Gather to scatter

Fifty-six years ago, I participated in a sit-in over the issue of wearing jeans to high school. Events on the news seemed distant. However, we tried our wings at challenging institutional authority. We were learning how to present arguments for what we thought was just and fair.

That experience was a precursor to a lifetime of standing up for or sitting in for what I believed.

It was one of the factors that led me to hold up a sign to traffic along Route 200 on a recent hot Saturday morning. Here’s how my path unfolded.

Both my parents practiced their Christian faith through their actions. My mother’s strength was abundant kindness to all people in all situations. My father mentored adolescent boys through a residential program a minister friend started called Ranch Hope. It worked with young men in trouble. This required my dad to drive an hour each way into the South Jersey country after working in his store all day. I am glad to report this work is still alive, growing and thriving.

My years at a small Christian liberal arts college outside of Philadelphia were a heady time for learning how I could make a difference and for participating in various projects and programs. My mentor, Rev. Dr. Anthony Campolo, told us repeatedly that our purpose during those years was to learn to think critically about the world and then go out and make a difference.

One program in which I participated was teaching in an emergency high school when Philadelphia schools went on strike. Dr. Campolo felt called to organize an effort so the seniors in an inner city area could still graduate. He knew that their future success rested on getting through this milestone. After days spent in class, buses took us to his church in town where we worked with the students in the church basement. We did this all that spring, going to sleep late and getting up the next day and doing it all again.

Dr. Anthony Campolo

I performed street theater with our college’s traveling drama group on the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Our effort was to draw attention to the dangers of casino gambling. Back then, Atlantic City was an aging pile of former splendor. Poverty was abundant. Despite our dramatic efforts, the allure of a path to renewed wealth and splendor was overpowering. New Jersey legalized casino gambling. Unfortunately, poverty remains in that city, just one block off the casino-lined boardwalk.

In theological school, I learned a name for the framework for being the kind of person of faith in the world I wanted to be. Based on principles gleaned from Jesus’ teaching, there is an identifiable pattern of gathering and scattering. Jesus’ followers are meant to be “out there” where people live and work. The church was not founded to be a bunch of buildings that make up an institution. Its mission is to be a living and breathing entity whose work is in the streets and cities and nations of the world, in boardrooms and classrooms and hospital rooms, carrying out the love, inclusion and justice work Jesus demonstrated. Being a follower of Jesus is not an inside job.

People who share a commitment to this way of being are invited to take time out together to rest, recharge, learn, evaluate, strategize and worship. Then, go out and do it again. The goal of the church is not to be an institution of buildings, but a movement for change. If a church focuses inward, it is only doing half its job.

It was a natural progression from my experience for me to be moved to draw attention to the plight of undocumented people right here and around our country who are being swept into a detention system without due process for their cases. I stood with about two dozen other residents along the street on Rt. 200. My sign said, “ICE OUT.” Other signs called for compassion. Still others had signs with photos of those who have died in ICE custody.

Of those who reacted, about two-thirds were positive, with horns honking and thumbs up. Among the negative responses, some were hateful. Others simply looked away. It reminded me of reactions to college kids doing street theater on a boardwalk. However, back then, no negative responses were that harsh or crude. That made me sad.

I write about these experiences not to ask for agreement on issues. I write to spark personal assessment. This is a church-going area, much more so than other places. Do you gather to go home or do you gather to scatter?