C ASE S TUDY Change from Within The ABC-AME Church Marios I. Katsioloudes, Derek R. Avery, E. Eli Kass This article describes the dilemma of a senior pastor whose urban church lost its community focus as the congregation became more affluent. His task was to determine what role the church should play in helping its less fortunate neighbors and how to get the members to support this new vision. Where there is no vision the people perish. —Proverbs 29:18 P ASTOR HAWKINS should have been happy. His church, ABC African Methodist Episcopal (AME), had weathered what could have been hard times. Life in the inner city, where ABC was located, had become increasingly difficult. Many of the lower-paying jobs had dried up, sending much of the local community into poverty. The neighborhood had deteriorated to the point where drug use, prostitution, and HIV were becoming rampant. Furthermore, juvenile burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft rates were all on the rise. Yet the congregants were not only surviving these hardships, but were in many cases also prospering. Given the deterioration of the community and the fact that most who possessed the means to go elsewhere, many of the congregants had left the city and headed for the suburbs. These changes could have resulted in ABC Church’s losing its congregation, making Pastor Hawkins a shepherd without a flock. Instead, much of the congregation continued to return to the city for their spiritual well-being. Consequently, the Sunday prayer service continued to strengthen, causing membership to increase dramati- cally. In fact, the congregation nearly doubled over the past four years to approximately a thousand members. Moreover, the improved financial status of the congregants has been reflected in the offering plate, leaving the ABC Church in good financial shape. Yet despite NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, vol. 15, no. 2, Winter 2004 © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 239