Can peaceful people transform a violent neighborhood?
We found out that there were crack houses within a block of our church. One afternoon I took 250 people to one of those houses. Our choir sang for an hour outside that home. I knocked on the door and asked the people inside to come out and talk. Naturally, they hid behind the curtains for the whole hour. But who can come and buy drugs when a choir is singing out front? It dried up the drug trade for that hour, and the next day the people left, because by then everybody knew that this place was selling drugs. When you were starting out, how would you have described your calling? Was it primarily to build a healthy church? To improve the community? To empower the powerless? Or what? I’m glad you asked, because you can’t build a healthy church if it isn’t working to improve an unhealthy community. Many people have built “healthy churches” while the community around them is destitute. How then am I my brother’s keeper? No, in that case, I’m just my own keeper. How can a church see a commun
