Village United Methodist Church's congregational story and community mission work

Congregational Analysis Part I: Research Question Development
Congregational analyses have been proven to be important for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons it is so valuable is because it assists stakeholders to figure out the general makeup of a denomination or church in a given country or region. Christian congregations use stories inspired by various communities and societies to create patterns, values, and outlooks that are applicable to their own local settings.[footnoteRef:1] The local culture and church identity play a big role in shaping how the congregation understands various religious concepts as well as how they run their local church missions. Appreciating this reality, this paper analyzes the Village United Methodist Church (UMC) found along Rock Island Road in North Lauderdale in the State of Florida. [1: James F. Hopewell. Congregation: Stories and structures. (Fortress Press, 1987.) 1]

Research question: What is the unique story of the Village UMC’s congregation that influences the church’s local culture including its mission work, beliefs, and administrative policies and actions?
Part II: Data Collection
The research used methods such as observation, images, and narratives to collect data. The local church pastor made the narrative data collection method possible by providing a first-hand account of the church’s activities, policies, and traditions. The pastor shared her experiences running the organization as well as relevant stories that informed the research team of the church’s history. Further, the church availed copies of images of past events and locations as well as past buildings and locations of the church. It also provided information on how it has worked with the local community to achieve various community development goals. The research team executed the observation method by visiting the church’s premises on normal days and church service days.
Part III: Narrative Interpretation
Theme One: Transformative Popular Education Transformative popular education refers to the scholarly endeavors that are run by ‘the people’ and are therefore solely accountable to ordinary members of the society. This scholarly method is activist in nature and usually has the goal of equipping the local ordinary people with the tools they need to effect change within their communities. It is often associated with nongovernmental outfits such as volunteer organizations, churches, and non-statutory local social bodies.[footnoteRef:2] The church and its congregations have always played a big role in shaping how development projects are rolled out and executed in various communities. It has promoted intellectual inquiry and built up opportunities for the young and old to exercise their intellectual curiosity from Sunday school programs to adult programs. In many communities, the church plays a critical role in the education of members of the local community. Village UMC subscribes to the same school of thought and promotes various informal and formal education programs. Village UMC runs a child care center and also runs various programs that adults benefit from such as life-skills and engagement center that trains the public in skills such as plumbing, fire sprinkler mechanics, electrical engineering, and candle making. This approach to education focuses on making a positive impact in the local community and goes beyond academic theorizing to equip the congregation and members of the local community with skills that can actually improve their socioeconomic status by providing them with a way to take part in productive economic activities. Village UMC’s approach perfectly fits the mold of transformative popular education which is defined by Banks as a path to knowledge creation challenging the dominant models and theories that have been taken as universal truths and as enduring facts.[footnoteRef:3] For the purpose of this paper, a context-based appropriation of the central theme of this education framework is considered. The context calls for an appreciation of transformative popular education that is inspired by black theology. The black theology perspective takes advantage of the key aspects of transformative popular education to critique a white-dominated epistemology and develop a solution that is specifically tailored to the local black communities. In Western cultures, intellectual pursuit programs are usually constructed with a Eurocentric inclination and this is not optimal for all societies. The black community faces unique challenges that can only be addressed by tailor-made programs developed specifically for African-American settings. [2: Anthony G. Reddie. “Participative Black Theology as a Pedagogy of Praxis.” In Andrews, Dale P. and Robert London Smith Jr., Black practical theology. (Baylor University Press, 2015.) 61] [3: James A. Banks. "Race, knowledge construction, and education in the USA: Lessons from history." Race Ethnicity and Education 5, no. 1 (2002): 7-27.]

By using black theology to illustrate the delusive dimensions of Euro-American societal order, Village UMC has enabled its black congregation as well as other immigrants in the local community to pose important questions and gain critical epistemological awareness and insights. This process yields productive transformative learning that leads to new mindsets and perspectives. Bell Hooks notes that transformative knowledge can lead to new ways of thinking which can change how people perceive reality and so abolish the unproductive mindsets that they have been traditionally conditioned to have because of the imperialist, hegemonic, and patriarchal order.[footnoteRef:4] New ways of thinking lead to new courses of action and this brings change to the local community. [4: Bell Hooks. Teaching to transgress. (Routledge, 2014.)]

In this context, this work appreciates black theology as a transformative education methodology that has raised the conscientiousness and also raised the awareness of several minority groups who make up most of Village UMC’s congregation. It has done so with the goal that the benefits accruing from the education can result in huge practical changes in the lives of members of the local community. Because learners participate highly in their own education instead of being passive, the level of retention of skills as well as the subsequent application is high. The insights gained from practical education are linked to theoretical themes and ideas to mold a well-rounded educated class. The goal, therefore, is to design and execute a scholarly process that bridges the gap that has traditionally existed in theoretical classroom education and the practical demands of the real world. The designs around the practical demands of the real world are influenced by the lived experiences of minority groups in their communities and the workplaces where they earn their bread. This is important as minorities face unique challenges in their communities and workplaces that other groups may not be privy to and whose solutions they may not effectively design because of a lack of lived experience.[footnoteRef:5] Further, there is a second goal which is to develop a participatory educational framework that can adequately incorporate the improvisational inclination of black people as the congregation utilizes religious concepts and themes as a way of making sense of the challenges and absurdities of living as a black person in the nation. [5: Reddie. Participative Black Theology, 63]

Theme two: The Village UMC Utilizing Participatory Theology to Become a Change Agent As the discussion in theme one above notes, Village UMC combines black theology with transformative popular education so as to provide non-white immigrants and African Americans with models on how to act and think differently. This learning process uses various tools including games and drama to enable the learners to develop useful skills such as critical thinking skills and teamwork. The accruing benefits become valuable over the course of one’s life as one gets exposed to different personal and professional environments where these skills are needed. For instance, the congregation at Village UMC is engaged by the church to clean, scrape, and renew the premises of the church. This participatory community endeavor instills the idea of service to the community and also allows members to employ the technical skills they have learned. The church offers its members several initiatives where they can reflect on the lessons learned while also taking a participatory and active approach to their education. This scholarly perspective is referred to as ‘participative black theology.’[footnoteRef:6] [6: Ibid, 65]

Exercises and games are critical components for executing this scholarly model. Games are intrinsically performative and they encourage active participation in learning. Games also allow learners to engage with other learners thereby increasing the chances that people can learn from one another. The active engagement with other learners taking part in the program gives an ample opportunity for constructs to be refined and improved.[footnoteRef:7] Further, this approach forces the individual out of their shell and allows them to look outward for a chance to grow out of their unproductive habits or default learned behaviors. These exercises and games allow the learners a chance to interact with their environment and adjust according to the feedback thereby building important cognition skills. [7: Anthony Reddie. "Transformative Pedagogy, Black Theology and Participative forms of Praxis." Religions 9, no. 10 (2018): 317.]

After a game or exercise, the leader of the group leads the participants through an exercise where they reflect on the events they have participated in. In most instances, the leader of such a group is a pastor and the pastor would guide the participants as they reflect on how the lessons from the exercise relate to the feelings and beliefs they currently hold. In most cases, the reflections focus on issues that are in contention within the black community as well as philosophical, religious, and economic problems that plague the community. The result is that the congregants arrive at a framework that guides how they view the world and their environment. The aim is to cultivate a productive framework and this is necessary because every person views the world through a unique lens informed by their personal experiences, prejudices, communal beliefs, and education. The reflection exercise is, therefore, essential since it bridges the gap between past attitudes and beliefs and the possibility for personal and communal change.
This approach to education requires that the participants engage in ‘internal logic’. As relates to the activities the participants are engaged in, ‘internal logic’ essentially refers to the process through which the participants seriously consider the accruing psychological benefits drawn from the activity. This is to say that they need to actively participate in the activities and act upon the lessons. It is important that every participant in a group activity takes their role in the group seriously. Nonetheless, group activity should be fun for all participants and a reasonable measure of levity is encouraged. Play has been a big part of black theology for ages and began in the mid-1900s.[footnoteRef:8] This approach to education bears resemblance to those proposed by Groome[footnoteRef:9] and also by Berryman.[footnoteRef:10] [8: James Cone. Black theology and black power. (Orbis Books, 2018.)] [9: Thomas H. Groome, Sharing Faith. The Way of Shared Praxis. (HarperCollins, 1991).] [10: Jerome W. Berryman and Dina Strong. The complete guide to Godly play. Vol. 1. (Church Publishing, Inc., 2002.)]

The approach that Village UMC has taken to helping members of the community by utilizing practical theology challenges the long-held beliefs of education that have been propagated in and against black communities. Further, it challenges other non-white members of the community to embrace the games and exercises that constitute this scholarly model. When other non-white participants embrace this model and participate in it, a scholarly nexus results between the groups as well as between practical theology and black theology and these result in the model becoming more robust.[footnoteRef:11] Usually, because most of the participating congregants are adults, games and exercises may appear ridiculous and absurd but participants are always encouraged to take the process seriously. Using humor helps alleviate the mental blocks adults might have that may hinder their full participation in the learning activities. [11: Reddie. Participative Black Theology, 65]

To allow for greater exploration, Village UMC has made these learning sessions friendly such that participants can easily ask questions about the issues that arise during the sessions. This allows the participants to see things differently and be able to express their ideas, change their perceptions as new information and evidence comes to fore, and accept that alternative ideas and ways of living may be more optimal. A pastor at the Village UMC noted that one of the significant challenges the church faces when running the program is getting the adult participants to challenge long-held theological Christian beliefs. This is an issue since being able to challenge existing religious, communal, and personal beliefs is critical to personal advancement in this era of rapid technological and social change. Moreover, the paradigm that certain beliefs are sacred and should not be challenged or questioned makes some congregants think that questioning certain aspects of the Christian faith is wrong or immoral.
Theme Three: Engaging to Alleviate Injustice and Congregational Poverty Village UMC is currently involved in a number of programs aimed at alleviating injustice and poverty in the communities its congregants hail from. Poverty is a major local problem and the church leadership notes that the community is relatively depressed as far as economic production and socioeconomic advancement is concerned. To solve this problem, the church is equipping its congregants with income-earning technical skills as well as the soft interpersonal skills needed to advance economically and socially. These skills help the members of the community secure technical jobs or go into self-employment. The concept of hope is especially important since hopelessness can lead to an apathetic community that does not take action to advance economically. Without action, no progress can be made. Therefore, Village UMC is also focusing on instilling hope in its congregants that they can rise to overcome the challenges they face. The members of the congregation who are doing well also encourage others to go into the marketplace and do their best. When people see that someone they know make significant socioeconomic progress, they begin to believe that they too can make such progress.
Material poverty has been a major problem facing many black communities and black churches in the United States. It has been a persistent problem influenced greatly by the history of African-Americans in the United States. Black theology has over the years presented the case as to why poverty persists in many black communities. One of the reasons is that at the end of slavery, the main factor of production was land and Blacks practically had no land because of the history of slavery. Starting off without significant ownership of one of the greatest factors of production, the community was at a big disadvantage. Further, the nature of Western capitalism is that any progressive efforts to correct societal imbalances take a lot of political will to effect as has been the case with affirmative action benefiting women and various minority groups.[footnoteRef:12] Global capitalism is amoral and has, in some instances, demonized minority communities for lack of economic advancement while ignoring the blatant exploitation of African American’s natural resources and labor for hundreds of years. [12: Ibid, 66]

Through the engagements and programs that Village UMC runs, it questions the scope of the injustice that has been meted on Black communities in the United States and engages with various social groups to correct these wrongs.[footnoteRef:13] The contemporary Christian society as evidenced by Village UMC’s engagements recognizes and pushes back against the delusive promises made by authorities and their push of equality that is based on fairness instead of justice.[footnoteRef:14] Where there is justice, it would be impractical to treat Black communities in the same manner as White communities, even though that would be equality, since Black communities are starting off with clear disadvantages that they have to overcome. The American education system should be both fair and just. To bridge the existing gaps, Village UMC is taking action to correct some of these injustices by partnering with Broward Organized Leaders Doing Justice (BOLD Justice). BOLD Justice is an interracial and interfaith community-based organization looking to hold local leaders accountable and so speed up the process at which community concerns are addressed and resolved. [13: Ibid, 68] [14: Gustavo Gutiérrez. "the Theologies of Liberation." Reconstructing the Common Good: Theology and the Social Order (1990): 101.]

Theme Four: Imagery and Its Roles in the Church Most churches use imagery but there is limited utilization of imagery in the African American church with most of the imagery taking the form of Christian symbols such as The Cross, windowpane images, window shapes, and architectural designs of churches. Village UMC uses imageries such as murals, flowers for decoration, as well as a depiction of an open tomb on the altar. The church has pews and has a traditional ‘church sanctuary’ architecture and design.
Christian symbols find their value in the representation of ideas and objects that Christians worship or find valuable. The symbols do not have intrinsic value and they are not worshipped. In the Village UMC sanctuary, the symbols of an open tomb and flower decorations are for Easter celebrations to depict the rising from the dead of Jesus Christ. The mural is a depiction of the Last Supper as Jesus Christ sits amidst his 12 disciples. The mural depicts the mission of Village UMC which is to carry on the work of Christ on earth as he directed his disciples. Theological Dimensions of These Identity Questions, Challenges, and Future Trajectories Village UMC’s practice of black theology provides a reliable approach for ordinary black people to raise their consciousness and tackle critical social and economic issues that are of concern to the local communities. It also provides a reliable means to appraise, analyze, and explain Black theology itself as it is practiced in the church. The transformative learning process offered by Village UMC provides the congregation with a direct means to effect positive change in their lives and also take part in the development of the theology practiced at the church.
The transformative education program utilizes the lived experience of black people and this gives it credibility as well as the license to draw from past and present pastoral figures that some people might deem controversial. Various pastoral figures throughout the history of the black church have presented useful insights to social disciplines and humanities. These insights should be incorporated in solving problems that are unique to black people and whose solutions are best found from within the bounds of the community among people who have faced these unique problems. This requires courage and the black community can draw inspiration from past leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Fannie Lou Hamer who used their ministries to push for massive social change.[footnoteRef:15] They exercised courage and acted to push for social justice even when they faced fierce opposition from powerful forces and when their lives and livelihoods were threatened. [15: Leonora Tubbs Tisdale. Preaching as local theology and folk art. (Fortress Press, 1997), 110]

To be truly liberated, one should be free to live their life as they see fit as long as they don’t infringe on the freedoms and rights of others. Liberation does not free one from an oppressor and then subjects them to a different oppressor. True liberation results in personal freedom to choose how one directs their life socially, economically, and politically. Therefore, even as Black communities make progress towards social justice, questions should be asked as to how the communities can free their minds and hearts to pursue ideals that are dear to them. Part of freeing minds is embracing black theology that is not captive to ideals proposed by other communities such as white Christianity that may have practices that are counterproductive to the black community. The liberation must be all-inclusive and not cover just a few socioeconomic groups within the Black church. Black people who have managed to achieve economic success should play a big role in this process, give back to the community, and resist being physically, mentally, or spiritually severed from the rest of the Black community.[footnoteRef:16] [16: Donna E. Allen, “Rituals of resistance to strengthen intergenerational relations.” In Andrews, Dale P. and Robert London Smith Jr., Black practical theology. (Baylor University Press, 2015.), 125]

The practicality of black theology ensures that it retrieves from black history as well as from cultural and spiritual theologies to transform the community’s understanding of various issues and inspire people to action to make real change. The community is then built as a source of real power. With the goals of liberation and the agency black churches have toward social justice, they can bring together various players in the society to push for social justice. Such campaigns are stronger since the sum of the players is greater than what they bring to the table if they were acting individually.[footnoteRef:17] Most successful campaigns that saw black people make social progress were joint efforts by several organizations in the black community. Therefore, churches should not stand alone and should invite various partners to join their causes. [17: Allen, Rituals of Resistance, 125]

The future looks favorable for the black church. Village UMC has been able to successfully launch and run community development projects including its transformative scholarly program that has been able to equip members of the local community with critical skills that can aid their socioeconomic advancement. The evidence gathered by this study shows that the black church is investing heavily in its congregants. The most valuable program the church runs is its education program as this enables the congregants to tackle various challenges they face in their lives and in their communities. Description of the Research Methodologies This study employed an ethnographic study method which is a qualitative study method focusing on the study of social interactions, behaviors, and beliefs of small communities or societies. This method usually utilizes observation as a data collection method and the study usually lasts for a relatively long period. It is a scientific approach that separates the research subject from the researcher and so gives the project greater credibility. Scientific studies are more reliable as the outcomes can be tested and verified. The aim of ethnography is not to test a hypothesis but to analytically describe various cultures and explore the various phenomena that characterize those cultures.[footnoteRef:18] In this study, the data consists of unstructured accounts of pastoral leaders of the church as well as the analysis was done using description, observation, as well as explanations. [18: Loshini Naidoo. "Ethnography: An introduction to definition and method." An ethnography of global landscapes and corridors (2012): 1-8.]

Social sciences rely heavily on ethnography as a research tool. The research process usually involves the observer, the subject being observed, and the research project report, as well as the audience the researcher presents the report to. Ethnography has given social sciences a level of credibility and drawn some parallels between the discipline and physical science.[footnoteRef:19] At the onset of the development of ethnography, researchers took a similar approach to physical scientists and accorded themselves the right to study various phenomena as long as the study provided new knowledge and the sole perspective was that of the researcher.[footnoteRef:20] Researchers looked at participants as passive actors in the study who did not impact the studies’ content. There was a clear separation between the subject and the researcher and this was reflected in the reports made available to audiences as the contents were solely from the researcher. [19: Naidoo, Ethnography, 1] [20: Ibid, 1]

Bibliography Allen, Donna E. “Rituals of resistance to strengthen intergenerational relations.” In Andrews, Dale P. and Robert London Smith Jr., Black practical theology. Baylor University Press, 2015. Banks, James A. "Race, knowledge construction, and education in the USA: Lessons from history." Race Ethnicity and Education 5, no. 1 (2002): 7-27. Berryman, Jerome W., and Dina Strong. The complete guide to Godly play. Vol. 1. Church Publishing, Inc., 2002. Cone, James. Black theology and black power. Orbis Books, 2018. Groome, Thomas. Sharing Faith: A Comprehensive Approach to Religious Education and Pastoral Ministry: The Way of Shared Praxis. HarperCollins, 1991. Gutiérrez, Gustavo. "the Theologies of Liberation." Reconstructing the Common Good: Theology and the Social Order (1990): 101. Hooks, Bell. Teaching to transgress. Routledge, 2014. Hopewell, James F. Congregation: Stories and structures. Fortress Press, 1987. Naidoo, Loshini. "Ethnography: An introduction to definition and method." An ethnography of global landscapes and corridors (2012): 1-8. Reddie, Anthony G., “Participative Black Theology as a Pedagogy of Praxis.” In Andrews, Dale P. and Robert London Smith Jr., Black practical theology. Baylor University Press, 2015. Reddie, Anthony. "Transformative Pedagogy, Black Theology and Participative forms of Praxis." Religions 9, no. 10 (2018). Tisdale, Leonora Tubbs. Preaching as local theology and folk art. Fortress Press, 1997.