pg. 24 — lightandlifemagazine.com
urfm You are the church
Among other things, he witnessed tavern owners and
businessmen giving cash bribes and alcohol to police,
who also had ties to prostitutes.
“I couldn’t believe what I was experiencing,” Owen
said. “I said to the Lord, ‘If you ever give me a chance to
have anything to do with addressing police corruption,
I’d like to be able to do that.’”
Owen said that as he graduated seminary, “I knew I was
called to urban ministry, but I was supposed to go back
here to New York to serve.” However, doors closed in his
home conference to urban ministry opportunities, “and
in the providence of God, He called us to Minneapolis.”
His wife, Belva, worked either 3–11 p.m. or 11 p.m.–7
a.m. shifts as a Veterans Affairs nurse, and the young
pastor decided that as “my church people went to
bed, that’s when the city came alive.” He would watch
television reports of nighttime crime and think, “Who is
with these people who are suffering these experiences of
domestic abuse or shootings or fires? ... Who’s winning
them to Jesus?”
He started by carrying a portable police scanner in
his car and heading to the sites of police calls. Owen one
night delivered cake and tea to the 3rd Precinct police
station. No officer wanted to touch the cake or tea until
one older lieutenant finally said, “Come on in, John. I’ll
eat some of your cake.” Owen later learned the officers
previously were the victims of a cake spiked with a
laxative.
“I learned from that experience that they’re just like us;
they have to trust you. That began my involvement with
them, and pretty soon they started asking me to ride with
them,” said Owen, whose first Minneapolis ride-along
was with a Black officer and his White partner.
The chaplaincy program took off, and Owen’s efforts
were documented as part of the book “Miracle at City
Hall” by Al Palmquist with Kay Nelson. The Minneapolis
program became the model for police chaplain programs
across the country. Owen traveled in 1973 to Washington,
D.C., to meet with other chaplains for the founding of
the International Conference of Police Chaplains that he
served as its first treasurer.
The following year, Owen was one of the urban pastors
who participated in the Free Methodist Church’s first
Continental Urban Exchange (CUE) at the International
Friendship House in Winona Lake, Indiana, where
the denomination had its headquarters at the time. He
credited the efforts of Charles Kingsley, then the director
of the denomination’s Christian Witness Crusades, who
“in all of his travels found us urban pastors. He knew
what we were doing. He knew that we were living out the
gospel. He saw us in our context.”
He became a regular participant in future CUE
gatherings that eventually led to the formation of the
Free Methodist Urban Fellowship. Owen acknowledged
that he and the other urban pastors didn’t always see
eye to eye with denominational leaders, such as when a
list named the “top 10 churches,” which primarily were
located near the denomination’s colleges and universities.
Owen explained, “We said it’s absolutely reversed. The
top 10 churches are in Buffalo and in Minneapolis and in
Chicago and in all these places where nobody recognizes
them as the authentic church. We’re multiethnic. We’re
multicultural. We’re primarily focused on the poor —
not the rich and highly educated.”
Owen, of course, isn’t opposed to the churches near
educational institutions. In fact, he served for a year as
an associate pastor for youth and families at the First
Free Methodist Church next to Seattle Pacific University.
He said with a laugh, “I was the oldest youth pastor the
congregation ever had.” He emphasized intergenerational
connections and outreach to local schools and the Union
Gospel Mission.
Capital Calling
After serving as a pastor in Buffalo, New York, Owen
found himself without a church appointment, and he
became the chaplain for the Erie County Sheriff ’s Office.
Meanwhile, he became increasingly burdened that Free
Methodist ministry had ceased within the nation’s capital.
“Instead of following through with what we were
called by B.T. Roberts and the Lord Jesus Christ, to reach
the oppressed and the different, we took off and we left,”
he said.
The Owens moved to Washington, D.C., in 1997
to begin a chaplain ministry that would revive Free
Methodist outreach in the capital city. They were able to
rent a house (which they later bought) in a predominantly
Black neighborhood from Hubert T. Bell, an African
American man who served as an assistant director of the
U.S. Secret Service and later as the inspector general of
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
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