Camden

I spent my spring break with a group of students and one teacher (Phillip Camp) from Lipscomb in Camden, New Jersey. One of my best friends is doing his Ph.D. in Philadelphia (Westminster) and we worked with his church to somehow be good news for the six days we were there. Most people do not know this but Camden was recently voted the most dangerous city in the U.S. (U.S. News and World Report). It edged out Detroit, Houston, New York, and Los Angeles (and a few others).

Camden is actually an extension of Philadelphia--just across the river. It only has about 50,000 people. Buildings are abandoned, streets are occupied with trash. As we stood on the corner of one of the most dangerous parts of Camden I thought to myself, "This cannot be America." I've been to Trujillo, Honduras and Ocho Rios, Jamaica-but I expected poverty, despair and hunger.

Our group worked with "My Brothers Keeper"-a mission house run by a pentecostal church in which former addicts, pushers, and pimps come for food, healing, and restoration. Day by day, with prayer and community, they are made whole again. Real people with real pain. Not simply "lazy blacks/latinos" who don't want a better life. Men who've been overrun by institutional sin.

I wonder when our churches will start sending missionaries to Camden. I wonder when the churches in Korea will start sending missionaries to Detroit. Missiologists say (people who study mission contexts) that more Christians live in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe than in the West. This hasn't been the case for several hundred years.

I wonder when Christians will start to reclaim their identity as missionaries in a context that is hostile towards the claim of the gospel? Maybe those of us in vocational ministry (preachers, pastors, and counselors) should spend more time equipping the disciples than performing psychology; bad psychology at that.

Where the poor exist, Christ is present. Is the church spending time with Christ or with Caesar and the spoils of his empire?