The 2024 Culture Conference at Redeemer

Registration for the 2024 Culture Conference at Redeemer is open now! Click here to learn more and RSVP.

As you and I drive around San Antonio, we do not have to look far to see the familiar signs of a problem common in almost every city, state and country – poverty. It shows up on cardboard signs at intersections asking for food or money, broken-down public housing and underperforming schools in low-income neighborhoods. For all the things we love and celebrate about San Antonio, it is among the poorest major cities in the nation. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, San Antonio’s poverty rate, which measures how many people live below the federal poverty line, is 14.6 percent, higher than the Texas state average of 12 percent, and higher than the national average of 10 percent.

In a large and diverse church like Redeemer, we have doubtless had differing experiences with poverty, and probably have a variety of stories about why poverty persists. If you have never lived in poverty, you may believe that it is always a result of bad choices. But when you have lived in poverty, you know it can be much more complicated.

When my wife Jeannie and I were newly married, we were called to Dallas to plant a church in the inner city. We received only a small amount of monthly support and had no health insurance. Jeannie worked at a Tom Thumb grocery store chain to help support us while I met with people in the neighborhood and organized early meetings of the church. But we could not have survived without government assistance like food stamps and Medicaid, especially when our two children were born. We were working very hard but barely making ends meet. This is a reality for many American families.

The clear teaching of Jesus is that as his followers, we are called to love and serve the needy, whether we have material wealth to give or not. And yet Scripture does not offer us easy answers about how to alleviate poverty. In fact, the Bible tells us something that challenges many of our assumptions: money may temporarily meet a material need, but it can never relieve our deep spiritual poverty. Both the materially-wealthy and the materially-poor need hope that is only found in the Gospel.

This is why I am so excited about the 2024 Culture Conference at Redeemer – A New Story: Bringing the Hope of the Gospel to the Needs of the City, February 2-4. We are thrilled to have Dr. Brian Fikkert lead us in our time together. Brian is a committed Christian and an economics professor who has dedicated his life’s work to studying poverty alleviation efforts and what Scripture says about the deep needs of humanity for connection, community, and hope. He is the founder and president of The Chalmers Center for Economic Development at Covenant College and co-author of books including Becoming Whole: Why the Opposite of Poverty Isn’t the American Dream and When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting the Poor … and Yourself. These works are foundational to Redeemer’s approach to mercy ministry.

At the New Story conference, we will focus on the material of Becoming Whole, which examines the faulty stories we often believe about poverty and how change occurs for people and communities and offers a robust framework for why and how we are called to serve our materially-poor neighbors.

Being confronted with poverty can be an anxiety-inducing experience if we do not have a wise and Gospel-centered framework to help us navigate it. Our anxiety often leads us to simplistic solutions – throwing money at a need in the hopes that the underlying problem will go away. This is rarely successful in the long term. Worse, it often harms the poor by delaying more meaningful help. And it harms us by reinforcing our cultural belief that if we do not have enough money to fix every situation, we cannot help at all.

As individual Christians and as the church, we should be generous with the resources God has given us. But we must also remember that we have more than money to offer – we can welcome people into a community, walk with them in their challenges, and invite them into a relationship with Christ. This is always the harder and messier work.

The Culture Conference is not a place where we present easy answers. Rather, it is a space Redeemer provides for the purpose of wrestling with complex issues. Our prayer is that this investment of time will strengthen the longstanding vision for Redeemer’s faithful ministry in San Antonio and equip each of us as individuals to serve our neighbors with love and wisdom. I hope you will join us for this important conversation in the life of our church.

Victor Martinez is RPC Associate Pastor of Mission & Cultural Engagement.

Registration for the 2024 Culture Conference at Redeemer is open now! Click here to learn more and RSVP.