BREAKING THE GHETTO MENTALITY

In 1974 our family moved to Los Angeles where I went to work for a very innovative Christian ministry called World Literature Crusade. WLC is now called Every Home for Christ (www.ehc.org) and is headed by my long-time friend Dick Eastman. In 1974, WLC was a leader in utilizing secular television to spread the vision of world missions and to raise prayer and financial support on secular TV stations using multi-hour specials run in primetime. These were not just simple one-hour TV programs but four- and five-hour mini-telethons. Nobody was doing this in those days except us and we presented the multi-hour specials in every single TV market in the U.S and Canada.

It was exhilarating to go to a city like New York and go on WOR Channel 9 on a Tuesday evening and be “live in New York” from 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM. It was thrilling to take 8,000 pledges and raise nearly seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars for missions in one evening. What a rush— it was unbelievable!

In 1975, I was part of a three-man team that was preparing for the New York TV special and the three of us would also be the “on air” hosts of the program. About a week before the special, we were at the Channel 9 offices meeting with station staff about the production of the program. I was fascinated with the conversation of the station personnel as they talked about the block of religious programming that was on the station on Sunday mornings in what they referred to as the “Sunday morning ghetto.”

I had never before heard that kind of terminology used when referring to the Sunday morning church programs. In those days there were programs like Rex Humbard, Robert Schuller and a very few others. In my world, the ghetto was “the slums” where alcoholics or drug addicts or people down on their luck lived. But in the world of television, the ghetto meant that it was a select time for “an isolated group.” I came to realize that the word ghetto is not a bad word but, rather, a defining word. The definition of the word means an isolated group; it refers to a section of society or of a city where the members of a minority group live because of social, legal or economic pressure. Television professionals were referring to the fact that most of religious television does not appeal to the masses but only to the pro-Christian crowd.

Thirty years later Christian television has found its home on cable and satellite; it is still “in the ghetto” and speaks primarily to ghetto dwellers. If Christian TV had the impact that they talk about on their telethons, then America might not be sliding unchecked into secularism, and church attendance might not be declining. The impact of Christian TV is an illusion and many of the wealth and prosperity messengers who make it their home are simply playing with the bling of the ghetto.

But lest you think that all I want to do is beat up on Christian TV, I don’t, because the fact is, I don’t watch Christian TV, well almost never. The ghetto mindset of Christian TV is simply a symptom of a larger problem within the evangelical world. This problem is that the majority of evangelical churches are stuck within the confines of their safe haven world. They have no plans and no vision to reach the lost of their cities, let alone the world. Most evangelical churches are not growing and if they are, it is from “transfer” growth (which is not real growth at all).

I recently did an outreach program for a Southern Baptist church in Oklahoma. The senior pastor there told me there were 180 SBC churches in their area and through a denominational survey they had found that of those 180 churches, only a handful were actually growing. Most were stagnant or declining in attendance and of the few that were growing, only one church (out of 180) was growing by using outreach methods. The other few that were growing were doing so through transfers from other churches.

When the church stays locked in its little world, fooling itself into thinking that it’s growing by taking people from other churches and when the church has no evangelism programs and is developing no plans for them, then we can safely assume that the church is locked into a “ghetto mindset.” Another definition of the “ghetto mindset” is “an impoverished mindset defined by conspicuous consumption and irresponsibility.” That definitely fits most of Christian TV and large segments of the church, as well.

God gave the church its marching orders in Acts 1:8 (ye shall be witnesses to me). The early church in Jerusalem, however, was locked into a “ghetto mindset” and the early believers were content to sit in Jerusalem and get blessed. God would not allow that and sent them a thorn in their sitting down side; that thorn was named Saul and his weapon of choice was persecution. The hammer of persecution fell on the church and the scattering began (see Acts 8:1).

We still live under the same marching orders and if we don’t take steps to break the ghetto dweller mindset that exists in today’s church, then God Himself will take up the issue with us. God may very well allow the hammer of persecution to fall on the church again.

Acts 1:8 says it begins first in our city and county, and then in our country before we make the leap to other nations. All the short-term missions trips in the world do not release us from our orders, “And you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

Today’s church is hardly being a witness in Jerusalem or in Judea. It is content to send a pittance to support missions that go the end of the earth and then they want to argue about being “locked in a ghetto mindset.” It’s time to break free!