How can we minister in deprived areas?

John Root offers this review of Jonathan Macy Sowing Seeds with Songs of Joy: Growing God’s Garden in Forgotten Places.

Jonathan Macy’s book began as a 13,000 word position paper for the Church of England Evangelical Council on Privilege, Class and Poverty, which he has extended into the present book looking at the response to class and poverty by, very largely, the Church of England. It is written both from his own experience as a minister on the Thamesmead estate in south-east London, but also from interviews and discussion with a wide group of clergy in a variety of contexts. To this he also brings a shrewd and creative awareness of social dynamics, a very thorough biblical understanding, and great discernment of the processes by which class and wealth differentials play out across the church.

It some ways it still has the rough-hewn characteristics of a privately circulated position paper. An editor in a major publisher would have noted the occasional repetitions and of the text jumbled by having been re-processed, but the informality of style effectively expresses the creativity and informality of the church context that it comes from.

My own primary interest is in issues of church and race—but this book’s relevance is that race and class are intimately entwined, with the bulk of Britain’s minority ethnic population sharing the issues facing all poor or working class communities, and noting the observation of Sunder Katwala included in the Sewell Report that ‘Britain is doing better on race than on class’. Macy’s sub-title on the book’s commitment to ‘growing God’s garden in forgotten places’ is, proportionately, more relevant to the ethnic minority population than to the white English population. (His shrewd comment that ‘it can be more expensive to be poor’ (p 24) is paralleled by the title of Bashy’s rap cd on Afro-Caribbean experience ‘Being Poor is Expensive’, the focus of an illuminating inter-disciplinary project organised by Robert Beckford).

In passing he also makes some points directly relevant to ethnicity:

While bishops were diverse in the sense of heritage and culture, they were politically, and in terms of class, education and parish background…pretty monochrome (p 91).

(Thus the American observation that ‘diversity groups look different and think alike’). He warns against the ‘privilege narrative being based around racial and cultural heritage’ and ignoring widespread white deprivation (p 199). He also notes the important distinction between estates with very widespread ethnic diversity and those that are very largely white English.

Features

Understanding of Society

Macy begins by looking at the context that shapes the church’s understanding rather than its faith. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs structures his essential framework. Churches flourish where people’s basic needs are already met and the church can effectively minister to the upper levels of love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualisation. But we find it hard to make headway in poorer areas where the more basic physiological (food, shelter, clothing) and safety (employment, health, resources) needs are unmet. Yet our ministry is very largely directed to the former contexts when it should be the latter that receive our energy and resources. He stresses that a particular issue in poor areas is the compounding of problems—the interaction of lack of money and employment, emotional distress and marital breakdown, poor education and job opportunities with a resultant ebbing away of a sense of hope.

Allied to this is a running theme (frequent in my articles) of the contrast between the Somewheres and Anywheres, as exemplified in the Brexit vote and the stark disjunction between the votes of church leaders and church members. The former (those who have prospered through mobility) lead and shape our churches whilst the latter are often ignored, looked down on or even despised by church leaders. (The Church Times for 27 March included a cartoon featuring over-weight, bald headed, heavily tattooed white men in t shirts carrying ‘exclusionary’ placards. Had they portrayed militant Islamists or Black Lives Matter supporters with such crude negative stereotypes the outrage at their racism would have caused an immediate apology).

Evangelical Basis

Following the opening chapter on society there is fully referenced account of the Old Testament understanding of the poor, followed by the teaching of Jesus and the first apostles. This is continued in a chapter following the theme at various points in church history.

He is strong on the importance of both the vertical (relating to God) and the horizontal (relating to neighbours), and at times is sharply critical of liberals being weak on the former.

We must preach the full fat gospel of power and change and not vague notions of love and affirmation (p 196).

Running through the book is a strong confidence on the potential of born again people from poor backgrounds to both lead and minister in the church and to be effective servants and witnesses in their communities. The priesthood of all believers is strongly emphasised. A heart touching moment for me was his emphasis that even in situations where people are acutely conscious of their deprivation, the call to ‘count your blessings’ is an important antidote to self pity (p 70).

Local

A chapter is devoted to Macy’s ministry on Thamesmead, describing both his underlying principles and some of the stories emanating from them. Subsequent chapters give welcome but often neglected attention to the church addressing poverty in rural areas, seaside towns, and (a feature of his pre-ordination employment) people with disabilities.

I would have valued more specific, practical attention as to how churches might address the bottom two layers of Maslow’s pyramid. Food banks are often mentioned, but little on approaching the more intractable issues of lack of employment and pressure on accommodation. It would have been interesting if his already wide remit had extended more to the north of England, especially towns with strong Muslim populations.

Thoroughly grounded

The book is clearly the outcome of both thorough engagement in an estate parish and wide-ranging awareness of the current dynamics of the Church of England. He has an excellent chapter on leadership and the demands of ministering in high needs/low resources situations, such that leaders often have to create their own resources since off-the-peg materials are too characterised by the ‘anywhere’ favouring of the abstract and theoretical. Thus it is that ministers in poor areas need to develop a wide range of skills if they are to survive—he argues that they are thus more able than the leaders of large churches, who can buy in capacities they themselves lack, but who are often moved into more prestigious posts. (The book might have benefitted from a guide to the resources that are available for churches in poor areas).

‘Adaptability’ is high on Jonathan Macy’s agenda. Pre-formed clerical plans will crash to the ground. It is by absorbing the feel of a church and of its community, and by sensing, with the help of the Spirit, directions that need to be taken that will eventually lead to a church responding effectively to the opportunities and challenges that its community presents. The over-confident neglect of that humble attentiveness is the reason that evangelical initiatives in deprived areas often fail to thrive. (I am aware of one such situation in east London at present).

Issues for the Wider Church

Ministerial help

Macy is acutely aware that the minister on his own has an uphill task to simply keep the church running, given the ever-increasing administrative burdens that are to be carried. He writes appreciatively of the ‘transformative’ impact for a friend’s ministry when he was joined by a contact who helped to develop children’s and youth work, it becoming eventually a part-time post, and the growth that ensued from that. In similar vein he writes of the value of thorough links with more prosperous parishes, the benefit of a skilled musician or two greatly enhancing the church’s worship, and the possibility of administrative and financial work being done on-line from a distance.

It is this small scale incremental resourcing that he favours over the large-scale revitalisation through the importation of leaders and members from flourishing churches. He is generally critical of his evangelical constituency for lacking enthusiasm and vision for ministry in deprived areas. He mentions at a couple of places instances where people were unwilling to come to parishes because they lacked what were assumed to be essentials of administrative help, youth workers etc. He makes an interesting contrast between ‘planters’ and ‘pioneers’—the former want to create something new from outside, the latter to patiently develop from within a specific context.

Training and leadership

This leads on to a running concern through the book, the need for appropriate training patterns. He writes:

This would require a shift in belief into realising that clergy are missionaries and not some form of ecclesiastical civil servant, who sits in the community with a level of status and influence (p 186).

Central to this is raising the expectation that ministry in deprived areas is a live possibility without needing an array of resources behind you. Macy knows that reluctance of clergy to minister in difficult areas shows that something is seriously wrong and that training is often failing to equip people for the task. He speaks of the importance of apprenticeship. Having taught in a theological college I know of the problems in reshaping training to be appropriate for deprived areas. (It is no accident, I think, that all our residential colleges are set in ‘Anywhere’ communities). Perhaps Macy’s passion has not helped him to shape clear proposals. Nonetheless he is absolutely right in stressing that training must generate a sense of hope, expectancy, indeed the passion to work in deprived areas, which his book brims with and is summed up in his italicised mindset for approaching such posts:

I know what that looks like and what it demands and I know that I can do it by God’s grace.

Conclusion

It is difficult to judge who needs this book the most: clergy, often grappling single-handedly with the manifold challenges of poorly resourced parishes, and looking for encouragement and guidance; or leaders at diocesan, training or major network levels who need to listen much more closely to the needs coming up from ground level, and shape appropriate policies that will address what has been referred to (in the 1860s!) as ‘the great problem of our time’; and which is now even more acute as regards our inability to minister effectively in order to grow ‘God’s garden in Forgotten Places’.

But of course, it needs reading by all parties for its thoughtful and original assessments and for its faith-filled trust (referring to his running theme from Luke 13:6-9) that with patient cultivation the trees will bear fruit.

John Root was a curate in Harlesden, led an estate church plant in Hackney, and planted two Asian language congregations in Wembley, before enjoying retirement ministry in Tottenham.

This article was first published on John Root’s substack here.