In the ghetto a black male is much more likely to graduate from a Christian school than a public school. White privilege won’t be able to see Christian schools in the ghetto as a justice operation because they experience Christian schools as elitism. Ask struggling single Moms in the ghetto what they would prefer, you’d be surprised.

I had a conversation recently with a Puerto Rican brother who can’t wait to get out of New York City to get his son a better education. He’s only been a Christian for 3 years and he is worried about his son being at school 9 hours a day in New York City public schools with that kind of secular culture. His son is thinking about college and he doesn’t want that to be sabotaged by horrible public schools. If his son goes to college he’ll be one of the first ever in his family to do so. I don’t think “missional” guys understand this from the perspective of minorities who were raised in the city. I often hear this, “we’re moving because we don’t want to raise are kids in this.”

What they mean by “in this” is something the gentrifiers don’t understand. They just don’t get it. It’s unbelievable. The city is not “cool” for many blacks and Latinos. For many it’s been generations of hard living watching white-collar white people get ahead in the world while minorities, blue-collar whites, and immigrants work in the low-skilled labor jobs for those white people and struggle.

Before people get all “that’s-not-missional” on me think about this: this man has only been a Christian for 3 YEARS (and in his late 30’s at that). He doesn’t know what it means to have a “Christian” home. He’s trying to sort through much in his own life having spent most his adult life as an unbeliever. A Christian school would do his family well because he could put his son in a Christian school so that he and his entire family could be supported as they try to figure what it means to be a “Christian” family and construct a Christian worldview (something that he’s never seen modelled before, ever).

This is where the missional movement derails and misses a real opportunity to serve new converts and minorities in the city. The bottom line is that he would remain in New York City if he could put his son in a Christian school. Christian minorities converted to Christ later in life (20s and 30s), who already have families, may not be ready just yet to be the kinds of missionaries that many missional leaders assume all Christians need to be with respect to their families.

Most missional pastors can’t relate to what it’s like to come to Christ in your 30s and 40s, when you’ve already been raising your children as pagans, and therefore these pastors don’t see how Christian schools would really support these families while they mature in their faith.

If urban missional church planters want minority families in their churches, and want minorities families to remain in their communities, the only wise thing to do is to attach to your church plant a vision of cooperating with other churches in your area to support the establishment of Christian schools. Many minorities families need Christian education more than the pastor’s kids do (who has a mom with a master’s degree)
Inner-city areas need Christian schools just as much as they need new churches (because, believe it or not, minorities churches are often already there).

If you think I’m crazy watch Waiting for Superman. It’s hard for me to believe Christian leaders who say they “love the city” but also don’t want to see an explosion of Christian schools in inner cities. How is that possible? What’s their mission really about then?

Please do not look at this through the lens of white privilege.

The Schott Foundation recently reported that only 47 percent of black males graduate from high school on time, compared to 78 percent of white male students. This revelation is beyond disturbing because it exposes the fact that many public schools serve as major catalysts for the desolation of unemployment and incarceration that lies in many black boys’ future.

In the ghetto a black male is much more likely to graduation from a Christian school than a public school. White privilege won’t be able to see Christian schools in the ghetto as a justice operation because they experience Christian schools as elitism. Ask struggling single Moms in the ghetto what they would prefer, you’d be surprised. I wrote about that before–Read the article and watch the video.

Anthony Bradley is an Associate Professor of Theology and Ethics at The King’s College, NYC. This commentary is taken from Bradley’s blog, The Institute and is used with permission of the author.