Experiential Discipleship in Urban Projects
By: Randy White
It is dusk in the highest crime, highest poverty neighborhood of the city, an area known as “The Devil’s Triangle.“ A small group of students and their staff worker are gathered in a living room in the heart of that neighborhood, studying Isaiah 58, focusing on compassionate action on behalf of the poor as the best evidence of a real relationship with God. Their study is interrupted by a pound on the door. It is homeless man, looking like something out of a Victor Hugo novel. Pretending (not very skillfully) that he is deaf, the man slips the staff worker a note that says his car has “broken down just up the street, and couldn't you spare three dollars so I can buy some gas?” The staff worker, annoyed at the interruption to the study, rolls his eyes. He recognizes that this is a typical con, one he’s dealt with before in this neighborhood, and without listening any further says "sorry, I can't help you." He closes the door to the man’s bewildered face, and returns to finish the lesson – compassionate action on behalf of the poor. But the look on the students’ faces signaled that the real lesson had already taken place. The staff realized what he had done, and the rest of the evening became an act of reflecting on the interaction and seeking more appropriate responses and applications.
The best urban projects place the word of God and the work of God side-by-side in close proximity, in an intentional juxtaposition that forces each to comment on the other. Students in a recent national survey of urban project alumni told us that the more cognitive components of our projects, e.g., manuscript studies, speakers, reading assignments, etc. formed an important backdrop to the more experiential aspects of the project, e.g., service components, interactions with children and families, etc.. They framed the experiences, providing interpretation, explanation, a backdrop of meaning, and an overall view. Helping to build a house is important activity, and has an inherently gratifying effect. But the effect is amplified when students simultaneously engage in theological and/or sociological reflection on the issue of shelter, the question of why families are homeless, the forces in a city that are shaping the lack of justice for certain people who must reside in substandard residences.
And the reverse is true. Theological reflection on human dignity and Jesus’ love for children, or sociological reflection on family systems or institutional sin within education, for example, can be powerful in and of themselves. But when these considerations are framed by the experience of spending time with children in a poor neighborhood in a tutoring program, or putting on an after-school Bible club for them, we are finding the lessons becoming permanently etched on the soul and the psyche of the participant.
For example, put these words: “the Lord is a Father to the fatherless” next to these actual words, spoken by a child to one of our UP students in a high crime, high poverty neighborhood: “my daddy was killed last week; can I call you Daddy?” If a student hears both phrases spoken in the same day, can they ever think about biblical references to orphans and widows in the same way?
We can teach our students that sometimes children in the city pick up a breakfast of potato chips, a candy bar and a soda on their way to school. Or, we can feed those things to our students on one morning of the project and see how well they do, how well they feel, how well they concentrate for the rest of the morning. When we do both, then lead students in a reflection and response, something more permanent is achieved. We can teach about the difficulty of obtaining housing for the poor, or we can send them out to go through the process of finding housing themselves, but with some proscribed, binding limitations (you don’t speak English, you don’t have transportation, you don’t have childcare, etc). When we do both, something more permanent is achieved.
Most of the concepts that are introduced on urban projects (evangelistic social action, community organizing/development, racial solidarity, economic justice, confrontation of the systems, urban theology) are so far outside the normal framework of our students that there is no natural way for them to connect at anything more than a cerebral level. But when these concepts are introduced in the midst of real situations they take on a new life. Being in the home of the child were there is no food in a refrigerator, listening to a homeless person or family, talking with the family that has been on the waiting list for public housing for over a year, agonizing through the dilemma of whether or not to call child protective services, all create a very rapid learning curve, and force multiple teachable moments. Placing them in environments and contexts where their newly acquired values must inform (often immediate) specific actions helps to clarify beliefs and deepen appreciation for real solutions. It also places more emphasis on Christian community as a way to formulate appropriate responses and to apply biblical values, as students wrestle with these values and responses together.
OUTCOMES
As Experiential Discipleship events, Urban Projects have an impressive track record of outcomes in the lives of our students. In a study done in 2002 of 80 alumni of six of our projects (all project types) we found that in the period from 3-14 months after a project:
73% had begun crossing ethnic divides and seeking racial reconciliation
25% had joined a church of a different ethnicity
30% continued on to serve with the same agency that they were placed with during the project.
50% began tutoring or literacy work in an urban neighborhood after the project
10% purchased homes in high crime, high poverty neighborhoods in order to minister there permanently.
45% began mentoring younger leaders in their church or fellowship
50 % became more involved in chapter or church leadership as a result of the project.
As we examined the data of the full survey, as well as tons of anecdotal material – the cumulative experiences of UP directors over 20 years – we are learning some key ingredients for crafting creative learning environments in an urban setting. As we added additional research from other practitioners we began to see that what we were distilling was applicable in any educational setting, including campus ministry.
TRANSFORMATIONAL LEARNING
The kind of learning that happens on our projects can best be defined as transformation or development. And it is a student’s search formeaning that is the engine that drives that development or learning process. This is what, in reality, is drawing students to our projects. They are hearing that the learning that happens there becomes is not a matter of acquiring information, but rather an act of transformation. Gandhi said we must become the change we are seeking to make. Learning that leads to internal or external transformations is authentic learning, and it is inherently attractive.
Our role as we formulate urban experiential discipleship projects is to form what Laurent Daloz calls "compassionate understanding of the range of ways in which students make meaning.” We then devise a range of methods to match, to help them students see new choices. We are learning that some combination of both classic and contemporary pedagogies will be necessary in order to navigate the diverse landscape of learning postures that students come with. This means we must continually ask, “what’s in our storeroom of resources and methodologies that can meet this particular audience?” And a follow-up question is inherent. “How will we measure whether we are being successful?”
MEASURABLE SUCCESS
It has been shown that educational value ought to be measured by the extent to which it creates a desire for continued growth. In other words, we will know we are being successful on our projects when students say “where can I learn more about this?” or “what’s my next step?,” rather than treating them as events or experiences that they can check off as having done. This is evidence that something has become meaningful – that is, it is providing the value of meaning to a person’s life. It is that value that students who “get it” will pursue, even on their own outside of the direction of their staff. The journey of growth is something they have come to own, and therefore they take independent initiative to mature.
Daloz contends that personal growth can be understood as a “series of transformations in how we make meaning…” progressing from simple to complex as we move from child to adulthood, from family to community to world. “Each new horizon demands that we form new, overarching ways to make sense of the diversity and conflict we see with increasing clarity around us. For each, we need to learn to think in whole new ways." We are reminded that a ten year old doesn’t just know more than a four year old does, a ten year old thinks differently.Urban projects accomplish transformations in the ways students think, and therefore often to a new set of decisions and behaviors..
THE SHADOW SIDE
But there is a caveat in all of this, and it is one that is true of every other aspect of staff/student relationships. There is a cautionary note to be sounded when considering our calling, and before we march off “transforming” innocent people, we need to reflect on our own limitations and motivations. We can’t take our students beyond our own expertise. This is a particular danger for IVCF staff. We value language, and sometimes we can confuse talking about justice as equaling the pursuit of it. Language soon becomes meaningless if it is not linked to consistent action.
For example, “racial reconciliation” becomes a phrase that is popular, but without a definition and a set of corresponding actions it becomes hollow, and is eventually replaced by another term that sounds fresh and good for a while, until the same default cycle is repeated. We need to examine what we actually model. We must not go off teaching authoritatively on “God’s love for the poor” if we don’t know any poor people. We must not become passionate about justice and develop a language and theological vocabulary about it if we don’t know what pursuing it would look like. As someone has said, “It’s one thing to say with the prophet Amos, ‘let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a never failing stream, and quite another thing to work out the irrigation system.” Are we training our students to work out the mechanisms of justice, or just giving them a language for it? Now, if we realize we have the language but not the track record, wecan introduce them to people with actual expertise. But we can never fake it, or hope that our words will be enough.
WALKING TOGETHER
The kind of training we provide in urban experiential discipleship projects is something “we neither 'give' nor 'do' to our students. Rather, it is a way we stand in relation to them." Will they sense our commitment to be co-learners with them? During one of our projects, a staff worker was given the assignment to preach at a men’s jail. He took some students with him to share their testimonies and some songs. Thirty men with tattoos and very large muscles filled the room. The staff worker gave a short sermon, the group did their thing, and then the staff spent the next two hours throwing up in the parking lot from the stress of the event. With his students watching, this staff was saying “I’m willing to do what scares me the most, in order to put feet on my words.”
BEST PRACTICES
UP directors have developed a list of best practices with regard to the design of their projects. Some of the features on that list reflect things that most enhance them as mechanisms for an experiential discipleship event. A selection from these includes:
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Design of projects includes a healthy cycle of action/reflection/action. This could include a design feature for rest and reflection in the middle of the project.
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Projects include a variety of delivery systems for the message, including manuscript study, dialogue teaching, preaching, Q&A, videos, speakers, simulations, exposure to indigenous leaders, prayer walks, guided tours, and service opportunities. All of these are debriefed.
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Specific opportunities for response and continued involvement are presented during, and at the end of the project, as well as a mechanism for further study.
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Project includes Staff who model ministry among the poor and a commitment to reconciliation and justice throughout the year, beyond the confines of the project, lending authenticity and providing a replicable example.
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Plan in a “Yoda Factor” – staff who will take individual responders under their wing to help interpret what students are experiencing in the blend of the cognitive and the experiential. This staff will seek a balance of challenge and support in the life of the student as they make responses to what they are learning.
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Keep the word of God and the work of God in close proximity, juxtaposed in the structure of the project, so they can comment on each other. Be sure there are chances to journal, reflect and share.
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Define outcomes – the specific goals you have for your students, and draw a straight line to the specific cognitive and experiential mechanisms you will create for achieving them.
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Guarantee soul-to-soul contact – interaction with people of the city in the basic fabric of the schedule. As part of this dynamic, insure that story and narrative are used as essential learning tools – that is, relational interactions get re-packaged as story and become part of the story of the project.
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Plan a good balance of cognitive elements and more experiential elements in the basic design of the project. Make sure they are related.
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Shake up your students’ world a bit, without abusing their trust. Plan in experiences that “create cognitive dissonance, with opportunities to confront the challenge, seek more information and sort it out.”
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Build features in that contribute to the creation of a temporary community, with adequate levels of trust between students that can facilitate honesty, vulnerability and teamness.
IN OUR DNA
As we plan Urban Experiential Discipleship events, these eleven best practices can enhance a short-term, temporary event in such a way as to give it the potential for long-term impact. After all, that’s why we exist. These programs are about equipping disciples for a lifetime of service in God’s shalom kingdom. In this way, students’ experience as members of the academy can continue to change the world.
InterVarsity’s earliest known roots include ministry in the city. Charles Simeon, who formed the early student groups and a ministry attractive to students at Trinity Church in Oxford that would lead to the development of the IVF, organized famine relief in 1788, linking the expression of the gospel with the demonstration of it social implications.
In 1827, following a discussion of a Sermon by Simeon, students formed a school for children that lived in Jesus Lane, a poor district in town. Many children were illiterate as well as poor. The historian notes that the continuous relay of teachers (young students – undergrads) that staffed this outreach were themselves greatly helped and enriched. Essentially an urban project, it is documented that many of the youngest of these students later went on to be influential Christian leaders, world-renowned Bible teachers, scholars and missionaries, that influenced Christian mission for many years. This one effort led to the start of other mission outreaches to townspeople, and especially to Children in and around Cambridge.
In the sixties and seventies in the US, Barbara Benjamin, CSM in New York City began experimenting with connecting her students with justice and race-based issues she was seeing shape her community. These forms of outreach had an impact on her student ministry, and would go on to frame the basis for many of our Urban Project values today.
In LA in the 1980’s, Paul Gibson began the Pasadena Youth Program, primarily as a way to teach his students the value of service, but began to identify profound outcomes in the lives of his students as they processed what they were seeing and experiencing.
CONCLUSION
Ten years later – same neighborhood, the old Devil’s Triangle (though no one calls it that anymore), same living room, just past midnight. The knock at the door jars the staff worker awake. It’s a man wrapped in a blanket, shivering. “My car broke down, I was robbed,” he says. “I just need a place to stay the night. I’ll have some money wired to me in the morning.” The staff worker cautiously lets him in. His college age son, Joe, gives him some tea, and they listen to his story. It is full of holes, and the staff recognizes the familiar sound of a scam. Having seen too many examples of guilt-based, naive “help” simply ending up enabling the addictions or the poor choices of the homeless, and not willing to assume any greater level of risk this evening, after an hour or so he tells the man he cannot stay. As he ushers him out, Joe, who has been to the urban project and who has since the project made consistent, Kingdom of God choices in the neighborhood, turns to the staff and says, “Dad, which is the more appropriate response to this situation – yours, or the one in Les Miserables where the priest forgives and hosts the thief Jean Valjean? It seems like the priest’s was a more gracious act that launches the thief into a new life” The staff worker tries to explain, but it sounds hollow. Once again, he realizes the real lesson has taken place.
Experiential Discipleship Report
Daloz, Eyers and Giles, Woolsey, and others
Daloz, Laurent, Mentor, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999, pg. 45.
Dewey, John, Democracy in Education, New York: Macmillen, 1916, pg. 62
Daloz, p. 23. See also works of Developmental Theologian James Fowler and Stage Theorist Jean Piaget
Daloz, pg. xxv
Attributed to William Sloane Coffin
Daloz, pg. 15
Daloz, pg. 208
J. Eyler and D. Giles, Where’s the Learning in Service Learning?, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1999, p. 17
