This is the next instalment of the serialisation of my book – The Teeth of our Exertions – full details of which can be found here.
Belonging, not just being
Fourthly, you will gain a real sense of community. Many middle-class churches believe they understand what community really is because they run midweek groups with the word ‘community’ in the name. They put community on their website as one of their values. But they typically don’t understand what community really is because middle-class culture doesn’t value community as much as self-sufficiency.
By contrast, working class communities – particularly deprived communities – understand the meaning of the word. Tim Chester says:
Traditionally, within mining communities, if a husband died, colleagues and neighbourhoods would take up a collection for the widow, often raising large sums of money… social solidarity persists at a personal level. There is almost an unwritten social contract that you share what you have with friends. Human assets matter more than financial assets.[1]
When Steve Casey moved to Speke, he said, ‘we thought we would create community. But the locals knew more about community. Our youth work could not compete with the strength of community in the area.’[2] If you want to truly experience what genuine community looks like, you will come to understand it and enjoy it in a deprived community. Such places foster a sense of belonging, not just being.
Bearing fruit
Fifth, coming to deprived communities means you will know what it is really like to participate in the conversion of souls. Of course, that is not to say the Lord isn’t saving anyone else, anywhere else. The Lord is sovereign in whom he chooses to save and those who turn in repentance and faith to Jesus have done so because of God’s gracious, electing work. But we also know that the Lord works through means. We know that people will not be saved unless Christian believers go and tell them the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ so that they might respond to it.
My church does not stand in the tradition of altar calls and open invites for baptism. Yet, in our church, we frequently see people being baptised and welcomed into the church. This is a result of the Lord’s work in the lives of people from all over the world, who are encountering the gospel, joining the church and then going on with Christ. This story isn’t unique to us but is replicated in many churches in deprived communities.
None of that is to say evangelism is easy or revival inevitable in deprived communities, but it is to see the reality of what the Lord himself says about the gospel and the poor. It is not uncommon for middle class churches to bemoan the lack of conversions and, when they do come and baptisms follow, it is principally among the children of believing parents. That’s not to denigrate those souls who are being saved. I am the child of believing parents, converted as a young lad and later baptised in a church in which I grew up where there were few other types of baptism. So that is my own background! It is simply to say that the conversions we see in deprived communities are entirely in line with the statistics and trends that we saw back in chapter 3. The Lord is at work in deprived communities and we are actively participating in his mission of making disciples; we are seeing real and frequent fruit in that ministry. If you want to be an active participant in the work of conversion where the Lord is clearly at work, you will find it in deprived communities.
[1] Chester (2012), Op Cit., p. 49
[2] Ibid., p49