Information provided by SCUPE, Seminary Consortium
for Urban Pastoral Education, 200 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 502, Chicago,
IL 60601, Tel: (312) 726-0425, Fax: (312) 726-0425.
OTHER RESOURCES
"Faith and Public Issues"
Classic Quotes on Contemporary
Issues
1997 Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches
New Titles in the Urban Church Resource
Center
Strong prophecy scolds and admonishes, but it also provides hope. It offers the community a convincing and often passionate critique of the present, as well as a glimpse of a vision into a more just and faithful future. Today, particularly in our struggling urban neighborhoods, we need the pull of a vision, the strength of hopefulness, more than ever.
One of the best known and most powerfully hopeful contemporary stories comes to us from Boston's once-devastated Roxbury neighborhood, where local residents began in 1985 to organize around a compelling vision under the umbrella of the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative.
The Dudley Street story, rich in community-building lessons for all kinds of communities, is recounted in both a wonderfully-written book, Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood, and in a powerful hour-long video called "Holding Ground: The Rebirth of Dudley Street."
Both the book and the video chronicle the struggles of DSNI's resident founders to ensure that people who actually live in the neighborhood will control the organizing and planning process. What emerges from this central principle of resident control is a powerful, locally-determined vision for a racially and ethnically diverse, economically viable community. Continuous resident commitment contributes to significant organizing victories. DSNI is perhaps best known for its success in wresting the power of "eminent domain," which allows the group to control vacant land in the community, from the City of Boston.
Both the book and the video confront tough questions: How do local communities take real power? Can a very diverse community unify around a common vision? How can the often-separated tools of community organizing, community economic development, and community planning be joined together in a more powerful neighborhood tool box? How can a neighborhood's young people be brought into the center of community-building activity? For these and a host of other challenges, the Dudley Street experience provides valuable lessons.
People of faith--both clergy and lay leaders--have played an important, but never dominant, role in the Dudley Street story. For faith-based community builders across the country, these two thoughtful accounts of effective prophecy and action provide both guidance and hope. -Reviewed by John P. Kretzmann, Co-Director of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute, Senior Research Associate at Northwestern University, and a member of SCUPE's board of directors.
"Prayer is an attempt to count the stars of our souls. Under the sacred canopy, an oratory of hope echoes the vast but immediate distance between who we are and who we want to be."
How one approaches these echoes of hope is of immediate concern to the
collector of these prayers. Dr. Washington, in an eloquent introduction
that alone is worth the purchase of the book, shares his inner conflict
in producing an anthology of prayers that reflect the deep spiritual essence
of African Americans. He writes, "My disdain for profiteers is matched
only by my repugnance for eavesdroppers..." The introduction appropriately
prepares the reader, not only intellectually but also spirituality, to respect
the privilege of standing under a sacred canopy.
Reading this book of prayers may be done best in a special place, perhaps
one's own sacred space. Be prepared to have both your spirit and your soul
stirred by the oratory of hope that echoes from people of profound faith.
The prayers are organized chronologically, subdivided into six parts beginning
with Slavery and ending with Post-modern African American Worlds. Each division
represents the invasion of a new form of social absurdity. The organization
of these prayers enables the reader to taste the experience of how a sinned-against
people attempt to converse with God about the joys, burdens and hopes of
being African people in a racist society. The prayers repeat the theme of
God's love and justice, while at the same time expressing the agony of the
human dilemma that we cannot always know and see God's justice and love.
One can feel the close personal friendship of the author with his colleague
and companion Cornel West. The book concludes with a final prayer entitled
"Afterward: A Scholar's Benediction." This prayer, written by
James Washington, is dedicated to Cornel West. The benediction is a tribute
to the people who pray while living in the midst of a world of absurdity.
- Reviewed by Dave Frenchak
I am the church! You are the church! We are the church together!
All who follow Jesus, all around the world, Yes, we are the church together!
The words of this familiar hymn are the focus of Charles R. Foster and
Theodore Brelsford's study of three urban congregations as they adjust to
changes that occur relating to ethnicity, economics, and declining membership.
Charles Foster, a professor at Candler School of Theology at Emory University,
and Emory doctoral candidate Theodore Brelsford chose three congregations,
one Presbyterian and two United Methodist, to watch over the course of one
year to evaluate how the churches were able to grow despite a changing constituency
and more diverse neighborhoods.
They began their study simply by attending the churches and observing Sunday
services, social gatherings, church governance meetings, and interviewed
different members and pastors of all three churches.
The authors were not looking at how "multiethnic" the churches
are, but were more interested in how the multiethnicity of the churches
is viewed and dealt with in each congregation. Although their original intent
was to find a model for churches moving toward encompassing a more diverse
congregation, their focus shifted as they understood that ethnicity is more
than just skin color. It is a confrontation of cultures, practices, and
norms which are no longer norms as the church gets more diverse. The authors'
work in the three congregations shows hope in melding different cultures
to a common aim in Christ.
What is disappointing is that the authors aim to give guidance to churches
who struggle while working with multiethnic congregations, but end up saying
little to help the congregations. Rather, they end up telling pastors and
churches that each congregation is different and must deal with its own
problems individually.
- Reviewed by Aaron Tambrini
At first, Conn's history seems frustratingly inconclusive - he offers
a mixed review of the church's role and little by way of a forecast on the
future of the city. I suspect that Conn would like to be optimistic, but
that the history he recounts of the church's ministry in the city precludes
expressing as a prediction the hope he has had to hold on to as an urban
missioner. The last chapter, "Into the Future," ends with the
speculation that "the history of the church in the city will repeat
itself" - a reluctant concession to the expectation that much of evangelical
church will continue to maintain its distance, detachment, and defensiveness
regarding its call to the city.
Conn is carefully inclusive in his examination of the evangelical church,
and this inclusiveness forces the ambiguity - as well as allowing for his
hope. While mainstream white evangelicalism has been prone to abandon the
city, including the urban church, there has been a continuous witnessing
presence in the city by African-American and other churches of color whose
commitment to the biblical message and the salvation of souls demands that
they be counted among the evangelicals. There are as well other missions-oriented
groups (e.g., rescue missions and the Salvation Army) who have, with or
without the support of the rest of evangelicalism, maintained their work
in U.S. cities for a century or more.
Harvie Conn notes both promising and disturbing current trends. Some evangelical
denominations are appointing staff for urban ministry, the "colorization"
of the U.S. may sensitize the nation's conscience regarding its urban areas,
and the community development movement continues to fluorish. On the other
hand, new immigrants and the African-American middle class are increasingly
likely to leave the city for the suburbs. White megachurches and many Latino
and Asian-American churches haven't yet, in Conn's evaluation, shown a sophisticated
consciousness about urban social issues. The evangelicals who have made
a commitment to the city are often dis-integrated from mainstream evangelicalism,
particularly if they go beyond providing charitable services and doing traditional
evangelism to addressing the institutional structures which shape urban
life.
While the book betrays some difficulty in organizing its information, and
the writing has an occasional pasted-together or off-the-top-of-Conn's head
feel, there is nevertheless a wealth of information here, clearly presented.
The early history of urban America was particularly fascinating. Conn includes
all the necessary pieces of the urban evangelical puzzle, and rather than
forcing them into a conclusion, allows the church's witness - faithful and
shameful - to speak for itself.
- Reviewed by Mark Walden
How do Christians bring their Biblical faith to bear on important social
issues not addressed in detail in the Bible - issues like education funding,
welfare reform, or national health insurance proposals? For us as Christians
who understand the strategic significance of Luke 4, is charity enough or
do we also need to advocate policies for social justice?
If your church is interested in questions like these, a series of four discussion
guides called "Faith and Public Issues" has recently been produced
by a Chicago organization called Protestants for the Common Good. The series
recognizes that the relationship of faith and politics is complex - as is
the dual role of citizen and Christian disciple - and is structured in such
a way as to allow respect for diversity of opinion.
Each of the four sessions includes an overview of the topic, a Bible study,
and a case study. The leaders' guide, included, describes several options
of how to lead the study, as well as tips and suggestions of activities
to bring discussion alive.
The series encourages Christians to think for themselves, even as they learn
from God's Word, and to think critically of political ideologies - even
as they are enabled to act with conviction in public life. These are not
easy tasks, but churches and church groups should find this series an important
starting point.
Larry Sibley, chaplain at Westminster Seminary in Philadelphia, has put
together a short collection of little-used, but often insightful and poetic,
quotes on issues from poverty to angels to ecology. His sources are Christian
leaders and writers ranging from the church fathers, through St. Francis
and Teresa of Avila, to C. H. Spurgeon and Tolstoy.
Though Sibley's own comments, which introduce each topic, are quite sensible,
the collection doesn't reflect such balance in every topic. The section
on "work and leisure," for example, reflects the editor's presumably
Calvinistic preference for the former. (There is nothing to be said here
for lying down in green pastures!) Nevertheless, Sibley's quotes include
some gems on issues relevant to the contemporary urban church, and can serve
as an intriguing introduction to Christian heritage too-often neglected
in Protestant circles.
This annual yearbook is a very handy directory of U.S. and Canadian denominations, seminaries, and religious periodicals and organizations. It includes a section of statistics on denominational membership, seminary enrollment, and so forth. SCUPE development director Jim Bell says he uses it almost daily, and - not content with the office copy Abingdon sent us for review - ordered his very own. We find the yearbook very useful when the Rolodex falls short.
The African American Devotional Bible. Zondervan, 1997.
A Theology As Big As the City. Ray Bakke. InterVarsity, 1997.
Reconciliation: Our Greatest Challenge - Our Only Hope. Curtiss
Paul DeYoung. Judson, 1997.
Urban Christ: Responses to John Vincent. Ian K. Duffield,
ed. Urban Theology Unit (Sheffield, UK), 1997.
With an Eye on the Future: Development and Mission in the 21st Century.
Duane Elmer and Lois McKinney, eds. MARC, 1996.
Loving Your City into the Kingdom. Ted Haggard and Jack Hayford.
Regal, 1997.
The Church, Change, and Development. Ivan Illich. Urban Training
Center/Herder and Herder, 1970.
The Black Family, Past, Present, & Future. Lee N. June,
ed. Zondervan, 1991.
Street Children: A Guide to Effective Ministry. Phyllis Kilbourn,
ed. MARC, 1997.
Economic Empowerment Through the Church. Gregory J. Reed.
Zondervan, 1994.
Ministry at the Margins: The Prophetic Mission of Women, Youth, &
the Poor. Cheryl J. Sanders. InterVarsity, 1997.
On Moral Business: Classical and Contemporary Resources for Ethics
in Economic Life. Max L. Stackhouse, Dennis P. McCann, and Shirley
J. Roels with Preston Williams, eds. Eerdmans, 1995.
Lending a Hand: A Congregation's Guide to Community Investing.
Kathryn Tholin. Woodstock Institute, 1995.
Black Man's Religion: Can Christianity be Afrocentric? Glenn
Usry and Craig Keener. InterVarsity, 1996.
Journey to the Center of the City: Making a Difference in an Urban
Neighborhood. Randy White. InterVarsity, 1996.
No Hiding Place: Empowerment and Recovery for Our Troubled Communities.
Cecil Williams with Rebecca Laird. HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
The Seminary Consortium for Urban Pastoral
Education (SCUPE) began in 1976, when a group of seminaries and urban pastors
came together to address the need to educate prepare urban pastors with
a sound biblical, theological, and sociological understanding of the city.
SCUPE created an educational program accredited through its member seminaries
integrating academic study, an urban ministry internship, and a reflective
practicum - a program which has graduated more than 200 students with experience
in ministry and a profound understanding of the complex urban environment.
In 1978, SCUPE organized the first biennial Congress on Urban Ministry,
to facilitate networking among urban practitioners and to share the expertise
of urban leaders in a national forum. The eleventh Congress will be April
14-17, 1998, in Chicago. This year SCUPE is launching a new Master of Arts
in Community Development program with North Park University, already accredited
and enrolling students for fall of 1998.
To learn more about SCUPE, our seminary program, the Congress on Urban Ministry
or the M.A. in Community Development, please contact us. Tel: (312) 726-0425,
Fax: (312) 726-0425.