Against Prejudice — Clayton Shenk — Ep. 068

Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here with Clayton Shank. We're in York, Pennsylvania, and you haven't always lived in this city. This is, you moved here and you're now, um, a school administrator in an inner-city context. Can you just tell, give us a little bit of background, what that was like when you, when you made that move to the city? Well, what's interesting is that my first church experience was in the city of Lancaster. So my parents were missionaries to Lancaster City, Laurel Street. And so my very first remembrances of church, summer Bible school, uh, prayer meetings was all city mission at about the age of 10, 12, somewhere there.

There was a dispute at church and my parents were asked to leave, and so we went back out to the country. That was a very, very hard adjustment for me to have to go to a country church instead of a city church. I grew up in the country, uh, sort of the suburbs of Lancaster City, um, and, um, it's been in my bones, right? It's been in, and I think that's an important thing for parents to think about is what do they want their children to appreciate and what you give them at a young age is many times, you know, the Bible says, "Champa child, away you should go when he's old, you won't depart from it."

And so there's a number of my siblings who are also in the cities, uh, and in different cities, uh, and join city missions. And so that's a, that's a critical part. For me, uh, we, we visited for a while. We lived in Lancaster the first year and a half of our marriage and traveled to York, but then I saw young people who really wanted to do what was right, but they had to pay to call the pastor. They had to, you know, get out, that was before cell phones, when you could just call people, right? Yeah. And so I, I actually got an 800 number so that they could call me over, over in Lancaster without them costing anything.

But then I said, you know what, if I can't live in this city and be faithful to God, how can I expect them to live in this city and be faithful to God? And so moving in was sort of an act of, uh, a demonstration that you can be faithful living in the city and in the midst of all the crime and all the whatever people think that the city is, you can be faithful. And I want to show that to the youth so that they could also do that. With that move into the city, what are some prejudices or misconceptions, um, things that you had to overcome and then maybe impressions other people had of what the city is like?

Prejudice is a very, very real thing. Uh, and, and whether we like it or not, whether we think it, we have it or not, almost everybody has prejudice about something, right? I remember as a little boy, my dad was drilling and he was, I don't know what drill he was using, what job he was doing, but I just remember him saying, "This is pretty good for a craftsman." Now, interesting that, that prejudice against Sears products, I caught that. I was like, "Oh, okay, well, what is this?" Right? And so the, the little comments we make along the way are the same way. And so I'll go to a church and I'll say, "How many of you hope that you never have to live in the city?

How about, how many of you ever, you raise your hand, right?" And you put lots of, especially out in the country, I don't want to live in the city. I said, "Well, I'm going to pray for you because in Revelation it says all of God's people are going to live in a holy city in Jerusalem. We're going to enter the city." And most of the people who don't live in the city have this concept that, that crime is, is really bad in the city. And, um, and, and there's, there's a prejudice against, uh, just the, the concept that you would even live in the city. Well, the Bible talks about over a thousand verses about cities, you know, city or cities.

And for most of humans, uh, existence, since creation, you lived in a city for safety and you went out in the country to do your, your farming, right? You, you didn't have a farm out there. It's, that's a concept of America. When, when you left Europe, people came over here and there was woods. And so you chopped down a tree, you built a house, you cleared some more trees and you had a farm and you had your own little individual farm. Well, that whole concept is only the last 250 years because the European model, the, the African model, it's, it's a cluster of homes and you put up a fence around that to protect you from the animals at night or from, uh, the, the other enemies, right?

And so the, the whole concept for thousands of years was you live in the city, it's safer in the city. Now we come and we say, "No, no, it's safer out in the country." And so it's just total reversal of what you have to do. Now I ask people when I teach at SMBI, for instance, the urban class, the urban missions class, I'll say, uh, true or false, most people live in the city are, are Blacks or Hispanics and people, yeah, true. No, that's false. Most people live in the cities are white and, uh, there are some cities, you know, you can, you can find Atlanta, Georgia and St. Louis and New Orleans, you know, but for the most part here in America, the Black, the whites are the majority of people live in the city.

I'll say, "Okay, so most people who are on welfare are, are Blacks, true or false?" Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I said, "That's false. Most people on welfare are whites." Matter of fact, there's more farmers on welfare than there are whites on city people. Oh, interesting. Now that's a controversial one, right? I'm going to tell you that because what's farm subsidies? You know, I'll pay you to not plant any crops this year, right? That's welfare. That's a form of welfare. It's a form of government subsidy, but we don't look at it that way. The city people, the city people. Perspective, it's like your perception of things. You like to see it from your angle, but then if you'd flip it around and be from this side and look at you, you'd see it totally differently.

Right. Yeah. Right. And so then you asked about crime. How many believe that most people who commit crimes are living in the city? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Well, death, for instance, uh, about 15,000 murders per year. That's, that's awful, right? But what about how many deaths happen in business because of violation of OSHA? Is that also a murder?

Well, that, that is way more. There's more deaths per year, uh, from business accidents than there are from actual gun shootings in the city. And so, oh, well, uh, yeah, that, it kind of stretches people a little bit, but it's like, how, how do you look at it? Yeah. And so then you look about theft, right? The cities are awful. You know, people stealing stuff and it amounts to about $5 billion a year. Wow. Well, when you think about embezzlement, that's about $20 billion a year. $20 billion a year. That's the upper echelon. That's the, the higher guys. That's the white-collar crime. And most people don't report white-collar crime. There's lots of embezzlement that, for instance, a bank, I don't know what bank you go to, but let's just say you read in the bank that the vice president of finances embezzled $10 million from the bank.

That, that's a terrible light for your bank, right? That, that means my bank isn't safe. If, if that guy could embezzle $10 million, I better get a different bank. So they won't report that kind of stuff universally, year after year after year. There's more embezzlement than there is actual theft. And so we have these prejudices that it's not safe there. It's safe where I'm at, but, uh, per capita, there's more crime actually in some of the other, uh, smaller towns than there is actually in the big city per person. That's really interesting. Even that example you give of your, of your dad saying, "Oh, you know, this drill isn't, you know, as good because it's a whatever."

That's so common. If I'm just stopping and thinking, I'm like, wow, how many times have we heard little things like that? Not even like big scary prejudices, but just concepts of the world that we have that we just take for granted, you know, and that's just how we look at things.

There's an African American writer, an amazing writer, his name is Frederick Douglass, who has this great line. He says, "It is easier to raise strong children than repair broken men." And that is a line that all of us who are parents, who care about this issue, should consider deeply. It's a lot easier to change yourself when you're 16, 17, 18 versus when you're 40 or 50 years old. We're all creatures who have a certain momentum to who we are and a certain set of qualities that become ossified as we get older. But these, this basic idea of, of shaping ourselves and crafting ourselves, and I would say the glory of the gospel, the glory of Christianity is transformation.

It's taking people who were one way and they become a different way.

There's a lot of Christian authors today or people of influence that are saying things like, you know, that the church needs to be much more intentional about moving into the cities. I'm curious, would you share that? And if so, like what kind of model would you suggest, um, for our churches, particularly the Anabaptists, to be involved in those ways? Well, first of all, I want to, uh, confess that I have been so city, city, city, city, city, go, go, go, a cheerleader for city missions that I have sometimes wounded other people who are not involved. And, and there's people who have felt that I come across like you're not quite as spiritual if you're not in the city.

I mean, the spiritual ones are in the city and I don't want to do that. The reason I would encourage city missions is that's where the people are. And so if you have, um, let's say, I don't know what the statistic is, but we'll just make something up, right? One in a thousand people is going to come to Christ.

Well, if you're in a town of 6,000 people, you have six people that are going to come to Christ. If you're in a, in a city with 200,000 people, that means you're going to have 200 people come to Christ, right? Yeah.

Our goal is to, to reach Christ and, you know, to, to preach Christ and to go out and to, and so when you have people who are hungry and thirsting and, and needing help and, and open to dialogue, well, if they're in the cities, that's where they are. That's where we ought to be. And so somebody living in a city, somebody who's raising, raising their children in the city, who are, is working in the city, working alongside of it, uh, a lot of good contacts when I drove bus, uh, I was driving the mass transit bus. And so you have people who don't have vehicles. Um, I, I met, uh, a number of people that way.

Uh, it's a very good ministry, very good opportunity. First of all, being intentional wherever you are, whatever ministry God's called you to, but also in a sense, you're advocating be strategic, go where the needs are, where the people are. Right. Yeah. I like that. Yeah. I think that's, that's really good. Well, is there anything else you would like to add? Well, one of the things that, um, I think everybody ought to understand, and I sort of alluded to it before, we need to be faithful no matter where we're at. And, and so if you say, "I can't, I can't live in the city." No, there's no way I can live in the city. Well, would you consider maybe a suburb where you have your own grass and your own yard and still have, you know, but you're, you're within striking distance of the city? 35 years ago, when we first moved into the city, my wife and I were walking across town and we were, we were going over to the rescue mission and there were some people sitting there on the sidewalk and so we stopped to talk to them and they found out we were Mennonites. "Mennonites, I didn't think they let you out."

I said, "What? Let us out? What are you talking about?" Well, yeah. There was like, "Could you live in the city?" Wow. About three years ago, there was a case of some of our school students were taken away by children and youth. And so I was down at the courthouse and the children's appointed lawyer saw my wife and I said, "Come on, come on." So he pulled us across the lobby. He's like, "Do you live in the city?" Yeah. And you're Mennonite. Yeah. I didn't think they'd let you do that.

And so there's this misconception that, that we can't live here. We're not allowed here. There's a bit of a prejudice right there, even like a, like a mindset. Yeah. Oh, wow. And so there's things there that we have to overcome too. And there's people who believe that you have to be born Mennonite, that you can't, you can't join us. You can't.

I am amazed at how many times, uh, we have become, we are, we are judgmental. You said prejudice, right? And it shows up by staring, by, by looking, right? Uh, I, I would go out to, um, the country and take some, some children from the city. We'd go out to a church service and they come back and they say, "Over and over again, I heard this. Mennonites have eye problems. Mennonites have eye problems." So what do you mean? They just stare at you. They just stare at you. And you know, where's the friendliness? You know, the friendliest church I was ever at was the Mormon church.

I went to the Mormon church and everybody in that auditorium came to say hi to me. I mean, it just, they, they, okay, so here's somebody we can get, right? Here's, here's somebody we can win. And they made a point to everybody who came over. As a matter of fact, they took an SMBI group there. Oh, really? But they just, they swarmed us to make us feel welcome. Oh, please come again. Is there any questions we can answer for you? When you go to a new Mennonite church, even those who are Mennonites, people just stare at you. The point is, most Mennonite churches are not friendly churches.

Most Mennonite churches are not welcoming churches. And so a stranger walks in. I mean, we have that here. We have to constantly work at our church, who's in the city to win people and encourage people to say, "Get out of that clique." You know, service is over, stand up and immediately you have people just talking to whoever's around you. And sometimes it's the people, because we all sit in our own places, you know, and then there's, there's new people, there's visitors who are completely ignored. And so it's something you have to work at. You have to constantly work at. It's very, very possible for somebody, I've been here for 35 years and for come across like I'm scolding people, right?

It's still something I have to work on. And there's also this issue of men versus ladies, right? Men are in boxes. You know, you read that book, "Men are like waffles and women are like spaghetti," right? Yeah. We do get caught up in our pursuit of life and our business and our job and to really take time, take time to, I had a lady tell me this week, just this past Sunday, "Clayton, you're the only one at church that actually will sit and listen to me." Wow.

Everybody else is, I said, "No, come on. What about?" And I mentioned a couple. "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. What about?" "Oh, yeah, yeah. That's true." But you know, there are many, many times you hear people, my parents taught us we ought to be winsome. We ought to be a winsome person. Now, Jesus was winsome, but he asked a lot of questions. Do we have enough time to ask questions or do we already assume? Well, assuming is prejudice, right? I assume I know what you mean. I assume by what you're saying. And so, uh, it's fascinating when you start asking questions and begin to learn hard. Wow. Another thing when I remember from, uh, mentioned that I grew up in Lancaster City.

I mean, I, I, I ministered in Lancaster City. My parents went in. We didn't live there. But one day I was a little six-year-old maybe, and I was, uh, teasing one of the neighbor boys and making some sort of comment. And my mom called me into the church and said, "People that you make fun of, you will never win for Jesus." Hmm. And people you laugh about will never win for Jesus. So what are our jokes? Who do we tell jokes about? We got to think about that because there's a lot, it's so much fun to have jokes. It's so much fun to be the center of the party and tell jokes. But if we're, if we're putting people down or we're putting genders down or races down or, you know, we already now have a superior attitude towards those and we're not going to win them for Jesus if we're going to tell jokes about them.

And so, um, that's another, another area we have to think about. What is the, yeah. Yeah. It's about being in, about intentionally thinking and taking the time to analyze your worldview. Where is this coming from? Is we have, it's very easy. And I'm sure every human on the planet struggles with this, but this superiority mindset, I'm, of course, I'm better than fill in the blank, whoever, this person, that person, this other religion, this whatever. But you know, we're all created in the image of God. And, and yeah, it's a real struggle. Wow. That is, hmm. Wow. Well, thank you, Clayton, for being on this episode, for tackling something big like prejudice and living in a city and wow, all the complex dynamics you have to deal with.

It's just, praise the Lord. Yeah. Yeah. And hopefully this will inspire some people to take a hard look at, at what, what they think of others. Sure. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Yep.