoping needs and thus invites.13 The activity of hope discloses an element of adventure, what one spiritual writer names as the “hop” in hope.14 The nature and content of hope illustrates the presence of disciplines through which there is provided the framework for being steadfast for the long haul. The very act of summoning mentors or leaning into inspirational figures or ministries themselves mirrors the presence of desire, and desire recently has been given its due exegesis in the service of accounting for that which spurs or sparks one or a ministry to arise to respond to a crisis situation both in the moment and for the long haul.15
