Find A Way to My Heart

Find a way to my heart, and I will always be with you.

From wherever you are, I'll be waiting.

I'll keep a place in my heart.  You will see it shining through.

So find a way to my heart, and I will, I will follow you.

Phil Collins' song, Find A Way to My Heart, is a love song, but for some weird reason the song keeps resonating in a particular watershed event today.  No, I did not meet the girl of my dreams today, for those of you who were wondering.  But I suppose you can argue that this watershed event could be possibly more important than meeting "the girl" (as if "meeting the girl" were some existential category).  The part that resonates strongest is the first stanza, listed above, but feel free to listen to the entire song as you read... if you choose to read.

In case you don't know yet, I will be starting a position come this September as a part-time youth/college director at a Chinese church in the Manhattan Chinatown.  Since I believe in the Doctrine of No Procrastination, I thought I'd meet with different members of the youth/college ahead of time to just get a sense of what their experiences were.  I must first tip my hat off to the people I've talked to for their candor and honest assessments.  But more importantly, my goal to meet with people is to get to know them.  Who are the people whom I will be ministering to?  This takes time, of course, and I sure did not want to start that September.  Why?  Because I believe in the Doctrine of No Procrastination, of course!

Today I had a chance to meet with Mark (not his/her real name, but assume it's a "he" for simplicity).  Mark was a typical Chinese-American engineering student at a prominent New York Tri-State area university.  He was soft-spoken and not, like me, an overly verbose person (which is a good thing, by the way).  Our initial conversations were separated with periods of awkward silence as we struggled to figure out what to talk to each other about.  After all, we both were relative strangers.  We made our way to a noodle joint where we both got very tasty noodles.  It was a good choice on his part - I had no idea such a joint existed... until now!  Egg noodles with beef tripe, curry squid balls, and bok choy?  Excellent.

We continued to figure out how to proceed, and a fail-safe way (at least for me) was to begin chatting about my adopted hometown of Chicago.  Then I asked, "Have you been to Chicago?"

"No," he responded.
"Were you originally from around here?"
"Yeah, I was born here."
"Oh! So you've stayed around town!"
"Well, our family doesn't have a lot of money, so we don't travel much.  We live in government-subsidized housing..."

He was slightly crestfallen, as if his relative poverty were something to be ashamed about, and returned quickly to his noodles.  I did the same, thinking to myself, "You jacka**!  Why do you have to talk about Chicago all the time?!"  My mind was muddled for a few minutes as I struggled to find a way forward in the conversation.  How could I relate to him?  I grew up in suburbia.  My family is relatively wealthy.  I live in suburbia!

But then, I remembered what I've always championed as a beautiful vision of the Church - a place where poor and wealthy gather together and share their resources, where young and old gather and share their experiences, where black and white gather together and share their many similarities.  As we continued to share about our lives and experiences, Mark became more open.  I was able to see his relative financial poverty as a tremendous asset and opportunity for the youth/college group as a whole.  How many youth directors (or youth pastors, for that matter), get placed smack dab in a near-ideal vision of a church where socio-economic backgrounds are blurred in significance?  So often, we are used to the Church of Suburbia, where everyone is wealthy, well-educated, well-connected to sources of power, be it financial, political, or others, we become numb to the notion that perhaps where we are is not where we should be.

As I pondered that on the subway enroute back to my suburban home (oh, the irony), I remembered a few pastors saying that ministry cannot be entirely urban, because suburban people need Christ too.  Indeed, everybody needs Christ.  But the problem is not that.  The problem is that suburban people are well-versed in the social narrative of needlessness!  In other words, we don't grow up needing anything! Sure, we say we "need" stuff, but what's that stuff? iPads? iPhones? Going to Harvard? Vacationing in the Mayan Riviera?  No - we say we "need", but we really "want".  And when we utilize the rhetoric of "want", we employ a utilitarian philosophy, because "wants" are necessarily based on personal tastes and preferences.  We never "want" food - we need it!  But when our tastes and preferences lean towards a certain cuisine, we "want" it.  That's why you never need Chinese food, but you want it.

Nobody ever needs suburban life.  Nobody ever needs nice houses.  Nobody ever needs nice school districts.  We all want them.  Now, wanting those things are not wrong, per se.  Indeed, the Church, if it maintains its diversity, benefits from people living in the suburbs; the excesses of the wealthy provide for the poverty of the poor.  That's how the church was envisioned to work, and for the first few centuries of its existence, that was standard operating procedure.  People noticed and rendered favorable judgments on the Church, and as a result, it grew organically.

But when the church becomes almost exclusively suburban, we have a theological problem, because it does two things.  It abstractizes the poor.  Thus, it becomes easy to just give money to the poor as a way to assuage one's Christian obligations because the poor are not people, but just a socioeconomic categorization.  And so we have Christians who openly agree with Objectivist economics.  You might think government-subsidized housing is suboptimal for economic efficiency, invisible hand of the market, and blah-blah, but f*** economic efficiency, f*** invisible hand - one of my college/youth kids and his (non-Christian) family will be homeless if we privatize such housing and let private developers replace such housing with expensive apartments befitting of Manhattan land.  Find other ways to raise revenue (e.g. raising taxes on the wealthy), because I'd rather pay higher taxes than see anyone in my church (much less under MY watch) be rendered homeless.

Secondly, the church baptizes exclusive suburbaneity with theological legitimacy.  Living in a large house becomes a theological imperative encrouched in the rhetoric of calling; possessing a nice sound system becomes a liturgical necessity; six-figure pastoral incomes become necessary for ministry.  Now, God does call some of us to live in ginormous houses.  But those houses are there to serve God's people, not for personal enjoyment!  God does call some of us to go to school at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, but our education is to be used to serve God and our neighbors!

In the book Following God Without Dishonoring Your Parents, one of the authors recounts a situation when one of the youths expresses a desire to teach in inner-city schools, but the parents disagreed angrily, asserting that by being a businessperson, they could do more for inner-city schools (by donating money) than by being a teacher in one.   The problem with that line of thought is that it is fundamentally utilitarian.  It abstractizes everything so that money can solve problems easily, and it baptizes a particular line of work as being the only legitimate one.  Without the poor in our midst, the suburban church is especially vulnerable to such thinking.  Our ethics become impaired and too simplified, because everyone is fundamentally without need, we focus our ethics on personal issues.  And so the biggest issues become homosexuality, abortion, pornography, etc.  Poverty? Irrelevant and distant.  Financial stewardship?  Just do a good job with the money, what's so hard?  Oh- but don't forget to upgrade the sound system!

I know many of you come from suburban churches.  I do not indent to dismiss your legitimacy - I definitely want WCAC to stay where it is and be a light in the community!  My prayer to you is that the Holy Spirit would destroy the suburbanism so that it becomes a church in suburbia, not a suburban church.   You have no reason to be a suburban church - Ben Lowe lives in very un-suburban community.  Instead, you have every reason, and every opportunity to be a church in suburbia.  May you journey towards that (unfortunately, I can't join you guys in person).

My hope for my new ministry is that everyone, myself included, would find our way to God's heart in our diversity.  I am a product of suburbia, and I've grown up in suburbia.  But most of my youth/collegians are not.  But wealth or poverty are not curses.  No, we are not perfect.  We have our fissures, we have our issues.  But they're part of growing up in Christlikeness, if we can grow from them.  Nonetheless, I count myself too blessed to be able to participate in a difficult journey to God's heart and follow Him only.

Find a way to my heart, and I will always be with you.

From wherever you are, I'll be waiting.

I'll keep a place in my heart.  You will see it shining through.

So find a way to my heart, and I will, I will follow you.