What is church without mutual aid?

By Chuck Collins
senior scholar, Institute for Policy Studies

In the Boston neighborhood around our church, the wreckage of the economic meltdown is still palpable. Foreclosed houses sit empty, metal grates shutter businesses and the view toward the future is anxious.

Many of my fellow congregants have watched their job security vanish and savings evaporate. Grown children have moved in with their parents. Parents have doubled up with their grown children. And the demand for our church's food pantry has outstripped donations.

Last winter, 60 congregants gathered in our parish hall to try to find a way, together, to confront these issues. There were tears of shame and deep expressions of fear.

We shared a reading from the theologian Walter Brueggemann suggesting the economic crisis was a call to move from "autonomy to covenantal existence," from "anxiety to divine abundance." He stirred visions of an early Christian church, putting our trust in God's hands, pledging to hold wealth in common. But what did this mean in hyper-individual Mammon America?

Part of our church response was to form a "common security club," an approach being piloted at several congregations in the Boston area at the same time. Our club is part-study group, part-mutual aid, and part-social action -- a way to hold one another, spiritually and practically, as we face uncertain times. Fifteen of us have met twice monthly since January. Another club formed out of church members over the summer.

With very little publicity, a mini-movement of these "common security clubs" has formed in churches of varying denominations around the U.S.

At each meeting, participants learn a bit more about the economic crisis, by watching videos, reading articles, sharing what we know. We've strategized over personal budgets, shared tips to live more frugally, and helped our unemployed members network about jobs and health insurance.

Members have made pacts to get out of debt and cut up credit cards as ritual. One Boston club did a "weatherization barn-raising," helping one another insulate their New England homes for the winter in order to save hundreds of dollars in fuel costs. We have bartered for services among ourselves swapping yard work for childcare, computer skills for language lessons.

At all our meetings, we gather around a potluck - a manifestation of "loves and fishes" abundance if there ever was one.

I recently gave a presentation about our common security club to a group of ministers and lay leaders.

"Isn't this what church should be?" asked a pastor from Washington state. "When did pastoral become so excessively focused on spiritual?"

There are probably many answers to that question. A generation of "you are on your own" economics has chipped away at our mutual aid skills. We understand charity, but reciprocity is very hard. Maybe this is an Anglo church problem. My friend Donald, a lifelong Baptist, informed me, "To survive, our Black church tradition has always had mutual aid associations. It was impossible to separate the pastoral spiritual from material economic necessity."

Our group has recognized the value of practicing with the small things, simple bartering and hospitality. Even with the shared experience of an economic disaster, most of us still feel deeply ashamed that we haven't figured out economic security on our own.

We may not become like Apostles in the book of Acts -renouncing materialism in favor of wealth held in common. But we can go much further in holding one another in prayer and drawing from the wealth and skills and experience we have together. Maybe that's what church is?

Chuck Collins is a member of First Church in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. He is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of "The Moral Measure of the Economy" (Orbis). Learn more about Common Security Clubs.

By Chuck Collins |  November 2, 2009; 3:37 PM ET Save & Share:                 
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