As the Word became flesh and dwelled as Jesus with people of the day, the people of the modern church are challenged to likewise "pitch their tents" with the indigenous people of today's culture.

But the church has frequently lost its way in relating to the nation's working class people. Reconnecting will require a dramatic shift in the scope of ministry, a determination to relate everyday ministry to the daily practices of people, how they work, take care of each other.

That in the proverbial nutshell is what theologian and one-time cab driver Dr. Tex Sample told a packed Amphitheater audience during a Convocation March 21, 2000 at The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. But this writing won't do justice to Sample's highly evocative, sometimes salty, country-singing, humorous style of delivery urging the church to relate to the practices of working class people. His dynamic phrasing featured colorful descriptors of how upper middle class churchgoers stereotype working class persons ("conspiracy of taste," "imperialism of language," "impeccable formalism," "legitimation of inequality," "strategies of condescension").

His points were usually "brought home" with a homespun, pithy narrative spiced frequently with country music lyrics likely familiar these days on the streets he knew as a boy in Brookhaven, MS. His lead story for the day described the challenge a graduate of St. Paul Seminary faced in counseling a despondent young man in Kansas. (Sample is The Rogers Professor of Church and Society at the Seminary, located in Kansas City.) For a time in counseling the young man, Sample said, the pastor felt he wasn't getting through. "He was afraid that he would find no way to help," Sample said. Then the young man, pacing the room, described feeling as though "I am in a tunnel with no light." Unconsciously the pastor responded with the lyrics of a country tune suggesting that when the light DOES appear, it's attached to a train bearing down. (Egad, this writer doesn't know country lyrics at ALL.) For the next hour, Sample said, the counseling session proceeded with a series of apropos country lyrics and two minds and hearts met. "And the Word became flesh," Sample said. Words of ministry, he said, will not have much meaning in today's culture, unless "they become embedded in the practices" of people.

Tex Sample (named Tex by his father after a slave woman who was close to Tex's family) is a prolific author who told his Seminary audience that "people can never have read too many books." But he added that academics and church leaders need to remember that "oral critique" is a powerfully relevant discipline for working class folks.

Against the backdrop of change marked by technology and growing diversity, Anglo/European women now comprise the largest segment of today's working class. Another strong working class segment consists of racial ethnics and immigrant persons. He acknowledged the impact and importance of the latter, but Sample seldom strayed far from his roots, often amplifying his points with anecdotes involving working class whites, the kind of people "I know through my skin." He also spoke dramatically of the degradation of the workplace and work and the deterioration of the labor scene "about which the church can't do much" because its overall relationship with working class people isn't strong.

"Class happens," he said at one point. "Take a look around you at the giving and taking of orders and how that is done, how respect is given and received, how deference is given to some and how some are demeaning to others." Imposition of one's practices on the lives of others is a "ritual of inequality," he said.

In an afternoon workshop, Sample advised professional church leaders to rekindle and reconstruct their relationships with blue collar people by looking for signs of resistance in their congregations and identifying with working class individuals. He indicated that despite their best efforts, most leaders will not be able to effect far-reaching systemic change.

Sample was this year's Hein-Fry Lecture Series speaker at the Seminary. The author of many books on the interface between faith and culture, the 65-year-old Sample addressed the topic: "Class Matters: Mission Across Unseen Divides." The Hein-Fry Series is an endowed lectureship, which annually fosters original scholarship and aims to foster enriching theological dialogue throughout the church.