In looking over the statistics for November in Mother
Hubbard’s Cupboard, part of the Jubilee Ministry Center at St. Mark’s, it came
to my attention that in November alone we were able to serve 97 families for a
total of 270 persons. What is amazing is that of these 17 families or 37 people
were NEW clients of the Cupboard. That means that 17% of the families served
had not been in the Cupboard before.
To me this is more evidence that the economic “recovery” is
not trickling down to the lower strata of our economic structure. In other
words, the problem is getting worse, not better.
In 2011 Church Finance Today reported, "68% of
churches in the West-South Central U.S., and 64% of churches in the East-South
Central U.S. have expenses exceeding income. These are the best regions in the
country." This poses an interesting question: how are churches that can’t
even pay their own bills with current income provide the safety net that is
necessary for our own society in the long term? This is one of the fallacies that
plague our current political debates over care for the poor: that “private
sector” organizations (i.e. churches and non-profits) are the proper purview
for this kind of work – that it is not part of government’s responsibility.
I am not a conspiracy theorist, but this
leads me to a question I shudder to ask. Is this a way to accelerate the
decline of main-line protestant churches, I mean the ones that are traditionally
identified as “liberal” in their social justice stance? The logic is there: if
these churches feel compelled to take care of the poor, let them. Soon enough they
will spend their way out of existence and the social consciousness that they
espouse will go with them.
Honestly, I do not think that there is any
such conspiracy. However, the logic is inescapable and if we continue to ignore
the proper role of government in providing a social safety net for those who
are unable to care for themselves, we will in fact lose part of our national
soul.
Meanwhile, the Jubilee Ministry Center at
St. Mark’s will continue to feed those who seek assistance motivated by the
love of Christ. Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard and Parishioners’ Outreach will
continue to touch and change lives just when individuals felt that they were at
the end of their fiscal rope. We will do so even as the parish struggles to
keep its fiscal head above water because it is not about our institutional
survival – it is about our fundamental commitment to the Gospel to care for the
least and the lost in our community.