SEMINARY STANDS WITH THE POOR

In a global economy that is trumpeted as new, and therefore good, the American Baptist Seminary of the West is teaching a truth as old as the prophets: God’s preference for the poor.

That’s the Good News students cannot help but encounter in the classroom and in places of ministry. In their first year, Master of Divinity students are exposed to theologies of compassion and liberation. And through ABSW’s “contextualized curriculum” – interdisciplinary courses convened in ministry settings – “they’re going to see loving the poor in action,” says President Keith A. Russell.

Students sometimes come to ABSW with a highly individualized theology. However, by the time they complete their program, the seminary hopes students will understand the social dimensions of faith and have the tools to keenly analyze people’s needs, the social setting, and God’s call to justice.

“We hope to give theoretical underpinnings to complicate their view of the world and the work of ministry,” Russell says.

Understanding the Reign of God as “God’s economy” begins with an appreciation of the Old Testament stories and exhortations that inform Jesus and the early church. A “three-pronged ethic” – to care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger – is threaded throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, says Dr. LeAnn Snow Flesher, Associate Professor of Old Testament.

The widow, the orphan and the stranger should be understood as the poor, Flesher says, for on their own they have no economic means to survive. So the community is enjoined to care for these members, and the prophets castigate the community when they are abused.

“It’s not just being nice,” Flesher says of the command to care for the poor. “It’s an obligation.”

Israel begins with this ethic yet constantly forgets it, Flesher adds. Israel’s worship is an affront to God because “those who are at ease in Zion” lounge in prosperity while they “trample on the needy,” as the poor shepherd and prophet Amos puts it.

At its best, Israel understands that the community will eclipse mere charity and move toward equity. Flesher sees this reflected in the concept of “the year of Jubilee,” which calls for forgiveness of debt and redistribution of property every 50 years.

Israel knows that everyone “ought to have enough,” Flesher explains. “And everybody ought to have a means to having enough, which translates into a plot of land.”

ABSW students are taught to bring this understanding of Israel and the prophets into their reading of the New Testament and their analysis of the church today. Using such a hermeneutic, students notice that Jesus preaches the word of the prophets regarding the poor, yet the church diminishes the force of his proclamation because it has “allegorized the poor” to talk about “spiritual poverty,” says Dr. J. Alfred Smith Sr., Professor of Preaching and Church Ministries.

“We must be breaking the heart of Jesus because Jesus said that the anointing of the Spirit was upon him to preach the gospel to the poor,” Smith says.

Working with and for the Poor
For ABSW, preaching the gospel to the poor is a ministry of word and deed. That ministry is lived out daily by many graduates, including:

• The Rev. Michael-Ray Mathews (1998), Pastor of Grace Baptist Church in San José, Calif., an ABSW teaching pastor, and a leader in People Acting in Community Together (PACT), a community organizing effort advocating for health insurance for the poor and affordable housing among other issues.
• The Rev. Valerie Brown-Troutt (1998), Deputy Director of Ark of Refuge, a San Francisco nonprofit working with at-risk youth, the homeless, and people living with HIV/AIDS.
• Marcie Giarrizzo (1998), a leadership and job development coach for incarcerated men and women, and founder of Working Poor Enterprises in Northern California.
• The Rev. Robert Wilkins (1988), Executive Director of YMCA of the East Bay, which provides a variety of educational and leadership development programs for at-risk youth.

Current ABSW students like Jonathan Zingkhai often begin their studies in the midst of ministry with the poor.

Zingkhai is the Recovery Program Manager for CityTeam Ministries in San Francisco. He leads support groups and provides one-on-one counseling for alcoholics and addicts, a ministry he has pursued since hearing God’s call in his native Nagaland in the late 1980s.

“If I want to serve Jesus, then I need to serve these people,” he says.

Learning with the Poor
ABSW students are trained in an urban context that naturally informs their understanding of ministry. The seminary’s teaching churches, socially engaged congregations scattered around the Bay Area, are classroom sites throughout the M.Div. program, from the first-year colloquium, to field ministry in the second year, to the third-year mentoring program, in which students take on a special project under the supervision of a seasoned mentor. Many of last year’s seniors developed projects dealing with marginalized people.

In addition to the core curriculum, ABSW students choose from such electives as Theologies from the Underside of History, The Thought of Malcolm X & Martin Luther King Jr., American Social Christianity, and Pastor as Community Organizer.

Students also have access to a wealth of theoretical and practical courses offered by the Graduate Theological Union’s member schools. Through such courses and ministry opportunities, students learn firsthand about God’s Good News for the poor.

That’s vitally important training, Russell says. As more churches and denominations move to an individualistic approach to ministry, the need increases for leaders who address the personal and social realities of the community, he says.

“ABSW has an important leadership role to play in emphasizing that ministry to the poor is at the heart of the Gospel.”