[South Dakota] Poverty series: Our resources, the faith community and poverty

from The Black Hills Pioneer

LAWRENCE COUNTY -- Churches have been a safe haven for the sick and needy for as long as Christianity has existed. This is still true today, at least for many churches and religious communities. But even in generous communities such as our own, churches cannot take care for every one or every need.

Lawrence County's long-time residents remain largely Christian, church-going folks with deep roots in their various denominations of Christianity. While other cultures have been welcomed and studied here, western South Dakota rests squarely in the northern tier of the Christian Bible belt.

Lifelong ties to the community aren't as common as they once were though, and more young families in the county do not have a church family upon whom they rely on an ongoing basis. When crisis hits, churches are often the place people turn for help.
One look in the local yellow pages reveals that there are more listings for churches than most other entities.

Since Deadwood launched itself on the backs of a voracious appetite for gold, the hauty and sometimes-wicked lifestyles of the hearty souls who built our early communities also gave rise to record numbers of the faithful. Those faithful were anxious not only to save the souls of the greed-filled heathens of Deadwood Gulch but also to do good works and spread Christ's love in and around the Hills.

But are our churches still serving that purpose and really being sought out by those who need help? And what are they able to do to meet that need? Is poverty really a problem that the church should handle, or are there sufficient resources on the state and federal level to tackle the problem of poverty in our communities?

Steve Agan, pastor of Lead and Whitewood Presbyterian Churches and coordinator of the Preacher Smith Ministry in Deadwood, thinks that poverty is definitely the church's problem. "I think Jesus would be appalled at what the churches in the United States are not doing," Agan exclaimed. He added that this may not necessarily be true for our local churches, but nonetheless he feels that churches in general need to focus more on the needy in their communities rather than new church buildings and other expensive self-improvement undertakings.

"We are not just called to help people in Africa, but around the corner too," he said.

So how do churches help needy people around the corner? Most pastors in our communities seem to agree that they can do little besides offer temporary solutions.
"We do a lot of band-aids," said Jerry Savage, pastor at the Northern Hills Church of Christ in Spearfish. He admits, though, that temporary fixes are usually not good fixes. "We can always feed people," Savage said, "and we have a benevolence fund for people who may need temporary financial assistance." The latter seems to constitute a significant need around the county, especially with the increasingly high cost of living.

Tim North, Corps Administrator of the Salvation Army in Spearfish, agrees. "We see a lot of people who are unable to pay their utility bills," he said. "We try to meet the basic needs for a decent living, anything to keep the household together."

Another need that most pastors identified is affordable housing. The Rev. Kent Stillson of Our Savior's Lutheran Church in Spearfish considers the high cost of housing the most pressing problem in Spearfish. "People can't afford to live here so they move to surrounding communities which in turn affects those places," he explained.

The Rev. Bunker Hill of the Spearfish Ministerial Association concurred. "There's nowhere in Spearfish for poor people to live," he said. He mentioned that they can provide temporary funds for housing, but again, are unable to present a long-term solution.

Whereas Spearfish churches are frustrated with the housing situation, pastors in Lead and Deadwood face a slightly different situation. The Rev. Agan noted that a lot of people there scrape by on minimum wage and have to move from job to job to ensure steady income. Many jobs depend upon tourism, so availability and income fluctuate according to the season. This makes it very difficult for some families to make ends meet on a continuous basis.

"Many people don't have health insurance, and child care is a very real problem, especially when parents work in shifts and on minimum wage, which isn't enough to pay for decent child care," Agan added. In his capacity as coordinator of the Preacher Smith Ministry he tries to meet a variety of needs in the community, everything from medical bills and school tuition to groceries and Christmas presents for underprivileged children.

The other side of the coin:

- In Whitewood, 37.5 percent of households earn more than $35,000 per year
- In Lead, 41 percent of households earn more than $35,000 per year
- In Deadwood, more than 39 percent of households earn more than $35,000 per year.
- In Spearfish, 41.5 percent of households earn more than $35,000 per year
- Countywide, 46.5 percent of households earn more than $35,000 per year
- State-wide, 50 percent of households earn more than $35,000 per year
- But in households with only a female head-of-household, 30.4 percent live below the poverty level
All information gathered from the U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Register