by Charles Lyons
David Claerbaut is a true city dude. He has lived and ministered as a Chicago resident over a number of decades. His involvement in a number of ministries is coupled with being in a position to observe many more. I recently caught up with his Urban Ministry in a New Millennium, released in 2005. (An update of Urban Ministry, 1983).
Simply put, the man knows what he’s talking about. He is not some distant academic who took a couple of summers to study urbanology. His in-the-trenches experience brings street credibility to his writing and gives this book great weight.
Not only does he approach this subject as a veteran practitioner, he brings his training as a social scientist to bear.
He sets out to provide a historical perspective on the city, the church, and urban ministry.
He navigates the matrix of urban reality, sociology, political science, theology, the economy, and history with great skill.
He identifies and defines what the inner city is, analyzing the elements that comprise it. He describes the psychological impact of living in an inner city environment. The chapter “Insecurity as a Way of Life” goes a long way to helping the uninitiated understand the psyche of someone growing up and living in the inner city:
“This paranoia or insecurity grows out of the life experience characterized by a lack of what is called ‘fate control.’ The poor are simply not in control of what happens to them. They are respondents rather than initiators, reactors rather than actors, passive recipients rather than active participants. It could be no other way because they are powerless in the educational, economic, and occupational realms of this capitalistic nation.”
It should be said that in the last decade, the term inner city has become less useful. It no longer describes the prevailing reality. The inner city has moved to the city edge and to dispersed pockets throughout metropolitan areas for a variety of reasons. The old stereotypical image of the inner city is no longer accurate or appropriate. The demographic still exists, but is no longer central or inner city, primarily or exclusively. This being so, this and any other weaknesses this volume has, are overwhelmed by its prevailing value.
Claerbaut nails and articulates issue after issue. For example, he writes: “Ministry to non-whites by white urban workers should be characterized by four additional elements. First is credibility; trust is the watershed. A second and related element is servanthood. Christ’s life was characterized by a what-I-can-do-for-you approach. A third element must be a desire to learn. There is no counting the number of ministries that have died simply because of ignorance on the part of those carrying them on. There must be no excuse for cultural insensitivity or ignorance. A seemingly less critical but important fourth element is support of worthy minority causes.”
His section on the socialization of the middle-class pastor is priceless. In it, he contrasts middle-class values with the mindset and values of those who have grown up minority in inner city settings.
He describes the characterizing elements of an inner city ministry including the kind of preaching and the kind of service ministry and organization one must understand and embrace. He profiles the urban minister, including one particular characteristic that to this day stretches me to my limit.
Claerbaut writes, “Yet another psychological attribute involves the tolerance of ambiguity. A city and its people teem with diversity, complexity, and confusion. Working in the inner city, a pastor quickly realizes the depth of this ambiguity. Bureaucrats do not always return phone calls and they often change their minds; city governments lie or stall or change policies; streets are built and destroyed; urban renewal comes and goes; and businesses come into existence and then burn down. Parishioners are unfaithful, late for appointments, dependent, and neurotic. Their problems differ each day involving a crisis interventionist approach. The whole environment is one of uncertainty and impermanence, and the residents incorporate a good deal of this feeling into their own lives and psyches. Being able to be calm and consistent and able to wait things out is necessary. Needing clear-cut answers from everyone to parishioners to city officials is not helping.”
Claerbaut gives a great overview of the social class system breaking the social structure into seven sectors: upper, lower upper, upper middle, middle, working, lower, and underclass, describing each.
His thorough and enlightening discussion of contemporary urban and global stratification models describing the elites, the professional and creative class, the service class, the working class, the working poor, public aid and disability, the underclass, shows how the inner city consists largely of the lower three categories.
When I found the first edition of this book in the 80s, I knew I had stumbled onto a valuable resource. Now, with a body of literature on the subject far more deep and wide than there was in the 80s, Claerbaut’s updated edition is still a must-read for anyone seeking to understand and/or serve in a metropolitan area and is quite useful to all ministering in an urbanized world.