By T.R. Robertson
Prison life is easier than life on the street for many in our country”s poor population. By understanding and taking effective measures to address poverty, we are helping to solve the crime problem as well. Here are some basic understandings and ideas.
Until she went to prison, Janie said, she had never in her young life been sure she would get to eat three meals in any one day and have a bed to sleep on at night. Born into the make-do culture of generational poverty, the only “meals” she”d ever known consisted of whatever food could be scratched together. Sleep happened wherever she found herself when she was sleepy. To her, the proverbial “three hots and a cot” of prison life is a luxury.
In prison she has found her niche. She”s learned the institutional rule””both the official rules and the unwritten ones”” and she knows how to get through her days without too many problems. She even has a circle of friends to make her life a little brighter.
Her outlook turns dismal whenever she finishes a prison sentence and is released back onto the streets. On her best days she has difficulty seeing beyond the needs of the moment. Being out in the world only worsens her reasoning abilities. Life on the streets offers too many choices.
Before long, she crosses the wrong lines, and finds herself back inside the only place she feels comfortable.
The Heart of Poverty
The book Bridges Out of Poverty (see list below) lays out in detail the “hidden rules” that govern life and decision-making among those in the poverty class. It says, “Hidden rules are the unspoken cues and habits of a group. Distinct cuing systems exist between and among groups and economic classes.”
Middle-class and wealthy people know what it takes to adapt to problems and sustain their lifestyle. To someone stuck in the culture of poverty, especially generational poverty, those hidden rules of societal achievement are as foreign as life on Mars. In fact, those behavioral habits often seem wrong and counterproductive to the underclass.
Attitudes toward money are a good example. As described in Bridges Out of Poverty, to the wealthy, money is something to be conserved and invested; to the middle class, money is to be managed; to those in poverty, money is to be used, spent.
There are hidden, class-specific rules about possessions, food, time, family, education, and more. It”s difficult for people in any of the three economic groups to recognize these differences and make conscious adjustments to achieve a goal.
It”s tempting to view this cultural gap in terms of economics or politics, but the Bible tells a tale of a deeper issue underlying these problems.
Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert, the authors of When Helping Hurts, point out that God created man to be in harmony with him, with each other, and with the world around us. After the fall, those relationships were broken. This disconnect from God”s intentions affects not only those at the poverty level, but everyone else as well. The book continues:
And now we come to a very central point: one of the biggest problems in many poverty alleviation efforts is that their design and implementation exacerbates the poverty of the economically rich””their god complexes””and the poverty of the economically poor””their feelings of inferiority and shame. The way we act toward the economically poor often communicates””albeit unintentionally””that we are superior and they are inferior. In the process we hurt the poor and ourselves.
Blessed are those who embrace their own poverty of spirit, for only then can they walk alongside others in doing the work of the kingdom of Heaven.
What the poor in resources need is more complex than either a sermon or a handout. They need for the churches of the middle and upper classes to recognize that perhaps the best way to rescue themselves from their own self-serving religious culture is to spend their lives standing alongside people in need.
“If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday” (Isaiah 58:9, 10).
The first impulse of many churches when they become aware of the need to do something about poverty is to take up a collection and give things to poor people. So we hand out turkeys at Thanksgiving, gift baskets at Christmas, backpacks at the beginning of the school year.
That”s not a wrong impulse, but charity programs fall short of what they, and we, need most. Financial and property resources are only the most obvious of the types of resources required to escape the cycle of poverty.
When Janie returns to the streets, she will need a support system around her. She will need healthy family relationships, an understanding of the importance of managing her money, and the secrets to being a valued employee.
She”ll also need help in slowly unlearning her ingrained thought processes and learning a new understanding of how every part of her life can work together for success. The best way for her to achieve that personal growth is by changing not only her mind, but her heart, something in which Jesus specializes.
The church can help her become the well-rounded person God intended her to be, but it won”t happen with a holiday basket program or some other big event. It will take place only when individual Christians, with the support of their church family, follow the model of Jesus” incarnation by stepping down out of their comfortable lifestyle to walk alongside the poor.
The Church and Poverty
The most effective ministry with the poor will always include mentoring at its core.
I”ve seen countless women leave prison, only to show up again in our Monday night chapel a few months later. Sometimes, though, we meet former prisoners back out in the real world. They”re doing great, holding down a job, and are active in a local church.
The common thread through nearly every success story is the presence of a mentor, someone who took the time to build a relationship. Without some who are willing to walk alongside, acting as a guide to resources, a successful outcome is much less likely.
The most effective way to make a real impact on the poverty-to-prison pipeline is by mentoring children. Young people born into generational poverty know nothing about what is possible outside the hopeless life they experience. Their future can be changed dramatically through the efforts of one person or family willing to be a friend and mentor.
Laura Schroff, author of An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting, almost passed by young Maurice as he stood on the street corner, but instead she invited him to lunch at McDonald”s. Over the next several years she built a mentoring friendship with and taught him life skills he had never learned at home. Along the way, she not only enabled him to see a different future for himself, she discovered her own path to a better life.
Ironically, while writing the previous paragraph, I received a text message from a young man urgently in need of a ride. Twenty-eight years ago, my wife and I had taken him in as a foster child for the first year of his life. Like most successful child-mentoring relationships, this one has continued beyond what we first expected. Now an adult, he still knows I”ll drop everything to help him out. He also knows I”ll show up this Sunday morning to take him to church with us.
The best way to get started with a mentoring relationship is to find the closest thread and follow it wherever it takes you. Nearly every Christian encounters people in need at some point in their daily lives. If you think you don”t, ask God to give you eyes that see those people.
Check out after-school programs, Big Brothers Big Sisters, tutoring programs, PTA, or foster parenting. Volunteer with WIC (the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children) or other assistance programs. While it”s true that government or secular programs can come with strings attached and compromises expected, they can provide a gateway into meeting people in need of a mentoring relationship.
Church leaders often think in terms of creating a church program to impact the lives of people in poverty. The best thing they can do is to challenge and train individuals and families to get involved in the lives of needy people, especially children. Match the talents and skills of your people with specific resource needs of the poor.
Make it clear to the congregation that every VBS, after-school program, or hospital ministry is not about putting on a program or following a script. Turn those standard outreach programs into a venue for meeting people and developing relationships. Then have a plan for supporting and celebrating those who make that commitment.
Larger-scale programs work best when they grow out of the mentoring relationships built by individual church members. They”ll know which specific systemic and community problems are creating hurdles for their friends. They”ll also be the first to see what spiritual resources are already available in the neighborhood, and how the church can offer a helping hand.
In When Helping Hurts, Corbett and Fikkert observe,
We are not bringing Christ to poor communities. He has been active in these communities since the creation of the world, sustaining them “by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3). Hence, a significant part of working in poor communities involves discovering and appreciating what God has been doing there for a long time!
True Joy
I last spoke to Janie a few months ago in the prison chapel. She was looking forward to a transfer to another state prison, where she would be participating in a program that would lead to her release within a few months.
She wore a huge smile on her face, filled with her “new teeth,” as she called the state-funded dental work she had needed so badly.
But there was more to her smile than that. Janie had begun visiting the chapel programs early on in her sentence, desperate for the peppy songs that gave her some fleeting enjoyment. Over the years, though, she found true joy in training herself for a more disciplined way of life, walking by faith with the God who loves her.
I only hope that upon her release from prison, whatever church she finds will match her up with a mentor who can give her the constructive help and support she needs.
T.R. Robertson is a freelance writer in Columbia, Missouri.
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Resources
Websites
“¢ Children”s Defense Fund”s Cradle to Prison Pipeline Campaign lists several ideas for taking action to help individuals, families, communities, and more. Go to www.childrensdefense.org/programs-campaigns/cradle-to-prison-pipeline/.
“¢ Love In the Name of Christ (commonly known as Love INC) provides training and resources to help local churches transform lives and communities, including mentor training; it has more than 155 affiliates in 30 states. Go to www.loveinc.org.Â
“¢ Also, www.urbanministry.org provides many resources for ministry with the poor.
BOOKS
“¢ When Helping Hurts, by Steve Corbett & Brian Fikkert (Moody Publishers, 2009)
“¢ Bridges Out of Poverty, by Ruby K. Payne, PhD, Philip E. DeVol, and Terie Dreussi Smith (Aha Process, 2001)
“¢ An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting, by Laura Schroff (Howard Books, 2011)
“”T.R.R.
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