Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

P ART I: D EVELOPING U RBAN C ONGREGATIONS • 53

contact is met with suspicion, the pastor must respond graciously. Whenever possible he should try to discover the source of the person’s complaint and ask them what he could do to alleviate it. “No church planter gains any ground when he appears to say, `We’ve come to this community to show all you folks how to have a real, genuine church,’ implying that the existing churches are not real and genuine.” 84 The attitude of the church planter toward others must be humility, eagerness to serve and a willingness to learn. If the church-planting effort is occurring in a city where World Impact already ministers, it is important to include other World Impact staff in this process as well. Schedule time with them and ask them what they have learned. The church-planting team should consciously tap the wealth of knowledge that exists inside the missionary community. Extend this same process to social service agencies in the community, both public (police, firefighters, schools, hospitals, etc.) and private (food pantries, Legal Aid, etc.). Anyone with long term experience in the community is a valuable source of practical experience. They should be visited and informed of what the church-planting team is doing. The point is to discover what resources or services they provide, learn from their experience and let them know that the new church has an interest in them and the larger community. Finally, contact garages, factories, financial institutions, shops; any place where potential church members may work, shop, recreate or socialize. Don’t neglect informal leaders in this process. Many housing projects, for example, contain strong informal leaders who are instrumental in organizing life inside their communities. These informal leaders are critical links for understanding and gaining access to the community. When I did this exercise, I visited forty-four local businesses in my first year. These included groceries, one-man businesses, garages and mechanics. I went to bars because they are centers of fellowship for the community, where people gather to pour their hearts out over drinks. One pastor I knew visited a bar and the manager complained about a drunken customer slobbering all over the bar and putting all the other customers off. The pastor reflected on this and offered the manager the presence of two people who would sit at the back of Bakke recounts the following results from one such investment.

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84 Redford, p. 60