Time and time again, we have seen how important the issue of control is in ministry with the hard living, but this issue is also deeply related to a dimension of protest and resistance. This can be seen in the subtle, but pervasive counter-control strategy in response to church efforts to order their circumstances. It is clear that the hard living cannot be reduced simply to passivity and self-loss, that failure to see in their actions a protest of the world and of the futility of their situation is to miss the part of them that still bears hope and capacity for change.
Their protest and resistance are among the basic reasons why authentic ministry must be indigenous and why it can only be faithfully done in identification and in solidarity WITH them. To do ministry FOR instead of WITH the hard living begins a one-down relationship that triggers a dynamic of opposition. This can take at least two forms.
One is covert, especially when the hard living need what the other has. Then the tactics of the powerless are employed with an imaginative creativity that deserves appreciation and awe. They have an infinity of tactics. These tactics would make Machiavelli look naive and lacking in subtlety. Theirs is an endless versatility of procedures:
* Testing the rules,
* limiting the rules,
* de-legitimizing the rules,
* following regulations to absurdity,
* acting out subversive obedience or
* manipulating exterior compliance for the sake of an interior violation.
Their dramatic condescension in formal submission, their duteous deference to nonessentials, their capacity to sap the strength of hegemonic aspirations, their ability to make relative adjustment to established policies, the parody of experts---the hustle, the shuffle, the ruse, and the con. These but scratch the surface of a repertoire which, indeed, must bring a doting smile to the face of God.
The other is overt, but for what it lacks in subtlety it makes up for in earthy candor and the four-letter exactions of primal Anglo-Saxon language.
* The perfectly timed flatulation,
* the capacity to embarrass,
* the coordinated use of odor whether of body or breath, and
* the capacity to undermine the exterior and pretentious ambitions of "saviors" by the wondrous ability not to give a holy damn.
This is a short list. And then there is the story of that resourceful bum-of-a-man who like royalty opened his heavy winter coat, ceremoniously unzipped his pants and grandly urinated all over the desk of an imperious welfare worker.
No church or ministry in its right mind wants to be the object of such hard living strategies and tactics. Moreover, there is perhaps no place where the church runs the risk of alienating the hard living more than in its service and outreach programs.
