By Jennifer Johnson
Why do we always want to Band-Aid the solution?
Never mind. I know why. Whether it”s homelessness or abortion or violence in schools, it”s easier to organize a sock giveaway, stand on a picket line, or bicker about gun control than to address the systemic social issues that first led to the problem.
I relearned this a few months ago when interviewing my friend Becky Ahlberg about My Safe Harbor, a nonprofit she (and Anaheim First Christian Church) launched in 2008 to serve a city ravaged by gang violence, crime, and poverty. It might have been easier to open a food pantry or start an after-school program, and God would have been honored by those projects, but as Becky began meeting with Anaheim”s city leaders and school administrators, it was clear there were bigger problems to solve.
“Seventy-five percent of gang members come from single-mother homes,” she said in an interview we did last year (the interview1 appeared in October”s issue; also see “Becoming the Go-To Church” from November2). “In fact, the vast majority of high school dropouts, teen suicides, and runaways are also kids in these households. It became obvious that so many issues in our community were symptoms of a more foundational problem””a huge number of single mothers with few financial resources, life skills, or support systems.”
So in the last five years My Safe Harbor has created resources and developed relationships with lots of single moms. They”ve partnered with city leaders, offered practical programs, and made a commitment to staying and serving. There are still gangs, borderline schools, and kids falling through the cracks. There are still too many struggling women and under-resourced families. But instead of putting temporary Band-Aids on symptoms, Becky”s team at My Safe Harbor is doing the much harder work of identifying and healing root causes, one person at a time.
Fred Liggin is doing the same thing. “You can”t take people off the street and put them in a room or even give them a job and think it will solve the problem of homelessness,” he told me. “They have been living in a perpetual state of survival, thinking only about getting through one day. They need people who will walk with them from codependence to independence to interdependence in the life of the church.” Like my friend Becky, Fred is investing financially, physically, and emotionally in the long-term.
I”m not saying there”s no room for Thanksgiving food baskets or Christmas coat collections. But I am saying that often””no, usually””these well-intentioned efforts provide temporary panaceas at best. We are a culture for whom instant gratification takes too long, but transformation of both communities and individual lives means years, even decades, of hard work.
There”s nothing “plug and play” about this, nothing programmatic or easily measured. In Anaheim and Williamsburg and in our own churches and families, growth is messy at best. But it”s the only way to create solutions that stick.
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1https://christianstandard.com/2013/10/a-conversation-with-becky-ahlberg/.
2https://christianstandard.com/2013/10/becoming-the-go-to-church/.
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