c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J.)

UNDATED _ A few years ago, my wife made a critical decision. Frustrated with the drug traffic passing through our neighborhood, as well as the police department’s seeming inability to do anything about it, Fran decided to take matters into her own hands.

She began to pray.

Mind you, her prayers were not a cry for the community’s deliverance from the drug scourge. Rather, Fran began to pray for the souls of the drug dealers. As a result, an interesting dynamic began to occur. Gradually, over a period of months, the brazen arrogance and disrespect shown previously by the drug dealers were transformed into reverential respect for Fran.

Customers who came to cop crack would be shooed away by the dealers while Fran talked with them about the love of Jesus. When she swept our front stoop in the mornings, one of the pushers often would leave his post to help her clean the street.

I would sometimes return home from ministering to criminals in prison to find my wife ministering to others before they went to prison.

Yet, as much as I admire Fran’s faith and courage, this story is less about the effect of her ministry than about the process by which it developed.

Several months before establishing her rather unusual ministry, she ranted and raved about the injustice of it all. We’re taxpayers, she raged. Why are we paying thousands of dollars in property taxes every year if the police (whose salaries are paid by those taxes) allow criminal activity to thrive with impunity?

It was in the aftermath of one such raving that it occurred to Fran that she knew the head drug dealer. Sandra, it turned out, had been enrolled in Fran’s Sunday School class nearly 15 years before. Out on bail, awaiting sentencing on an unrelated charge, Sandra was no longer the 11-year-old Fran had once known.

It was the juxtaposition of those two images _ Sandra then and Sandra now _ that served to undermine Fran’s anger. This formerly anonymous criminal now had a face and history with which Fran was familiar.

Thus chastened, Fran began to weep, asking God for forgiveness and direction. Her ministry on the streets was the outgrowth of her prayer.

Fran’s experience, it seems to me, provides an object lesson that is worth considering.

For we live at a time when many Christians are relying on the elective process, the legislative process and due process to facilitate the healing process in our nation. They believe that if we can elect the right people, pass the right laws and build enough prisons, righteousness, peace and justice will reign on our streets.

The problem with such thinking is that it places more emphasis on our rights as citizens than our responsibilities as Christians. The American Dream _ which envisions financial prosperity and personal security _ thus takes priority over the Great Commission, which requires that Jesus’ followers win others to him, at all costs.

Fran and I have struggled with this, too.

As an inner-city pastor who is also a husband and father, I am continually forced to balance my ministry burden for the poor and the imprisoned against the needs, wants and protection of my family. In addition, as homeowners with a financial stake in the community, our concern for the safety of our neighborhood is held in tension with love for those who violate its security.

Such concerns, of course, are not limited to the inner city. The emphasis in many suburban communities of armed patrols designed to keep intruders out bears witness to that, too. Yet, given the rash of violent incidents by suburban school children in recent months, this emphasis appears misplaced.

In those incidents, the danger came not from without, but within. As with Fran’s recognition of Sandra, each of the youthful assailants had a face and history that was well-known in the community.

Accordingly, the time has come for many in the Christian church to follow Fran’s example and re-evaluate their priorities. For if we claim our rights as citizens but neglect our responsibilities as Christians, we will continue to seek protection from people we already know.

DEA END ATCHISON