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When our old friend Harvie "Conned" us into writing an article on "raising children in the city" by mentioning an award we had jointly received because of our years of urban ministry, and laying on us "some responsibility to go with the glory," it struck us that his phrase of exhortation illuminated the subject.

There is a certain amount of glory in ministering in the city. We do not mean the occasional recognition given with sincerity but inappropriate awe, nor the voices of suburban colleagues saying, "I admire you for sticking it out there that long." Fact is, we would not trade our problems for theirs, not most of the time, anyway. Neither are we titillated by appreciative comments on our "sacrifice," followed by racist opinions of our parish (Paterson, N.J.)

Flashes of Glory

The glory is the magnificence of God's Spirit fleshed out in countless folks from our church and community, the triumph of grace in those living on the raw edge of pain, the privilege of having some part in their process, and the daily continuing education. We soon discovered that we were ministered to at least as much as we ministered, that we learned more than we taught, and that God was able to mix the deep and expressive spirituality of urban American Blacks with the more theologically defined but experientially naive faith of small-town and rural young Calvinists, and come up with something beautiful for everybody. That is glory! It comes in flashes, it illuminates the constant responsibilities, and it never quits. It's like the gospel song from the Black tradition, "You can't beat God giving."

In earlier years, for me (Stan) too much glory was subtly manipulated by my need to be needed in that burgeoning parish of mine. I missed some of the glory of our home as I immersed myself in trying to meet both chronic dependency and legitimate need outside. My wife's faithful reminders of her needs and those of our three little children helped keep me from losing my balance altogether. There was responsibility and glory at home too.

Today, it is mostly glory on the domestic scene. The kids are grown, out of the North Seventh Street nest, and have turned out beautifully. The city has definitely contributed to that. If we could do it over again, we would do it over again. And our children have been honest enough to help me finger what I would do differently if there were a next time around.

The subject is complex, multi-faceted, and full of trade-offs. No one ministering family's experience can be a blueprint for anybody else's. No two urban situations are the same. No two people are the same. No two perceptions of the same family history will exactly coincide. And so when Harvie Conn asked us to write it "jointly," we decided to ask our children, Ruth, Paul, and Lori, to each write a piece that could be integrated into this production of Stan and Barb. (From our integration they came; now they are returning the favor.)

Ruth and Paul, aged 27 and 25 respectively, are living in Grand Rapids, Michigan at present, next door to each other in a pleasant neighborhood termed "inner city" by local definition. Ruth is Acting Director of Admissions at Reformed Bible College; Paul is in his third year at Calvin Seminary. He and his new wife, Beth, hope to minister in Latin America. Lori, aged 24, is in her third year of teaching high school English at Lexington Christian Academy (Massachusetts). Part of their common particularity is that they grew up in two worlds.

At Home in the City

Our church, Northside Community Chapel, is located on Paterson's "north side," in an area of ancient and mostly decrepit two and three family dwellings owned by absentee slumlords, vacant lots due to fires, two large adjacent elementary schools totalling 1,700 students, and two large adjacent high-rise complexes which together contain about 1,250 apartments. The parish is mainly Black with a small but growing number of Hispanic people. The incomes of most of the residents are below the poverty line, there is a high percentage of mothers on welfare, and most of the children live in single-parent homes.

The parish is an exaggeration of the city to which it belongs. Always a place of oppression, the nation's first industrial city no longer has immigrants from Italy, Ireland, and Holland sweating for long hours and low wages in the now inoperative old mills. In place of their progeny, who have mainly moved up and out, are people whose parents moved from the South to escape Jim Crow and find work in the Second World War industry, or who left Puerto Rico in search of greater economic opportunity. Black and Hispanic people comprise two-thirds of the citizenry of this third poorest, medium-sized city in the United States, this landlocked little place in which 150,000 people live within 8.3 square miles.

The picture is further focused by our proximity to New York City and "cocaine corridor," Interstate 95. In the seventies, we were 90th in the nation in size but tenth in recorded incidents of drug abuse. If anything, it is worse today, as a block from our church and four from our house, "crack" is sold on the street as openly as if it were candy.

Our house is a comfortable, old, eight-room structure with a garage and a little yard. It is surrounded mainly by two-family houses of roughly the same vintage, some of them now with additional apartments in the basement and attic, but all of them in good repair. Located at the top of a steep hill at the bottom of which stands our church, we live a scant five blocks away from it, and only a few blocks from two streets which form the boundaries between Paterson and two surrounding boroughs.

The dominant ethnic hue of our block makes it sociologically similar to our congregation (two-thirds Black, one-third White, both low and middle-income members). Its physical proximity to the church (five minutes walk down the hill, seven minutes up) makes it close enough to be accessible, but far enough to preserve our privacy and guard our family stability from needless, spur-of-the moment interruptions. The neighborhood of our parsonage is also a buffer zone between the world of our parish and the white middle-class world just beyond.

Living in Two Worlds

Our children had the dual benefits of growing up in a struggling urban church very involved in the needs of its parish, and living in a decent house on a clean block and attending nearby Christian schools. These schools are parentally run but an integral expression of a large Christian Reformed community which has mainly moved away from Paterson. Their lives in both worlds gave Ruth, Paul, and Lori a variety of experiences, but the blessing was sometimes mixed.

While keeping them anchored to home base, we gave them some freedom to float. For instance, various church activities at Northside were supplemented by other age-appropriate ones they chose at the churches of their peers from the less urban CRC world. They made friends in both settings, and adults who were significant others were found in both cultures. Ours became the task of teaching them to maintain a certain balance. Only one dimension of that balance is the matter which seems to be most often brought up when white folks talk about bringing up children in the city-safety.

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Stan and Barb Vander Klay have served at Northside Community Chapel Christian Reformed Church since 1960, when Stan went there from Calvin Seminary to serve as pastor. Both are graduates of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan and founding members of inner city Paterson's Dawn Treader Christian School. Stan was awarded a D. Min. degree in 1983 from New York Theological Seminary. They have raised three children in the city. Address: 167 North Seventh Street, Paterson, NJ 07522.


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