Community Policing and Community Development

Community policing is far superior to militarized policing.  But don't expect miracles from community policing.  I noted that the Dallas mayor and the Dallas police chief worked closely together on community policing with very positive results.  But the mayor also should be aggressively pushing the churches to do community development on a massive scale.  The church choirs presented beautiful music for the service honoring the fallen officers, but are these same churches heavily involved in community development?

President Obama: "We ask too much of our police; we ask too little of ourselves."

Pope Francis to his priests and people:  "Leave the security of the sanctuary and enter into the suffering of the streets."

Jesus, the Messiah:  "Set your minds on God's kingdom and his justice above everything else." (NEB)

Most white American churches need to be reinvented in order to be holistically biblical.  Doing love and justice in your community is just as spiritual as praise and worship.  Praise and worship without justice is nauseating to God.  Read Isaiah 58 and Amos 5:20-24.  The church needs to combine praise, preaching and worship with giving to the poor and releasing the oppressed.

Two Sundays a month a church should hold traditional praise and worship services.

Two Sundays a months a church should do a love and justice social outreach.

 A possible example:  support your local Habitat for Humanity both financially and with volunteers.  A question:  Is working all day on the Sabbath day on a Habitat house for the poor a violation of the Sabbath or a fulfillment of the Sabbath Year principles?

Other possible organizations your church might want to partner with:  CCDA which specializes in rebuilding poor communities, Teen Challenge which specializes in healing drug addicts, Salvation Army, World Vision, USA which rebuilds poor communities, a local credit union which could help with financial literacy and low interest loans; for those churches that want a foreign mission outreach that rebuilds poor communities, try the Haiti Christian Development Fund.

Recommended reading:

Charles Blow, "Blood on your hands, too."

Nicholas Kristof, "When Whites Just Don't Get it, part 6."

Next blog on our racial crisis is :  "1616 to 2016: A Comfortable Blending of Bible and Oppression."