By Rev. Dr. Dawn Weaks
Pastor, Connection Christian Church
As we live into 2023 as a community, I would like to suggest new words for a new year.
I just completed a two-year study of ministry in oil field areas. My next few columns will focus on my findings. What weighs most on my heart is what we call employees of the petroleum industry.
“Oil field trash” is what workers call themselves, and how our area refers to them.
Like other derogatory monikers for marginalized groups, the origin of this phrase was not complimentary. It was born in the 1920’s from the social division between company men and contract laborers. Company men lived in worker communities designed to keep families together. Contractors were seen as temporary, less valued labor. They lived wherever they could make do, often without their families whom they left back home.
When a boom happened, the historic response of our community was something like, “Lock up the whiskey and hide the women because that oilfield trash is coming to town.”
But those whom the epitaph was hurled against picked it up and retooled it for themselves. Now a day driving around our area will yield the sighting of proud bumper stickers heralding, “Oilfield Trash Spending Oilfield Cash.” It would be funny, except that this is how people are still too often treated. And too often how our community is treated.
I love our community, so it is painful for me to criticize. But there is no denying the data. The rates of community health for Odessa fall below national and even state averages. For example, US News and World Report gives Ector County a 34 out of 100 for its overall health, and states that our life expectancy rate is nearly 3 years below the national average.
Our county’s rate of every major disease greatly exceeds that of the state of Texas and the nation. Our rate of smoking, drinking, and drug use exceed that of other counties in our state. A recent study by the Permian Adult Literacy Coalition discovered that over a third of adults in our area do not read above a third-grade level.
As a Christian pastor, I think churches are called to value people and teach our culture how to value them as well. Those who claim the Judeo-Christian tradition carry the message of the biblical prophet Isaiah who declared the holy worth of God’s children. Isaiah proclaimed that those who had been maligned should be valued once again, and that those who were left without an advocate would be given a partner. This all starts with a new name: “No longer will they call you Deserted, or name your land Desolate. But you will be called My Delight is In Her, and your land, Married.” (Isaiah 62:4) For the Permian Basin, that means the church calling oil field workers not “trash,” but “treasure”, and teaching the culture to do the same.
Let’s talk and pray about that!
