What is it about community or broad-based organizing that empowers people? Is it the individual meetings? Is it the house meetings? Is it the action research? What is it in organizing that turns ordinary citizens from “nothing but ordinary people” into very powerful and influential people? That dynamic is the pedagogy of action and reflection.

What is the pedagogy of action and reflection? It was best described by Dom Helder Camara, the late archbishop of Recife, Brazil. Dom Helder was the bishop to the poor who introduced into both Brazilian church practice and theology the structure of base ecclesial communities. These base communities were, for the Latin American Christian, the equivalent of community and broad-based organizing in empowering the peasants to work for the transformation of their favellas and squatter settlements. In an interview in which the archbishop was explaining the concept of the base communities, Dom Helder said,

We highly educated priests made the magnificent discovery that even illiterate people still know how to think. They might not be able to read – but they can think, and think most profoundly! So we discovered that it is impossible to work with the people without learning from them. You teach and you learn; you teach and you learn.1

What Dom Helder and his priests had discovered was the pedagogy of action and reflection! And once they discovered it, the building of a people of power was not far behind.

“Pedagogy” can be defined as “the art and science of teaching”.2 Pedagogy is simply the study of how human beings learn.

The pedagogy used by community and broad-based organizing, as well as the base ecclesial communities, is the pedagogy of action and reflection. That pedagogy is a very pivotal teaching-learning approach that frees people from the control of old ways of thinking and of acting, and enables them to take charge of their own future.

What is that pedagogy? It is simply the recognition that when people act, their action then affects the way they think. Likewise, reflecting “outside the box” creates receptivity for further and more adventurous action. Thus, action and reflection feed upon each other, with each action leading to a deeper and more insightful reflection that, in turn, leads to a more courageous action. Thus a spiral of learning is created, with action pushing toward reflection which results in a more decisive action which in turn causes deeper and more analytical reflection which leads to further action, and thus to reflection. Thus, people act their way into a new way of thinking. And they think their way into a more substantive action. Thus this cycle repeats itself, over and over again, spiraling to ever-deeper reflection and to more substantive action.

In the life and work of the church, we tend to separate reflection and action. We are action-oriented in the implementation of church programs and community projects, but rarely stop to reflect on their effectiveness or rationale. How often would we think of evaluating a committee meeting once it is ended? And it would never occur to us to have a congregation evaluate their worship!

Our theologizing as Christians, on the other hand, tends to be highly reflective without much application to everyday life. Theology ought to be the process by which the church thinks through and articulates its faith as it seeks to live out that faith in everyday life. But, in reality, we have isolated it into an academic discipline undertaken in seminaries and theological schools that remove the budding theologian from everyday life to consider theology in a cloistered setting. Thus, the church has separated its actions from its reflection so that each cannot influence, strengthen and evaluate the other.

This is not how human beings learn, however. We do not primarily learn by being removed from life and dedicated to learning in an academic setting. Most of our learning is actually accomplished in our moving back and forth between action and reflection. We learn by doing, and that doing then informs our thinking. Life-changing learning occurs only when reflection and action are related.

George Merck, the former president of the pharmaceutical company that bears his name, was recently named as the fourth most effective CEO of all time by Fortune magazine.3 He received that honor by turning the corporate world upside down. Most CEOs become fixated on maximizing profit for their shareholders, seeing this as their primary – and sometimes exclusive objective. Merck, on the other hand, did not.

Under his leadership, Merck and Company became known for giving medication away to the poorest and most unfortunate in the world. Thus, that pharmaceutical dispensed free streptomycin to Japanese children following World War II. And having researched a new compound to battle parasites in animals, Merck and Company distributed Mectizan, its drug that combats blindness and skin diseases to 30 million people in third world tropical countries free each year.

To give away so much medication to the unfortunate world’s poor seems like no way to run a business. – if your primary objective is making a profit But Merck said in a Time article, “Medicine is for people, not for the profits. And if we remember that, we discover the profits have never failed to appear. The better we remember and operate on that principle, the larger our profits have been.”

What had happened to bring about this amazing commitment on the part of an American pharmaceutical? George Merck had acted his way into a new way of thinking! The pedagogy of action and reflection was at work. And a major corporation taught the corporate industry, against all logic, that the way to make a profit was not to think about making a profit but to authentically serve people!

Let us examine more closely this pedagogy that actually empowers people and groups.

If the disciplines of action and reflection are systematically executed one-upon-the-other in a community or broad-based organization, a cycle of learning will develop that progressively deepens the peoples’ empowerment. That cycle is as follows:

· Each action will lead to a reflection that is more profound than the reflection before it, and a more intense analysis of the systems or the human condition will result.

· Likewise, each reflection will lead into an action that is more substantive than the one before it, and will have greater capacity to change the system with which it is dealing.

The cycle of action and reflection can be described as a spiral, as illustrated on the next page: Let’s interpret the chart.

The empowering cycle of the organizing of people begins, not with reflection but with action. Like George Merck, we must act ourselves into a new way of thinking. In community organizing, that action begins with the most radical activity of organizing – the individual meeting.

We begin the process of building our relational power one-on-one – sitting down with the people of our church, neighborhood, community or city to talk about the public things that really matter to them – the joys they take in their community, the concerns that worry them, the issues that start a fire in their belly, their desire and willingness to contribute leadership to the rebuilding of their community or city, the people they perceive to be leaders as well. A relationship is built with each one of them. And then, once a sufficient foundation of relational meetings have been held, house meetings begin to be held where people can share with each other the pain they feel and can take courage from each other that something significant can be done about these community-destroying issues.

In 1975, I was called to a large Presbyterian church in a suburb of Detroit that was contiguous to the poorest neighborhood in Detroit. I accepted the call to that church to be its senior pastor because that church’s leadership was committed to seeing that church become engaged in working for the transformation and restoration of that poor neighborhood.4 They rightly concluded that. If they were to reach that objective, they needed to have a senior pastor who would both understand and had experience in organizing in difficult communities. So they called me to be their pastor – and I continued as pastor at Grosse Pointe Woods Presbyterian Church for the next ten years.

That Detroit neighborhood had no name; it was only known by its census tract number – 5130. It had been named in 1975 by the US Census Bureau as the poorest urban census tract in the United States, with well over 76% unemployment and only 2% owner occupancy of housing. The story about Pastor Ron in the second chapter dealt with one of the clergy and churches in the 5130 neighborhood.

In my first year at the Grosse Pointe Woods Church, I either held individual meetings or house meetings with over 900 of the 1200 members of the congregation. And in those meetings, I discovered the biggest concern of my parishioners was with the senior citizens living in the Grosse Pointes. Therefore, our church spent my second year organizing around their concerns. But during that same time, I began holding individual meetings with all the pastors (including Pastor Ron) in 5130.

The following year, several of the Protestant and Roman Catholic churches in 5130 decided to begin organizing in that community, and because of the relationships I had built with them all, they invited me and the members of Grosse Pointe Woods Church to join with them. I pulled together a team of members from my church, and we began our work.

The first task of all of us was to build relationships with the people living in 5130. So about 30 of us from all those churches (including Grosse Pointe Woods) began visiting the people. As we began building relationships with the residents, they began to share with us their fears, frustrations and difficulties – especially in the light of widespread unemployment and deteriorating living conditions.

Eventually, the thirty had done enough individual meetings that we felt it was time to begin holding house meetings, made up both of selected residents and members of our congregations. We decided to have these four new groups hold their first house meetings in the neighborhood on the same evening. We purposely selected a fifth Tuesday of that month, because we decided no organization would have a meeting on a fifth Tuesday. I led one of these first house meetings. I wasn’t prepared for what happened!

The action-reflection spiral, initiated by individual and house meetings, will quickly uncover felt community needs; in doing so, the spiral has begun to operate. After conducting the initial individual meetings, those doing the organizing draw the people into house meetings where they have the opportunity to listen to each other as they share together their outstanding community concerns and issues. The objective of the organizer or group leader is to get the group to settle upon a felt need – perhaps not their deepest, most substantive need, but a need that these people feel strongly about and would be motivated to do something about. It will be out of that house group’s articulation of their felt need that the empowerment of that community will take place.

After we had convened our house meetings in Detroit’s 5130 and got acquainted with each other, I asked people to share what worried them the most about living in this neighborhood. I expected them to name crime, lack of jobs, poor police protection or issues like that. But an elderly widow, who was probably old enough that she no longer cared what people would think, was the first to speak. Her words were simple but horrifying. “I am so hungry,” she said.

I thought she meant that in some sort of general way. But she made it very clear that she was hungry – right here, right now! “I haven’t eaten for the past two days”, she said.

The ice broken, others quickly chimed in. And I realized we had eight people in that room that had had little or nothing to eat over the last several days. So I immediately sent one of the church members out for pizza, and she soon returned with her bounty that was rapidly wolfed down!

While we were waiting for her to return with the pizza, I began asking them to tell us why they hadn’t eaten for several days. What they told us was that they were all subsisting on welfare, and the amount they received each month was not nearly enough to feed and clothe their families, to pay rent on their apartments and to care for life’s necessities. Invariably, no matter how carefully they managed their money, they would run out of cash before the end of the month – especially when it was a five-week month! As one of them put it, “The money always ends before the month ends!”

This, then, was their primary issue. They wanted to be able to live life without starving at the end of each month! And when I compared notes with the leaders of the other three house groups, we discovered that their house meetings had come to the very same conclusion. We had found our “felt community need”!

The empowerment process begins with an action – individual and house meetings. Out of that action, each house group meets and reflects together. Such reflection usually results in one or two felt community needs dominating the discussion. After sufficient sharing has occurred that people are increasingly motivated to act, the organizer or the leader of the house meeting asks the magical question, “What are we going to do about it?” And out of the wrestling that the group does in response to that question, a plan of action is usually created, and an initial action is developed to respond to that felt need.

In our organizing of 5130, the next meeting was not in our house meetings but in a combined meeting of all the groups – what was in reality the beginning of an action team. Since we had all come to the conclusion that the immediate problem was, “I am hungry”, then that was what we needed to move upon. As we sat around and debated what to do, one community resident articulated what we needed to do more clearly than anyone else. She said, “Why should we sit around and wait for the city government to do something about our hunger? If we wait for them to act, we’ll starve to death. Let’s start a soup kitchen of our own to provide at least one good meal each day of the last week of the month, for us and our neighbors.” So that was exactly what the action team decided to do!

Over the next several weeks (the deadline being the last week of that month), the community people took charge of creating their own soup kitchen. A small delegation of then went to talk with Pastor Ron at the Lutheran Church (who was a part of the organizing effort) and requested the daily use of the church’s large kitchen and accompanying dining hall. They got it for free on the condition they would clean it after each use. They decided to urge each diner to contribute 50 cents for lunch (if they had it), but no one would be refused service. Some went to the “Day-Old Bakery” for bread each day, others visited the Detroit Farmers Market early each morning to get inexpensive vegetables and fruits, others made hearty soups and salads, still others baked cookies, one got a local dairy to donate milk each day, and still others set tables and cleaned the kitchen and hall afterward. It was a total community project, initiated and implemented by the people themselves. It continued on for years with between 75 and 200 neighborhood people attending each day!

As the action continues, those doing the organizing bring the action team, house meetings and community organization itself together regularly to reflect on their action. What are they learning about the issue they are addressing? What are they learning about themselves, about the community, about those who originally opposed them? The intention of the leaders and/or organizer is to get the people to reflect about their situation, using as the incentive for that reflection the success of that action. Thus, by reflecting upon and out of that action, the people have begun to act their way into a new way of thinking!

During this early stage of reflection, a subtle change will take place in the organizing group. Instead of thinking only of their felt need, they will begin to examine and reflect on the real issues. And that was exactly what happened in our organizing effort in 5130.

Of course, we pastors and organizers didn’t let a good opportunity for organizing pass us by. We would lunch with the people and then have discussions around the tables – and sometimes even with the entire group assembled together. With people getting at least one hearty meal a day, the tenor of the people’s reflection began to change. We asked them to reflect on what had caused them to be hungry. Soon the people were saying, “Well, the reason why we were hungry was because we had lost our jobs and we had no income except for welfare. And that was so limited that we would run short of cash before the month ran out of days. So, to save money for rent and medicine, we just wouldn’t eat!”

Through our table conversations, people began to realize that it was not hunger that was their problem (although it had certainly felt that way). It was the reality that they were the ones last hired and first fired in Detroit. It was an economic issue, not a physical issue. They recognized that they were extremely vulnerable in the hourly-rate jobs they occasionally held. They needed more employment certainty than was their option at that time. So what should they do?

Out of the discussions emerging from this more intense and perceptive reflection, the people will decide upon a new, more intense and substantive action. That action will be one that will be designed to address the new (and more profound) issue that has emerged from the discussion. Thus, the forthcoming action will address not only the felt need but also the more substantive issue that lies behind the felt need.

Since the reflection had demonstrated to them that the people needed to have a source of employment that was more secure, and since most of the unemployed people had automotive experience (remember, Detroit is an automobile-manufacturing town), they decided to start up their own automotive repair service. After all, they couldn’t be the first fired from a business in which they were part owners!

Their plan was to operate out of their respective garages and in a corner of the parking lot of the local Episcopalian Church. The local community organization that my church, the community churches and these community residents were forming (named PIFU or “People In Faith United”) was able to get some small grants through our tax-exempt status and began advertising in our respective churches this repair service, urging people to take their cars to these businesses for repair work. So the car repair service got started.

But then, something unexpected happened. Chrysler Corporation made the announcement that they were going to build a new Dodge Truck factory, and the tentative site was a far-out suburb. Well, this enraged the community members of PIFU. The reason why it enraged our people was that the primary reason for the economic depression that had settled upon 5130 and resulted in such high unemployment was that Chrysler had closed a Dodge Truck factory in 5130 only a few years earlier. And now here they were announcing the opening of a new Dodge Truck factory in a suburb that economically didn’t need it. There was a lot of “hot anger” in the PIFU meeting room the night that Chrysler made that announcement.

But this was an opportunity from heaven. Our research uncovered that the actual site hadn’t been determined yet. The announcement was a “trial balloon” to see how that suburb and the larger Detroit community would react to the proposed site. So we pastors got the people thinking about whether they could change Chrysler’s mind!

The reflection of the community organization now becomes intense and penetrating. It thoroughly researches the issue it has identified and the institution it has determined is its target, seeking to understand it, how it actually makes decisions (as opposed to its theoretical decision-making process), and how the issue can be “cut” in a way that empowers the people and at the same time can appeal to the enlightened self-interest of the institution.

But reflection deepens in another way, as well. There is not simply the necessity of understanding the target and how to best engage it for the results we want. There is also the necessity of understanding the nature and exercise of power at this operational level of the political, social or economic system. They begin to understand that the way they have been forced to live is not because of the lack of material goods or money, nor even of a few “bad” people or companies. Rather, it is primarily caused by the deeply interwoven systems of the world which exist to gain and maintain economic and political power on behalf of a few at the expense of the weak. Such growing knowledge conscientizes the people and institutions of the community organization, and they begin to formulate actions that will confront the systems of their city and pressure them into making significant changes and concessions, thus more equitably sharing power and wealth.

How did this happen in the PIFU organizing effort? The research done by our people soon revealed that Chrysler was actually considering a number of sites for the Dodge Truck factory – and one of those sites was its old site in 5130! One of the alternatives with which it was wrestling was to raze the old factory on that site and to build the new Dodge Truck factory in its stead. With this knowledge, we realized that the issue had changed. It was no longer how could we get Chrysler to change its mind, abandoning the suburban proposal. The issue now was how to so reinforce the arguments in favor of the 5130 site that the leadership of Chrysler would choose that alternative rather than any of the others.

Through our research, we were quickly able to determine who the pivotal person was at Chrysler in the making of this decision. The people from PIFU would have to get a meeting with him and present our claims for the new factory to be built on the site of Chrysler’s old abandoned factory in 5130. But in order to strengthen our argument, we had to be able to demonstrate the proposal’s economic viability as well as its social impact. So the people organized to do their homework.

The site of the soup kitchen became a research center of senior citizens, men greasy from working on cars, women and even teens, becoming involved in studying both the economic viability of the project and the actual decision-making structure of Chrysler. Gradually, a pattern in our research emerged. We discovered the dollars made sense for building the factory in the city, primarily because Chrysler wouldn’t have to purchase the land and the city would give some significant tax breaks the suburbs wouldn’t. We knew Chrysler knew all this, but it was important that they knew we knew it, also! Finally, if Chrysler committed itself to employing 5130 residents first, as well as building the factory in our community, that would play a significant role in the rebirth of the community (for which Chrysler could justifiably take some credit) .

But how would we ever get a meeting with the key officer of Chrysler who had the final authority to make the decision? Our research uncovered a close and trusted friend of his who was a member of one of our churches, and he agreed to intervene. Soon he was back in contact, telling us the meeting had been arranged.

The next step in the reflection-action cycle is the confrontation of the systems at substantive levels. Actions against the systems may have been going on in the organizing process for a while. Even the initial action and earlier subsequent actions may have been actions that were directed not simply at the people themselves (as they were in the PIFU illustration), but on actions with the local police precinct (as they were with the “little old ladies”) or with the banks (as they were with the “redlining story”). But this is confrontation at a much more substantive level, for it is taking on the powers at the very heart of the systems and motivating them to change the very way they went about doing business. And that can happen only through a mature community organization that has really come to understand the exercise of relational power, is highly experienced in using it and wants to marshal its capacity, ability and willingness to bring about systemic change.

The meeting with the Chrysler senior officer and his senior staff was set. The people of PIFU gathered together to prepare for that meeting. The decision was made that whereas some pastors would come along for moral support, it would be the people themselves who would do the talking. The documentation we would give to the senior officer and his staff was written up and assembled. The speakers who were selected prepared their presentations. And then, we rehearsed and rehearsed and rehearsed again. Finally the day came, and our delegation went in to meet with the president of Chrysler Corporation and his senior staff.

The officer listened carefully, asked pointed questions and carefully examined our documentation. I was impressed with how seriously he considered our case. Intriguingly, his staff said nothing. As our team approached the end of the presentation, our spokesperson presented our demands: (1) that the factory be built in 5130, using the old Chrysler factory site; (2) that Chrysler accept only construction contractors who would hire primarily from the PIFU neighborhood; (3) that once the factory opened, the first to be hired would be people from 5130, and (4) that they be trained at company expense for their new jobs. The senior officer complimented us on a proposal that was well done, told us that many of our conclusions were conclusions Chrysler had arrived at as well (which gave us some hope), and said he would be back in touch with us.

The team was exhilarated at the reception they had received and how well the presentation had gone. But everyone was even more thrilled when word came several weeks later from Chrysler that the factory would be built in 5130 and that the company would concur with all of our demands. But what thrilled us the most, was the officer’s comment to us that it was the community’s intervention that proved to be the action that tipped the Chrysler debate to 5130. Our intervention had been the decisive factor in convincing Chrysler to invest in our community!

The spiral of action-reflection is not yet finished, however. It is about to move to its most profound levels. On the final cycle, the people and institutions of the community organization look honestly at their own culpability. They publicly acknowledge that they themselves have contributed to the formation of the problems. It is a recognition, in the words of the cartoon character, Pogo the Possum, “We have met the enemy – and he is us!”

At the beginning of the action-reflection-action cycle, to look at the community’s own culpability would have been disastrous. They already felt badly about themselves, and looking at their faults would have crushed them. But there comes a point in the cycle when the people can afford to be brutally honest with each other. It is at this point in the cycle of action-reflection that they have developed the self-esteem needed to take an honest look at themselves.

It is crucial, in the building of a people of power, for the people to recognize that they have contributed to the creation of the injustice against which they are now organizing. That contribution might simply have been due to the people’s acquiescence over the years and even centuries that allowed unilateral power to build in the hands of a few. But the fact is that all participated, even unwillingly or unknowingly, in the creation of the imbalance of power. If we do not perceive that in the organizing effort, then we will have turned the world into “good guys” and “bad guys”, rather than recognizing that the very same potentials for oppression, exploitation and dominance lie in us all!

At PIFU, we recognized the necessity of reflecting at the level of our own complicity. So after our celebration, we began reflecting at the soup kitchen, in our house meetings, action team meetings and in our body as a whole about our own participation in the severe problems 5130 faced. We cut that analysis in two ways.

First, most of our churches and most of our people acknowledged that we had avoided being engaged in public life, leaving the fate of our city to its economic and political machines. We had not stood up for our rights, so we allowed ourselves to be exploited. We realized that, before our victory with Chrysler, we could not have shouldered some of the blame for the decaying of our community. We were too beaten for that. But now that we were victors, we could acknowledge how our own avoidance of engagement in public life had contributed to the creation of the problem.

Second, some of our churches and some of our volunteers were from wealthy churches in Grosse Pointe (like my church). We had contributed to the problem in another way. Each of our churches and each of us, personally, had benefited from cooperating with the powers that be. Those political and economic structures employed us and paid us well, and we had used that wealth to “buy into” a highly-consumer oriented world. Our churches had benefited directly from this, so that we lived well while our brother and sister churches in 5130 (sometimes of the same denomination) suffered. So we both had some repenting to do and some need to be terribly honest with ourselves and our priorities in life. It was a devastating experience to go through – but a very necessary experience, as well!

Now the community is ready to conceptualize, act upon and take charge of their own community transformation. And that, in turn, will lead to the spiritual transformation of the community.

But confession must precede assurance of pardon and the building of a life together. That is why the complicity stage cannot be eliminated. As a result of such confession, the people and their institutions can then take action under the redeeming grace of God to correct such potentials for evil within themselves and each other that have contributed to their vulnerability.

Out of the action and reflection of confession of sin, the community can then move towards its own transformation. A sense of oneness with each other, the identification of and commitment to commonly developed values, and a celebration of their life together will occur. People will begin talking both publicly and privately about relationship with and thanksgiving to God – and will do so naturally and without being urged. Thus, those who began their common journey with the words, “We are hungry” conclude it by declaring, “We will increasingly advocate the values and celebrate the life of our community, so that we will remember and rejoice at whom we are and will refuse to ever be exploited or marginalized again!”

The action-reflection spiral brings about a funneling process in the community or region being organized. The people and their institutions have moved from discussing superficial problems to addressing the deep issues within themselves and their community, bringing them to spiritual transformation. And this they have done through the pedagogy of action and reflection.

The commitment the Chrysler Corporation had made to 5130 became the fulcrum for negotiating a plethora of community-transforming commitments by government and business. With the employment of community members in the construction of the Dodge Truck factory, with its opening and subsequent employment of hundreds of residents of 5130 and the consequent radical economic reversal of the community from 76% unemployment to over 80% employment, the people, churches and PIFU concentrated on the rebuilding of the housing, infrastructure, values and spirituality of that community.

In short order, actions run by PIFU got the State of Michigan to guarantee the payment of all house-purchase loans, recruited a number of banks to provide high-risk housing loans to community residents at 2% below prime, and got agreements from the City of Detroit to rebuild the infrastructure of the community. The PIFU Housing Corporation was created, well over 100 new homes were built while hundreds of others were renovated, and the residents of the community became home owners through a “sweat-equity” program that allowed people to make their down payment on their homes by contributing work hours. The city rebuilt the entire infrastructure of the community, asphalting roads, rebuilding the antiquated water and electric power systems and lighting the streets, adding new side streets and constructing a new vest-pocket park. The Detroit School System built a new state-of-the-art vocational high school in the community and renovated its elementary school. And the federal government constructed a new post office.

But besides the real estate changes, the truly important change was in the people’s self-perception. Through the venue of our house meetings and our public meetings, PIFU led the community in reflecting upon and naming the values around which they wanted to build their neighborhood. Our times of area-wide shared worship reflected our increasing perception of ourselves as children of God who refused to be exploited and marginalized ever again.

But the crowning achievement was the people’s decision to give census tract 5130 a name. Today, the PIFU community is no longer known as 5130. Taking the name of a small river that ran through the neighborhood before it was covered over in the early 20^th century, the community now calls itself “Fox Creek”. We are now a community with a name!

Action and reflection are the twin dynamics of organizing that actually empower people. As we act our way into new ways of thinking and think our way into new ways of acting, we become changed people and change our institutions. Action-reflection is the pedagogy by which people free themselves and each other from the control of old ways of thinking and of acting, and enables them to take charge of their own future. It is the dynamic upon which a people of power are built!

We have demonstrated in the action-reflection spiral that each action is more substantive than the one that preceded it and each reflection more profound than the one before it. That spiral is the process that brings about the transformation of any structure, system or value of a society.

People acting and reflecting together cause change in a community. The needs of the people cause them to take a look at their values, which moves them out to new behavior. They begin to accept those new values as being true for themselves. Subtly, their belief system begins to change. This drives them to look at the next level of needs.

When we talk about community transformation, we are taking about a conversion process in an entire community. It is most often not a sudden conversion. It is a slow, driving process causing an entire community to change their way of understanding themselves. But it is truly a conversion, and not simply an improvement.

In the third century A.D., the pagan Celsus and the Christian Origen engaged in a debate on the legitimacy of Christianity. In the course of the debate, Celsus mocked,

When most teachers go forth to teach, they cry, “Come to me, you who are clean and worthy,” and they are followed by the highest caliber of people available. But your silly master, when he goes forth to teach, cries, “Come to me, you who are down and beaten by life,” and so he accumulates around himself the rag, tag and bobtail of humanity.

Origen’s response to Celsus’ attack ranks as one of the most profound statements ever made about the power of Christianity. He replied,

Yes, Celsus, they are the rag, tag and bobtail of humanity. But Jesus does not leave them that way. Out of material you would have thrown away as useless, he fashions (people of strength), giving them back their self-respect, enabling them to stand on their feet and look God in the eye. They were cowed, cringing, broken things. But the Son has set them free.5

This is the work to which the church is called in the cities of the developed, developing and undeveloped worlds. This is the ministry it needs to have to the broken, the poor, and the lost in the slums and squatter settlements of our giant cities. To enable people to free themselves from being cowed, cringing, broken things. To enable the poor to regain their self-respect. To support people as they fashion themselves into people of power and dignity out of material exploiters would use and then throw away. In the name of Christ, to unbind them and to let them go free! This is the work of the church in the cities of the world. And it is accomplished by engaging the people in the powerful pedagogy of action and reflection

1 Source unknown.

2 Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, MA.: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 1987) p. 866.

3 Fortune, July 21 2003 issue; p. 64; the quotation from Time (August 1952), as quoted in the Fortune article.

4 Grosse Pointe Woods Church’s leadership had come to that commitment, not because of altruism or liberal generosity but both out of a growing awareness of the demands of the gospel and of the biblical commitment to the poor, as well as out of self-interest on their part. That is, they realized that if that poor neighborhood did not gain significant economic viability, it would continue to decline and its growing crime, violence and anger would inevitably spill over the single street barrier that stood between that neighborhood and our wealthy suburb – and that, in turn, would bring about the inevitable decline of that suburb.

5 Origen, Contra Celsus

What is it About Organizing that Empowers People?