The Poor and the Creative Age in Ontario

Roger Martin and Richard Florida of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto really hit the nail on the head with their study, Ontario in the Creative Age.

They had four basic conclusions:

 We need to shift as many workers as possible into higher-value – and therefore higher-paying – jobs.
 We need to ensure that more kids find their way into higher education.
 We need to ensure that children in high-risk families and neighbourhoods get the food, clothing and shelter they need to develop their brains and creative talents.
 We need to make the transportation and communication network between the urban core and outlying areas more efficient and effective.

As an urban mission worker, I reacted strongly to the recommendation about high-risk children. I suppose a term that could be – and probably has been – coined would be the “paradigm of the poor”. Each of us lives by a paradigm – in other words, a set of beliefs and expectations that guide our decisions both great and small, from what we will eat and when we will sleep right through to who we will marry and what career path we will choose.

Time and time again in my work among the homeless and struggling at The Scott Mission, I am struck by the self-defeating decisions that otherwise intelligent and promising people will make. Probably the chief example is the decision to do drugs. Somewhere along the line, these destructive behaviours become a part of life, so much so that they become habits that are nearly impossible to break.

Many poor people, especially those who have grown up in poverty, stay poor because they do not know anything different. As a former client once said, “How can you be rehabilitated when you never knew what normal was to begin with?”

If your parents and peer group do not aspire to anything higher than low-skilled work on a production line, how can you knowledgeably choose to be anything different? To be something different, you need a compass that will show you a definite way; if the compass always points back to what you have been, that’s where you’ll decide to stay.

It’s a bit like someone telling me I could scale the Rocky Mountains if I really put my mind to it. Well, as a poor person, I’m looking up at that vast, distant, snow-covered peak and I’m thinking, “I’m never going to make it over the first foothill, let alone that thing!”

It’s easy to preach to the poor about not being poor anymore. It’s easy to tell a panhandler to get a job. It’s easy, that is, for someone who grew up with a loving family, with adequate food and clothing, educational opportunities and basically hope for a bright future – or for that rare person who can succeed in spite of it all.

That’s why the feeding programs and simple clothing distribution facilities of places like The Scott Mission are so important. A food bank, a soup kitchen and a new coat may not sound like much, and in fact may be seen by some as reinforcing the problem. But the fact is that these simple things are and always have been powerful tools by which we can permit people a glimpse of a better life, by which we can sow a seed of hope.

That’s why I would add a fifth recommendation to Ontario in the Creative Age. That recommendation would be to encourage all Ontarians, especially those who have hope for the future, to dedicate themselves to a certain number of volunteer hours per year, to a certain level of charitable giving, to living simply, and to giving away the excess of their possessions.

Charity is always going to be an essential part of unlocking the creative potential of disadvantaged people. Far from creating dependence, it produces hope. Hope produces creative and productive workers. Those workers are the ones who will create tomorrow’s businesses in Ontario – and who will be taking care of us in our old age.

City, Faith Communities and Each of Us

With an annual budget of $8 million, 100 full-time staff, 4,000 volunteers each year, and 14 major programs in three municipalities, we at The Scott Mission still long to do more. In our men’s and family services alone, we welcome over 8,000 different individuals every year; many of whom come to us monthly, weekly or even daily.

For us - and this will sound old-fashioned to some - the best and highest good that we can give to a struggling person is the inner resources of a public profession of God’s love. This, for us, is the pathway to a new life that will spill over into generosity, kindness and compassion for others.

Recently, we completed a governance review in which we revisited all of the beliefs that the Mission has held since it was founded in 1941. We came up with three main objectives for our service of love to the City.

First, we re-emphasized our commitment to providing basic necessities, social services and emergency relief services including food, hot meals, clothing, first aid, shelter, child care, youth services, counseling and advocacy.

Second, we strengthened our commitment to develop housing and residential facilities that will give at-risk people a chance to make a significant break with the vicious cycles of addiction, mental illness and low self-esteem that have held them back.

Third, we recommitted ourselves to our long-standing evangelical Christian faith basis. Our Bible study groups, prayer groups and multi-lingual Christian fellowships have recently seen a surprising growth. This is not because we obligate the poor to believe what we do. On the contrary, we encourage them to be who they are in their own way. No, the groups grew because of the deep spiritual hunger that is as severe as any shortage of food or housing.

I suppose my prayer for our cities would go something like this:

Lord help us, as faith communities, to support our political leadership in the incredibly complex task with which they have been assigned;

Lord, help our City leadership to continue to allow all faith communities to gently and peacefully preach and practice our various professions of faith without this being held against us as a form of discrimination;

And, dare I say it…

Lord, let Toronto home and property owners not begrudge the relatively minor increases in property taxes that would enable the City to reduce the public debt and build up the social services and housing that the poor need.

I know I won’t get elected any time soon on a platform of property tax increases. But those of us who live and work in Toronto and many other Ontario communities do have a good deal. If we aren’t prepared to donate our unused clothing, if we can’t find a way to provide a few cans of food a week to our local food bank, if we can’t donate the price of a cup of coffee per day (tax deductible!), if we can’t visit an elderly person, and if we won’t pay the taxes necessary to support this jewel of a City, then we’ll get the City we deserve: a City that is increasingly difficult to govern, a growing number of disgruntled and dispirited poor, and city services and faith communities that are overwhelmed with demands.

Changing the world starts in our hearts first.

Our vision for the future

A couple of exciting things to report to you in this blog letter...

First of all, as we all know, no blog letter is off to a good start unless accompanied by a funny hat photo. This is my daughter, Erica, and I getting ready to go out shopping at Christmas in Montréal. The Soviet bear cap and Viking horns were de rigueur on that day. Two great hats worth opening a blog letter with...

I also must tell you that Erica married Michael on December 21st. Here they are on their wedding day. This makes me -- dare I say it -- a father-in-law! And what a great son-in-law to have! Michael has two degrees in international law, one of them from France and one of them from the London School of Economics. He is now doing his doctorate in political philosophy at the University of Montréal. Erica is now getting toward the end of her degree in art history at McGill University. Two great brains and a great addition to the family.

Over the past year and a half, the Board of Directors of the Mission have been busily updating our Statement of Faith, bylaws, corporate objectives and governance procedures. I thought you would be interested in the Vision Statement that was adopted in February. Here it is...

"Our vision for the future is:

To enable every person with whom we work to form a loving, positive and inspiring personal relationship with Jesus Christ;

To provide Christian relief services, including meals, clothing, counseling, shelter, prayer and other basic necessities, to those in urgent need, and to increase these services;

To provide Christian rehabilitation ministry for impoverished men and women who wish to become self-supporting and realize their full potential, and to provide the graduates of such a program with the necessary after-care;

To provide Christian outreach services to needy youth and their families;

To provide Christian summer camping experiences for needy children and youth and their families, and to increase the number of summer camping spaces and related services; and

To provide Christian child care for needy children and their families, and to increase the number of childcare spaces and related services.

So this is a vision involving evangelism, provision of basic necessities, and training and rehabilitation, focused on children, youth, men, women and families. We feel that this is true to the history and traditions of The Scott Mission and will provide tons of opportunities for changing people's lives for the better. Please stay posted for more developments -- and funny hats -- in future letters. Everyone here at the Mission wishes you and yours a great start to 2008.

Santa Who??

We have just thrown Santa Claus out of The Scott Mission.

The rosy cheeks, twinkling eyes, snow white beard and his entire portly form have been expelled – and Christmas is still a couple of weeks away.

“Why on earth would you do something like that?!” you might well ask.

That was the question on my mind when one of our members suggested that it’s time the Santa pictures came down and pictures of Jesus went up.

“Who’s Christmas celebrating anyway?” my interrogator gently demanded, “Santa or Jesus? How come it’s so easy to find pictures of Santa around here? Where are the pictures of the Lord?”

I have to admit that this assault on the most innocent of Christmas decorations sounded to me like a choice bit of religious fundamentalism. “For heaven’s sake,” I thought to myself, “they’re just Santa decorations. They’re bright and cheery. They make people feel good. They go with the tinsel and Christmas tree.”

I thanked him diplomatically and hoped he’d forget about the whole thing. “Really,” I reflected, “it’s not as if we haven’t got better things to do, helping literally thousands of men, women, families, youth and kids over these few weeks, than worrying about some tattered Christmas decorations?”

He did not forget. He said that Santa was still visible and Jesus was not. Then others started mentioning it. It was turning into a regular Christmas snowball.

Hope as I might, the conversation got under my skin. “He’s right,” I had to acknowledge, “Santa doesn’t bring all the presents we hand out. God moves other people to give them to us and then we hand them out. Santa isn’t coming down our chimney this year. What came down was a universal and eternal grace – on December 25th some 2007 years ago.”

The more I thought about it, I started to see his point. It was unsettling to conclude that taking down the much-loved images of Santa was somehow at the heart of God’s calling on The Scott Mission.

The Mission has always said that the Bible contains the reliable words of God as printed when others have said the Christian scriptures are merely a beautiful part of the collective religious wisdom of mankind. The Mission has always been staunchly evangelical when others have allowed the demand for social services to overwhelm and wash away the founding Christian values and beliefs.

They say the Christian church in the western world is dying. Maybe it’s dying by inches from within, not through anything externally imposed on it. Maybe the whole Santa thing has something to do with it: Santa becoming the personification of good when Jesus is actually the personification of good.

There are some beautiful pictures of Jesus around, and some really beautiful ones of the baby Jesus in the manger. These will be better for The Scott Mission, because of our calling from God to stay faithful to the simple gospel truth.

Santa, you will have to stand aside. Jesus, welcome!

Thanking God for 65 Years!

Well, I think this is the third silly picture of myself that I've posted on my blog. In case you're wondering what on earth it is this time, this is a bird's eye view of the top of my head after my daughter, Erica, got through inserting a number of short (and therefore extremely painful) ponytails with elastic bands and bobby pins during vacation this summer. This has been a (painful) vacation ritual for years. I just had to share that with you...

On Saturday, October 13, nearly 500 people joined us to celebrate and thank God for 65 years of service to the community at The Scott Mission. Our Tuesday Men's Fellowship provided music and the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario, David C. Onley, sent his Aide de Camp, Captain Steven Roberts, to bring greetings on behalf of the Queen. Our City Counselor, Adam Vaughan, Ward 20-Trinity Spadina, also brought greetings from the Mayor and Council. Dr. Brian Stiller, President of Tyndale University College & Seminary, brought a powerful message of inspiration and vision. There were displays of archival photos as well as a gallery of community members' artwork assembled by Lorraine Rich. It was wonderful to see how impressed our visitors were with our facilities in downtown Toronto. So many have sacrificed so much to make the Mission what it is today, that it was beautiful to receive so many congratulations. We simply thank God. And now it's on to the next 65 years!

The formulation of a long-term strategic plan for the Mission is still under way and should be ready within the next few months. I'm sure that the final plan will be a source of excitement and inspiration for Board, leadership, staff and volunteers alike. The plan that we pursue will be the one that brings unity, singleness of purpose and a strong sense that this is God's will for us. Then watch out poverty, spiritual blindness, pain, unemployment! We will replace you with self-esteem, inner resources, knowledge, education and friendship with Jesus Christ!

Refocused & Renewed!

This photograph proves that you should always be careful when lending your camera to your teenaged son or daughter while on vacation. My daughter, Erica, and I finally achieved a long planned trip to England this past July so that she could meet her aunts, uncles and cousins on my side of the family. This time, I was caught unawares (or nearly unawares) in a souvenir shop in Piccadilly Square.

The Willow Creek Leadership Summit was held on the weekend of August 11 -- and what an experience it was! I have known about the Willow Creek Church for many years but was never inclined to attend the Summit. I just couldn't see how a remote broadcast from Chicago to a host church in Toronto could be any substitute for being present in person. I am over my reluctance! It was one of the most powerfully refreshing experiences I've had in a long time. Speakers such as former President Jimmy Carter, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, and John Ortberg, Senior Pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in California had me sitting on the edge of my seat the whole time. If you are serious about leadership, and especially about Christian leadership, you must, absolutely must, give the Willow Creek Leadership Summit a try. On this Monday morning following the Summit, I feel refocused and renewed and I'm already eagerly waiting for next year's Summit. Remote is good!

And while I don't want to give you the impression that all I do is attend conferences, you must also check out the upcoming annual conference of the Canadian Council of Christian Charities. This is going to be held in Mississauga (near Toronto) toward the end of September. Amazing things are happening at the CCCC.

As for The Scott Mission, I'm excited at the prospect of moving ahead with new and expanded services that will give homeless and working poor people an even greater chance to make a significant break with the chains of poverty. I am working on the draft of a strategic plan which will help to augment the Mission's services in the rehabilitation area as well as strengthen our traditional emergency relief services. I'm going to be interviewing a wide variety of rehabilitation practitioners, both Christian and secular, over the next couple of months to see what kind of program will help men, women and youth make a significant and lasting break with the street. I will tell you about progress in my next entry.

I hope everything is going well for you at home, at work and in yourself. Feel free to drop me a line anytime.

David

Christian focus on permanent rehabilitation in line with the direction of The Scott Mission

Well, I did it. I attended the convention of the Association Gospel Rescue Missions in Atlanta, Georgia. I don't like going to a lot of conferences but I thought this one would be worthwhile -- and it was.

The Scott Mission is in the process of joining the AGRM. There are two reasons for this. For one thing, the AGRM is an association of hundreds of Christian organizations dealing specifically with the problems of homelessness and the urban poor. There are lots of secular organizations working on homelessness but the AGRM is the largest organization of Christians in this type of work. This is appealing because I feel strongly that evangelical Christian organizations like The Scott Mission need to stay true to their core beliefs. With political correctness and the fear of lawsuits watering down the Christian message from without, and liberal and moral interpretations of the Bible watering Christ's message down from within, the Christian church is being watered down into decline. The watering down is hard to combat because most of it is being done with the best of intentions. The evangelical churches are about the only churches showing numerical growth these days. Why? Because people have a deep hunger for the simple, straightforward message from the Bible. People want it preached simply and clearly. They will make up their own minds what to believe and what not to believe.

The second reason that our AGRM membership will be important is that many of the member missions, especially in the United States, have established incredible rehabilitation programs that are getting chronically homeless people off the street once and for all. A few months ago, Tom McLaughlin, the Executive Director of the Buffalo City Mission phoned me about joining AGRM. Soon, I was in Buffalo and he was showing me around BCM's new women's rehabilitation facility, Cornerstone Manor (see photo). At Cornerstone, dozens of women and their children are enabled to get back on their feet during a two-year residential program. At the AGRM conference in Atlanta, I had the honour of visiting The Potter's House, which is the men's rehabilitation program of the Atlanta Union Mission. It's on 570 acre farm and has over 160 men in residence at any one time. The men develop a life plan, they meet in small groups, they receive counseling from qualified counselors, they work on their high school or college diplomas, and they work in a huge industrial operation (see photo) that repairs and sells discarded appliances, bicycles, clothing and just about anything one might need for the house. They even have a fully equipped woodworking shop which turns out professionally made tables, chairs and chests of drawers (see photo).

I think the AGRM's Christian focus on permanent rehabilitation is in line with the direction that The Scott Mission will take over the coming years. The Scott Mission is famous for its compassionate help toward those in crisis and despair. Now we will also be able to follow our men and women into lasting personal change. More in the next Scott Mission e-newsletter, which will come out in a couple of months. Blessings to you and yours!