City Matters Notes
City Matters Syllabus
Discover what city matters have meant to God’s past, and of how much the city matters in God’s future.
For every family the ingredients of poverty are part financial, part psychological, part personal and part societal, part past and part present. Every problem magnifies the impact of the others, and all are so tightly interlocked that one reversal can produce a chain reaction with results far distant from the original cause.
A rundown apartment can exacerbate a child’s asthma, which leads to a call for an ambulance, which generates a medical bill that cannot be paid, which ruins a credit record, which hikes the interest rate on an auto loan, which forces the purchase of an unreliable used car, which jeopardizes a mother’s punctuality to work, which limits her promotions and earning capacity, which confines her to poor housing.
If problems are interlocking, then so must the solutions be. A job alone is not enough. Medical insurance alone is not enough. Good housing alone is not enough. Reliable transportation, careful family budgeting, effective parenting, effective schooling is not enough when each is achieved in isolation from the rest.
There is no single variable that can be altered to help people move from the edge of poverty. Only where the full array of factors is addressed can we find a lasting solution.
The first step is to see the problems…
(excerpted from The Working Poor by David K. Shipler)
City Matters is an eight-week course exploring issues of race, faith and justice in the city. Topics such as health, housing and education serve as starting points to deeply explore the issues communities of poverty struggle with, how it all came to be and how we as individuals and communities can offer ourselves to solutions.
CLASS TOPICS
FAITH matters
JUSTICE matters
RACE matters
PLACE matters
HIP HOP matters
HEALTH matters
IDENTITY matters
WORKS matter
