One of the primary challenges that the church and Christians have in the US is bad PR. Amongst non-Christians and non-church going folk, churches and Christians are unfortunately often portrayed and viewed as intolerant, bigoted, and self-serving.
Some of the primary challenges of public schools and school administrators are:
Could the challenges of each group (churches and schools) be an opening to bring the two groups together?
Surprisingly, that is what many churches and schools are concluding. While there are still many concerns about church-state separation amongst many administrators, the reality is that many challenged schools are so desperate for help that they are willing overcome these concerns and accept any help that is truly offered. The key is for the church to truly be there as a servant.
This Monday, one of our members named Brandon, who is a teacher and is very community and outreach-oriented, met with a local school principal at Cannon elementary. Brandon had sent out emails to several elementary schools that are close to our church that might have needs and offered to meet these administrators and have our church help in any way possible.
The principal at Cannon responded enthusiastically that yes, she would love to meet with us and form a partnership with our church. And so we went to the school to meet her. Prior to going in, Brandon and I said a prayer that God would bless this meeting and open doors for us to just be servants there at that school.
We discovered in this meeting that the school had a partnership with the First Methodist church for many benevolent needs of the school children, which is wonderful that other churches had taken an interest in providing for these children in this way.
However, the principal shared that there were other needs, including:
We are going to share this back with our congregation, and plan on beginning serving by providing some meals and school supplies for the teachers as a first step. Then we will begin to seek to try to provide assistance in the other areas that they have identified.
Again, the key is to go in as a servant, asking what they need and seeking to lift their burdens. And by consistently being a presence there and serving, the school staff, the children, and their families will hopefully begin to see the church as a blessing and help and look forward to our coming. And by building relationships, over time, God will surely bless this and open doors and hearts to other things at other times and places.
Jesus said "the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve others." We have often forgotten this as a church, seeking to demand that others conform to our beliefs without even knowing Christ, or seeking to share Christ without serving. Jesus constantly served, and this service confirmed and gave credibility to his message and caused people to actually look forward to seeing him and listen to his message.
Still wonder about this can draw people together and work? Even the New York Times is taking note of these types of partnerships! This NY Times story, "Help From Evangelicals Meets the Needs of an Oregan Public School", notes how even in highly politically liberal/progressive/secular Portand, Oregon, mayors and school administrators are welcoming an evangelical church. And as the article states, it has drawn together both secular administrators and Christian millennials interested in social justice.
And within churches, there are often various theological views. But serving together those who are in need--particularly people such as children and teachers, who are so precious and vital to our community and lives, is hard to be against. It is something that most everyone can support. And God will surely bless this, if approached with a servant heart, much prayer, and love.
What do you think of school adoptions? What do you think of the NY Times story? How could school adoptions bless both churches and schools?
Comment
I like this idea. And I'm familiar with this story.
But speaking as an Oregonian, it's going to take a lot of this kind of activity to make up for the "My kids can't pray in school and teaching evolution and sex education so I'm taking my kids out" people. Which I liken to the Christian version of "taking my ball and going home." You may think this is just a PR problem, but for this area, society's prejudice against Christians is well-earned.
Oregonian evangelicals, including CoC, (which is not a strong denomination here, Oklahoma Christian's Columbia/Cascade College meltdown is a pretty good indicator of the social / philosophical mismatch with local culture) frequently put their kids in private Christian schools or homeschool in reaction to anything where they don't get their way in public schools. This is shockingly counterproductive. They withdraw from society's institutions to form a walled-off subculture and then whine about not having a voice in larger society.
With some notable exceptions, Evangelical Christians here are mostly isolationists, culture war activists and judgmental zealots - not blessedly meek, humble or engaging, as people here expect from Jesus' followers. It's not an unfair stereotype if it's true.
That said, look to this region (see Blue Like Jazz, Lord Save Us From Your Followers, http://www.churchbarpdx.com) if you want to see how US Christianity will survive the imminent shift into deprecated minority status.
As to the portability of this idea, I'm not sure many Bible Belt area believers can restrain themselves from proselytizing without feeling indignant by the restriction. Someone will eventually get upset and take a principled stand or try to manipulate it into a recruiting mission.
It's ingrained into our Evangelical Christian culture to do service as a switcheroo, do charity as an inducement and to love on condition of conformity. I remember several of our church meetings where every "Joy Bus" or clothing drive or food giveaway was made into a procedure for corralling people into worship. I can't even count how many times I'd hear some elaborate charity plan that ended with the phrase "... and then they'll have to stay and go to church..." Our VBS service was purposely made into a summer bi-weekly series on randomized weekdays so that the kids would miss out on incentives if they missed a day of attendance. This was done to pressure parents to cancel or delay vacation plans in favor of church. The premise was that vacationing members would forsake the assembly if they went on holiday.
It should also be noted that, while noble, Christlike and unconditional, this effort from Southlake Church probably works as an outreach to the "churched" and the "casual-churched" but not the "dechurched" or the "unchurched." In other words, there's no net increase in believers, just a consolidation of practitioners. Complicating matters, the Foursquare Church's position (Southlake's denomination) on marriage equality (gay marriage) will also turn off a good number of potential members. Eventually, the numbers will catch up and this effort will become viewed as an unproductive expense by the church like the "Holy Grounds" coffee gimmicks of the early 2000s and the superficially edgy urban "community" church plants of these days.
Despite the genuineness or sincerity of the service, outreach or mission, the problem for ministers here remains that Pacific Northwesterners aren't ignorant of the Bible, theology or doctrines, quite the opposite. They've made informed decisions not to be religious, because they've read the Bible, practiced the faith and found the experience lacking.
And many of my fellow Northwesterners are "refugees" from the very religious areas of Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. I can think of several of my fellow OC alumni and HU/F-HU/ACU/LCU/DLU friends who moved here to escape their religious home culture. In fact, some of us will converge on a pub in Portland or Seattle and laugh about campus curfews, dancing prohibitions, hair codes, mixed swimming, gay witch hunts, The Last Temptation of Christ freakouts, music backmasking, prom alternatives, church camps, glossolalia and purity sermons from the youth minister. We'll sing our alma mater songs, camp songs and hymns like drinking songs. We'll discuss our faith, faithlessness, sexuality and philosophies. It's kind of like church... but without the righteousness ranking, the guilt and the threat of hellfire.
These days, if we want to attract or retain people who will otherwise disregard or disengage from us, we must be brave enough to actually alter our beliefs rather than just offering liturgical novelties, singing at faster tempo or performing a unique service that will make the evening news. Novelties wear out fast and notoriety quickly fades.
This is a great idea and the servant step down approach is Jesus' way. I think there must be clarity in whose we are,you don't hide under the basket the light of the world. Deuteronomy 6: 4-9 gives us a great example. We can help but "be" Jesus to our communities. Jesus prayed for people, Jesus was open about His relationship with the father. If we "BE" the DO will be holistic and inclusive. Our culture says don't talk about religion and politics, because it is personal but at the same time our culture says Homosexuality is an open topic for discussion. Jesus is our very life, He serves, He heals, He restores, He praises the Father. I say all we do we do it as unto the Lord and all He leads us to do, we are first and foremost His. He is Lord of the harvest and the harvest is plentiful. Pray for laborers in the harvest because they are few. I believe in the attractional approach, let Jesus show Himself off through you and He will attract people to Himself.
For additional resources and videos on school adoption, check out the Missional Children's Ministry group!
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