Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

294 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 1

3. Rising levels of violence and involvement in the jurisprudential system (i.e., the police, the courts, and the prison systems – heavily weighted on urban needs and issues) a. Some stats as high as nearly one in three African American homes are touched by involvement in the jurisprudential system b. More AA men in prison than in college; nearly 600,000 Black men alone in prison today (Note: The Center for Disease Control actually recently placed Black men on the endangered list.)

4. Abandonment and benign neglect of the church

a. Difficulty of many ethnic churches to reach their own neighbors cross culturally

b. Evangelical church concentration on foreign fields: 10/40 Window

c. Estimations by missions groups that America is basically “reached,” and that scarce dollars and missionaries should be deployed to more needy fields d. Lack of unity and strategy among the American church to join forces to ignite new movements in American urban poor communities

B. God’s heart for the poor, and the biblical mandates to care for them

1. OT clear sign of God’s burden for the poor

a. Isa. 58.5-7 (ESV) – Is such the fast that I choose, a day for a person to humble himself? Is it to bow down his head like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? Will you call this a fast, and a day acceptable to the Lord? Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh?