We Love Our City

The subtitle of the book is an actual quote from one of our city councilmen. I was asked to make a presentation to the city council one evening on all the projects we, as a church, had partnered with the city on to provide social services to our community. One of the reasons for the report was to introduce the newest partnership, in which we as a church would become the citys official graffiti abatement team. After everyone on the city council took an opportunity to thank our church for the services we were providing to the community, one of them said, Because of all that the Fathers house is doing in our community, the city is a better place to live in. This is how a church in the community became the communitys church. The partnership between the church and the city was years in the making. There was a fair amount of distrust on both sides of the policies, protocols, and practices of each side. After years of working on justice-related issues, I often spent much of my time being a liaison between faith-based, local, city, county, state, and federal organizations. The delicate and often exhausting dance between organizations is created by the inflexibility of the policies, protocols, and practices of the separate entities. The justice for those who need relief routinely becomes a journey into a maze that results from all the different organizations created to secure justice. Since every organization has its own policies, protocols, and procedures that never seem to connect with other organizations, people who are in need of justice get lost in the maze. This is where it gets personal for me. Often the worst offender of too many policies, protocols, procedures, and nonparticipation with other organizations is the church.