Got this group email from Bart Campolo today. I was incredibly struck by it on several levels. I won't waste your time with commentary. I'll just let it speak for itself.
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Dear
Friends,
By the time they reach my age, most
inner-city missionaries are responsible for established ministries which require
them to manage programs, supervise younger staff members, and raise lots of
money.
Like it or not, they no longer have
much time to delouse a mentally handicapped neighbor’s apartment, sit quietly
with a now-destitute woman whose drug-dealing son was murdered the week before,
wait in line to restore a kid’s library privileges, try to establish rapport
with a twenty-something single mother of five who won’t stop watching daytime
television long enough to look at you or change her babies’ diapers, taxi a few
folks to the free clinic, talk gun control with a handful of young men who are
armed and might be dangerous if they didn’t know you, and teach an innocent,
malodorous and unparented ten year old how to successfully wipe his rear end.
I, on the other hand, had time to do
all those things and more…just last week. None of it was planned very far in
advance, either. In between emails, phone calls, and a few meetings about the
abandoned church basement we want to renovate into our office and ministry
space, all I had to do to make myself useful was walk out on the street with my
eyes open. Marty doesn’t have to go even that far; kids just come to the front
door looking for her to fix them a snack or watch them play in the backyard.
For better and worse, our parishioners here – and their needs – are almost
always available.
I will let you in on a secret: Most
mornings I wake up feeling impossibly fortunate, like a man whose fondest dream
has come true, because my primary job here is to creatively love my neighbors,
and feeling sorry for everyone who has to punch a clock or answer to a boss.
And most nights I lay in bed feeling physically exhausted and emotionally
overwhelmed, my mind racing with too many people and their too many problems,
and feeling envious of everyone whose job has more to do with clear expectations
and less to do with love. Sounds crazy, no?
I will let you in on another
secret: It may be a good thing that most older missionaries who have to raise
lots of money don’t get to spend as much time with inner-city poor people as
their younger staff members. Those youngsters, after all, are often so
fortified by their certainty and so blinded by their guilt that they fail to
understand how deeply – and sometimes permanently – other people can be broken.
Their idealism makes it easier for them to be hopeful about changing lives, and
their hopefulness makes it easier for their leaders to keep believing in their
life-changing programs.
As genuinely transformative as some
of those programs are – especially for those who serve – here again at street
level my old eyes see past them, to people I know will never change in the ways
we missionaries tend to value, whose lives are for the most part broken beyond
repair, whose identities have been systematically drained of recognizably
valuable characteristics. To invest yourself in someone with genuine potential
is a joy, I think, especially in a place like Walnut Hills. Remove that
potential, however, and the business of creatively loving your neighbor becomes
less clear.
If I were still running a big
evangelical organization, I might pretend I still see this-side-of-eternity
potential in everybody, and I might not mention that my only real hope for some
of my neighbors is God’s that-side-of-eternity grace for us all, which clearly
will have more transformative work left to do on some of us than others,
depending on how badly messed up by our own sins and the sins of others we still
are when we get there.
Instead, I’ll just admit that right
now I’m earnestly trying to figure out how to love my most brutal and hopeless
neighbors here without mixing in judgment, cynicism, self-righteousness,
contempt, or any requirement or expectation of change or appreciation, and I’ll
mention that, contrary to the lovely writings of Henri Nouwen, Mother Theresa,
or even my old buddy Shane Claiborne
,
the closer we are the harder it gets.
In case you think I’m complaining, I
promise you just the opposite is true.
God, I’m
so glad to be here, at this age, doing this kind of work along with my
family, surrounded by dear friends and neighbors who can and are changing for
the better, trying to change along with them, inspired by the enduring image of
your love in Jesus, confident that you will forgive my evident (in this letter,
for starters) failure to let your goodness guide me past my self, and buoyed by
food, laughter, and other daily joys. Thank you for this second chance!
Amen.
Thank you too for this second
chance, and most especially thank you who have been sending notes or gifts or
both to help and encourage us to do what we’re doing, do more of it, and do it
better. You are dear indeed, and our little fellowship is really feeling your
love and support, and happily sharing it around the neighborhood.
Sincerely,
Bart
[email protected]. 
