May 16th: Church of Scotland's Priority Areas Initiative

On Thursday morning, I met with two staff members from the Church of Scotland's Priority Areas Initiative (PAI), Naomi and Neill.

I learned about the PAI about a decade ago when I was thinking about how the Presbyterian Church USA might organize itself around defeating poverty. Poverty is a social sickness--it afflicts people who are poor the most by destroying their health, freedom, and happiness. But poverty also afflicts people who are wealthy--this is because poverty is a decision, a way of structuring the distribution of wealth in a community. Rich people decide that poverty is good--and that decision is a moral and spiritual sickness. Jesus oriented himself to be with people who were materially poor, and he also taught that in the Kingdom of God, poverty does not exist.

The church in the present day should align itself with Jesus to make poverty disappear.

But how?

About 20 years ago, the Church of Scotland agreed with the 2nd paragraph above. They created the Priority Areas Initiative to fight poverty. The Church identified 5% of the parishes in the country where people experienced the highest rates of poverty, and the church doubled its financial investment in those communities. 

It's a courageous model. I wanted to come to Scotland, see it, and find out if it works. What aspects of the model might work in Atlanta?

Naomi and Neill were thoughtful and helpful as they shared their own learnings with me. They were honest and didn't paint their work with an overly-rosy brush. A few things I'll take away from our conversation:

1. There is an imbalance in the wealth of churches--some churches are "resource rich" and others are "resource poor." I think the church is better served if we a) name this dynamic out loud and then b) decide if we think that imbalance is a problem or just "the way it is." I see it as a problem. I believe that resource re-distribution is intrinsic to the way of Jesus as we live in the world. If you disagree, nothing like the PAI is possible. If you agree that a church should--faithfully and confidently--move resources from resource-rich communities to resource-poor communities, something like the PAI is possible. However, this decision--whether we're OK with super-rich churches and super-poor churches--has to come before any program--otherwise you will always be fighting the suspicion that  resource-poor congregations don't "deserve" special attention.
2. This theological reckoning around the question of poverty has been ignored by the church because it's uncomfortable. It's a like a muscle that hurts when you exercise, so you just let it be. But it doesn't heal, it atrophies. Nothing is harder than conversations about money. Could the church learn how to talk about money, in light of the gospel? I think so. What I can imagine is a conversation within or between congregations that gives people the chance to see ourselves as "one body, with many members." In that body, each part has a gift the rest of the body needs to be whole. Such a conversation allows resource-rich and resource-poor congregations to explore relationships in which resource-poor communities identify the gifts that the resource-rich communities don't have. An inter-congregational culture of mutual gift-sharing is one way to avoid paternalism.
3. Pastors can't lead this work. Lay leadership is central. Dense networks of community relationships are what make congregational revitalization in low-income communities successful. Lay people are more likely to have these relationships than pastors--though not always. The denomination can support pastors in resource-poor congregations by removing the salary and benefit dis-incentives for pastors serving in resource-poor communities (ie, equalizing pastor salaries). One of the most successful PAI congregations has a pastor who has been in the same place for 35 years; fighting poverty is relationship-building and longevity matters.
4. Fighting poverty is about creating effective and caring social services--but not only that. It's also about Jesus. Faith sharing can be built into the work.
5. Creating vital congregations in resource-poor communities is the vanguard of the work that the entire church will be facing in the decades to come, as resources continue to dry up. Congregations in resource-poor communities have to figure out how to configure their ministries (worship, service, learning, friendship) to serve the people efficiently and effectively. In essence, focusing attention on churches in resource-poor communities is helping the whole church get ready for the post-Christian future that is coming (and some would say is already here).