A seminarian who works with troubled teenaged girls commenting on James P. Wind's article, "Leading Congregations, Discovering Congregational Cultures".

Wind was right about looking at the children of a congregation, to study their experience of congregational life. I work as a chaplain at a home for troubled teenage girls. In my time there, I have primarily worked with the African-American, Baptist girls. They "took me over" promptly after my arrival, and have been my most regular attendees, as I take them to the church of their choice every other week. I have been attending a large Southern Baptist church every other week for well over a year and a half, and I am usually the only person who is not Black.

The girls have plenty of different reasons for attending church regularly-to see friends, talk to boys, and get away from where they are the rest of the week. But I have noticed too, they seem to use church as a way of creating power for themselves in circumstances where they are otherwise powerless. In church, they are children of God, where older women tenderly scold them, men are kind and respectful, where they can pray for themselves and others, and receive prayer and positive attention. They form a positive small group within the institution where they live. God is their homey, Who provides them with a different identity, a more positive identity, which they dip in and out of regularly. They can pray, and see their prayers answered. The Holy Spirit falls on them-power no social worker can take away.

I realize I am part of their means of dealing with power. I am their means of getting to church, and then once there, they became the experts. For once they had an adult whom they could educate. (Not that they did not try to pull some fast ones too, but that was fine.) They would tell me the story of Black church culture, of what their mothers and grandmothers would do, how their "home church" would do things, differently from this church. I would listen, and these girls of fourteen to sixteen would tell me their story of how the Black church aided their survival, and sense of power. In sidelong ways, they would draw me into their discussions of morality and theology. These are not "angels with dirty faces." These are children who have lived through the kind of horrors we shiver over with drawn brows in theology and pastoral care classes. They are both victims and perpetrators. But in their congregation, they are young ladies of respect, and knowledge and endurance. They are God's good pleasure.

"Cinderella" is as grim a story of survival as any Antarctic exploration, or POW experience. How well a congregation equips children to deal with all the outrageousness they are largely "powerless" before is as great a testament to the efficacy of faith and religion as anyone needs to find. A congregation can be a fairytale (and I mean this in the most brutally practical sense) place, where what a child dreams of being true can be true. Church can be the place where they are welcome, and valued, a few hours a week when they need not fear being hit or yelled at, where they can believe that God can be on their side. The congregational culture that conveys the indomitability of human kindness is to be respected.