William Raspberry

The Washington Post, Friday, September 20

Stripping rescue-mission programs of their spiritual dimensions is too high a price for government "help."  

The Rev. Stephen Burger thinks a tremendous opportunity may lurk at the intersection of Bill Clinton's anti-welfare legislation and the rescue-mission work he has been doing since 1959.

The refreshing thing about him is that he isn't sure now much of it he wants.

"The good news of the legislation is that the government wants to enter into partnerships with nonprofits that have programs that work," said Burger, who heads the International Union of Gospel (IUGM), comprising 250 rescue missions across North America. "Our programs work. This past year, we fed 27 million people and housed 9 million. Our success at rehabilitating addicts and alcoholics and the people who used to be called 'bums' is well known. I'm satisfied we have something to offer, and we ought to offer it.

"The question, though, is: Do we accept government money to run our programs? And to tell you the truth, I'm not there yet. I'm not prepared to say we should run to the government's spigot and demand money. I'm trying to understand all that. But I am saying, here's an opportunity that we can work with the government, even if we raise our own money."

Burger, visiting here from IUGM's Kansas City headquarters, reveals himself as a thoughtful--and unrelentingly Christian--man. It is absolutely clear to him that the reason the Gospel Mission rehabilitation programs work is that they minister to the spiritual side of those who have fallen by the wayside.

Take the matter of homelessness. Governments and secular nonprofits can build shelters, hand out sandwiches and even distribute certain services. But, Burger insists, they cannot change lives.

"They don't treat the whole person. They don't challenge the homeless person's fundamental way of thinking. They treat homelessness like the basic problem is housing supply when, as our experience teaches, it goes a lot deeper than that."

Burger likes the formulation of his colleague, the Rev. Mickey Kalman of the City Rescue Mission in Oklahoma City: "The philosophy of government homeless programs is to respect and protect lifestyles that produce homelessness."

It's not so much government wrongheadedness as the incapacity of the government to reach the inner core that is the problem, Burger said in an interview. Certainly government could make life easier for the faith-based programs by being less rigid about zoning and staff credentials. And he thinks it absurd that a Schenectady, N.Y., mission was taken to court over its insistence that a client couldn't bring his pornography to the mission with him.

Government might be helpful in yet another way, he said. "My son runs his ministry in Charleston, W. Va., and he works in the housing projects. Now some of the community rooms in those projects had turned into, well nothing. I mean they were warehouses, full of junk, because people were afraid to go into them. Well, my son turned them around, and now they are used for programs that are changing people's lives. Should government make such spaces available? Should government pay for the programs?"

On one score, though, Burger harbors no doubt. "If it's a choice between government funding and doing what we know how to do, there' just no choice. I mean if we have to strip our programs of their moral and spiritual aspects, then they wouldn't be worth doing. Even things like our computer-skills programs and other training programs don't work unless we first confront people spiritually and get them to accept responsibility for their choices.

"And you know what? People know that. I'm not saying we don't need the government. But I'm saying we need this spiritual side too. Instead of arguing about welfare reform, we need to get the preachers in the pulpits and the priests and the rabbis and the people in the pew involved. That's the only way it's ever going to work."

It's a point that gets lost in our talk of reform and block grants and devolution. But that doesn't mean it's not true.