These challenges present the Church with opportunities aplenty. For nineteen hundred years the local church was distinguished for the comprehensive care of its own. But as social programs burgeoned with the New Deal, the Church began the slow abdication of that tradition. It is a tradition the Church could reclaim, starting with the enhanced support of members who are homeless, widowed, or are single parents.
On an individual level, Christians have the duty to approach their own marriages with the holy devotion deserving of its divine institution. Husbands must be committed to their wives and wives to their husbands, and both to creating a stable environment for their children.
Outside the family sphere, the need for individual involvement is great. As convicted criminals and experts told Meredith May, “a mentor might have saved them, anyone from the outside who could have shown them another way to be a man.”
One person who is showing young people “another way” is Richard K. Bennett.
A ministry of mentoring
I met Richard at Christian leadership class six years ago. That began a friendship that has deeply enriched my Christian experience.
At 340 pounds and six feet tall, Richard casts an imposing figure. At first glance, he could easily pass for a Tennessee Titan lineman or drug-lord bodyguard. But after locking eyes with him, the menacing form is transformed into a welcoming sparkle that says, “I love you, Brother.”
Richard grew up in the inner city where drugs, gangs and violence were givens. Lacking a compelling vision for his life, Richard drifted into an existence of substance abuse, drug dealing and thuggery. It wasn’t long before his physical and entrepreneurial prowess earned him street respect; and with that, money and female attention. But those “perks” came with a price: a rap sheet, prison sentence, and a body scarred from knuckles, knives, clubs and bullets.
On numerous occasions I’ve seen him display his street wounds and heard him talk about his gangland activities and prison stint; not out of pride mind you, but out of overwhelming gratitude in his future—a future that was turned from death row or the city morgue to life eternal. Richard glows when he recounts the night that he acknowledged his desperate need and fell at the foot of the Cross. It was the night when, as Richard puts it, his life went from “misery to ministry.”
