Road Crossing 101
Bruce Main is the founder and president of Urban Promise, a ministry to the city of Camden NJ one of the poorest and most violent cities in the US. It is located in the wealthiest state in the US and only a 10 minute drive from Moorestown, consistently voted one of the best residential communities in the 
US. In his book, “Why Jesus Crossed the Road”, he suggests that what he calls ‘road crossing’ should be recognized as another spiritual discipline. He defines road crossing as the intentional effort to connect with people different from yourself and that the ability to do so demonstrates a level of spiritual maturity frequently not found in most Christians.[1] As I read Jackie Pullinger’s classic book “Chasing the Dragon” I was struck by how she exemplified this spiritual discipline in a way rarely witnessed.
Over the years I too have fallen in love with the city of Camden, having led dozens of short term trips with groups from King University and my church. It is an odd thing to be in love with a place that is unlovely, full of extreme levels of brokenness and strife. Pullinger suggests that this sensation can only be derived from the Holy Spirit. She sensed it very early in her visits to the Walled City. “The second time I went into the Walled City, I had this wonderful feeling inside; like the thrill you get on your birthday…..nearly every time I was in that underground city over the next dozen years, I was to feel the same joy.”[2] It is this genuine availability of the believer, to be touched by God and used in whatever manner God sees fit that is the essence of road crossing.
What is it about Christians open to this level of spiritual maturity that transforms them into road crossers? The people living in the Walled City had seen plenty of Christians come and go, they never really penetrated the community but simply “flew into Hong Kong, sang sweet songs about the love of Jesus….and then jumped back in their planes and flew away again.”[3] Pullinger didn’t really start making headway until she had demonstrated that she was committed to the people and the community, which took four years.
I continue to be frustrated by what I call ‘Drive by Evangelism’, sending middle class white kids to foreign countries or poor neighborhoods to ‘help’ these people before jetting back to their 
comfortable homes and feeling good about the work they did. There are entire ‘mission’ organizations dedicated to helping the wealthy kids from the US have a good experience on the ‘mission’ field. Rarely do these involve long-term dedicated work with a community or people group, generally it involves building or painting something by very unskilled labor as though the local people have no ability to look after themselves and can’t even wield a paint brush more effectively than a 14 year old American girl. What frequently ends up happening is that the ‘poor’ community becomes dependent on the ‘aid’ coming from the US, the ‘mission’ agency becomes dependent on the financial support generated by hosting groups, and the short-term missionaries have nice pictures of poor people and badly painted walls to take back to their proud sponsoring churches. Cynical? Who me?
This does not constitute road crossing, but rather charity work, and that generally based on the agenda of the missionaries rather than the community being served. Pullinger too, found herself in a similar situation. She stated; “I got in the ridiculous situation where I was more concerned to please these missionary friends than to find out what God wanted me to do.”[4] There is an arrogance to much mission work as though we are bringing God to these desolate places instead of recognizing that God is already in their midst and the role of the missionary is to help them discover where those places are.
I honestly believe that this missionary arrogance is a form of racism and may be part of the reason that most of the churches across the US lack any form of cultural or racial diversity. What person of 
color would want to be part of a faith community that lacked anyone like them in leadership roles and then were encouraged to support the youth ministry in their charity work to those that do?
The strength of the Pullinger story lies in her recognition that her English ways were not suitable for communicating the Gospel in the Walled City setting. In much the same way as another missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, she recognized fairly early on that; “English methods for telling the world about Jesus Christ and how to follow him did not work out as practical possibilities on the other side of the world.”[5] She was learning as she was going but developing a rapport with the locals because of her tenacity and humility. Perhaps the same principles could be applied to our church communities in the US. Communicating the Gospel to people from a different culture, perhaps simply people who lack any form of God frame, should be considered from their perspective rather than our own. How will the Gospel translate to emerging adults (Millennials), or refugees, or people of various races or socio-economic status?
Pullinger begins in the introduction to her story lamenting the fact that the writing of ‘Chasing the Dragon’ created the opposite effect she intended for it to. She became a Christian hero or icon and had to recount the story repeatedly instead of new people, readers, being encouraged to “see that the same God could impart His (sic) heart and His (sic) power in [their] city.”[6] May our hearts be captured by this story, not to stand in awe of this humble woman, but to recognize that God has a similar story to write in our own contexts if we are willing to practice the spiritual discipline of road crossing in the place God has directed us.
PS. Sorry I will be missing all of your fantastic posts the next few weeks. I’ll do my best to catch up when I get back on June 11.
[1]Main, Bruce. Why Jesus Crossed the Road Learning to Follow the Unconventional Travel Itinerary of a Firstcentury Carpenter and His .. Christianaudio, 2010. P. 19
[2]Pullinger, Jackie, and Andrew Quicke. Chasing the Dragon: One Woman’s Struggle against the Darkness of Hong Kong’s Drug Dens. Minneapolis, MN: Chosen, 2014. P. 43
[3]Ibid p. 59
[4]Ibid p. 60
[5]Ibid p. 79
[6]Ibid introduction
About the Author
Dan Kreiss
Former director of the Youth Ministry program at King University in Bristol, TN and Dean of the School of Missions. I have worked in youth ministry my entire life most of that time in New Zealand before becoming faculty at King. I love helping people recognize themselves as children of God and helping them engage with the world in all its diversity. I am particularly passionate about encouraging the church to reflect the diversity found in their surrounding community in regard to age, gender, ethnicity, education, economic status, etc. I am a husband, father of 4, graduate of Emmanuel Christian Seminary, an avid cyclist and fly-fisherman still trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up.5 responses to “Road Crossing 101”
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” Cynical? Who me?”
Yeah. Me too. In fact, I find I have to constantly gaurd against getting bitter and angry. *sigh*
You point to racism as the root of the problem, and I agree that is a major issue. But I think another issue is the money. Too often our mission organization does project based on what funders in the US want to pay for, rather than doing projects based on what missionaries on the ground see as essential. So all this money gets poured into projects that aren’t the most useful.
Hi dan,
Have a blessed trip, and we look forward to your application of this book when you get back. You are living it my Brother.
And wow, “Drive by evangelism” was an amazing quote. You should write a book about that one…
Great post as usual Dan! I loved how you brought out the idea of “road crossing” and how that needs to be one of our spiritual disciplines (I feel more inspired to cross more roads in my life). I also appreciated you bringing out the dangers of our comfortable little short-term missions trips that are not building meaningful relationships with people and communities. Good work and hope you have a great trip.
Camden! Thank you for sharing about Camden and your love for that place. When we lived in Princeton, we had passes to the children’s museum in Philly, and we would occasionally stop in Camden. It’s crazy how it used to be a thriving shipping community and then became entirely ignored by the state, correct? It’s a special place that deserves much more public attention.
Dan, though I get, and even understand some of the cynicism that many feeling regarding the abundance of “mission trips” taken by youth groups, as a ‘once youth minister’, I think many also feel to recognize that those mission trips are not just about painting fences and building houses. The real cynicism is when we try to convince grown ups that there is a ministry field out there, but they are so self-absorbed in their lives to ever considered moving beyond their safe picket fences to do anything about it. As youth minister, your only hope is that something about a two week trip into a tragic environment will slap reality into our youth, to show them that real ministry is more than going to church on Sunday morning and Wednesday night. Real ministry means getting your hands dirty, ruining a good t-shirt, and losing a good night’s sleep because your bed was not in a Holiday Inn. Thanks to trips like the one you mentioned, one of my own daughters has grown up with a desire to do real missionary work with her husband. She kept doing anything should could to get included on longer and longer trips, and now she and her new husband are planning on a two year church building campaign in Germany toward the end of the year. Please don’t be cynical over the chance to influence our youth with a tough world lesson, if even only one week at a time; that one week could change their life and heart for Christ.