“A little outpost of the Covenanting for Justice movement” plans congregational arts centres for African-American youth

The answer surprised them. When a church leadership development task force asked church members in a predominantly African-American neighbourhood of New York City what they wanted their congregations to offer in response to the high-number of young people dropping out of secondary school, the answer was as clear as it was unexpected. They wanted their churches to become centres of creative arts.

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	Oliver Patterson believes church theatre groups can help overcome illiteracy (Photo: WARC/ Greenaway)

Telling the story while in Geneva for meetings of the Executive committee of the World Alliance of Reformed Churches (WARC), Oliver Patterson laughs and says, “That’s the thing about ‘networking’. It’s not a synonym for building blocks. It’s more like a stream of water. We don’t know where it’s going to take us.”

Patterson, a member of the Reformed Church of America, was on the task force which held a series of consultations at the local church level, focused on education.

Studies show that 60 to 70 per cent of young people from the Jamaica neighbourhood in the district of Queens, do not complete their secondary school education and that 20 per cent of male inmates between 18 and 30 years of age have low levels of literacy.

“What does that mean for local leadership?”, Patterson asks. “Where are the young Black men who will become Boy Scout leaders and teachers?”

When the task force asked church members to describe what factors make young people drop out and what their congregations might do about it, the answer from some congregations was to make their churches into centres for creative arts.

“They told us that creative arts are key to the development of their children, yet schools don’t encourage kids to tell their own stories their own way. They receive other people’s stories.They don’t hear raps presented as poetry,” Patterson reports. “So some folk wanted to create programmes in their churches to integrate the arts into literacy development through story-telling, drama, writing, and music.”

Patterson, a retired professor of Literacy and Language at New York City University, is enthusiastic about the idea. Through his involvement as a student in the 1960’s civil rights campaign initiative to sign-up Black voters, he discovered how many African-Americans working on university kitchen and cleaning staff were illiterate. Since then, through his involvement with WARC, he has seen the importance of literacy in other social reconstruction contexts such as post-apartheid South Africa.

“As Christians, we need to understand kids and build on what they are. So if a kid tells you a story about an argument while playing basketball, then basketball becomes a vehicle for reflection, for looking for the theology embedded in it. We can ask the kid about the good and bad in the situation and about how we can live as a good neighbour in community.”

This is a ministry of listening and walking together, similar to the ministry of Jesus, Patterson believes. “Through the stories of Jesus about ordinary people and their everyday actions, you see where God is and what is expected of you.”

The congregations involved in the pilot project set to begin late in 2009 are small. Most have 40 to 100 members but those are tightly-knit and live close to each other.

“This is a little outpost of the Covenanting for Justice movement in Queens,” says Patterson, referring to WARC’s programme encouraging churches to identify and address issues which create social injustice both in their communities and globally. “Through WARC we are connected to the regional and global church.”

Looking to June 2010 and the launch of the World Communion of Reformed Churches at the Uniting General Council in Grand Rapids, United States, Patterson hopes this model offered by small congregations in the Queens district of New York City will contribute ideas to similar projects in Christian communities worldwide which encourage literacy through the creative arts.

“This might not stop in Queens District,” says Patterson. “I have a feeling it will move out into structures of other African-American churches and from there to Native American, Spanish and Asian communities and beyond. Local networks like these could become unstoppable forces.”