Life Is A (Mission) Trip Rev. Ron Robinson, All Souls Church, Shreveport, LA Nov. 9, 2014 When the UU World magazine did its cover story on our church and community ministry four years ago in an article called Ministry in Abandoned Places, we were on the cusp of many changes that have come about since then. I will talk about those changes and developments today, but let me say upfront we are again on the cusp of many changes. So if I were to come back in four years expect to hear then of many different things than today. One of the marks of our success as an emerging church in a changing unchurched cultural landscape is that we are constantly changing our form to meet our mission, rather than the other way around. In the 11 years of our existence, we have met in ten different fairly regular spaces, and have also worshipped in many more places even then those (including at abandoned buildings, in closed school grounds, and at our first community garden area on land owned by another church, and now regularly we worship in the two properties that once were abandoned and are now owned by the non profit foundation we started; in addition to that, we regularly now worship with two non-UU churches each month as well). And during that same time, we have had four different name changes. Of course, four years from now, we might also be non-existant as a group, that is always a part of the risk of being an organic missional church, but I trust that even were that to happen that the relationships we have formed would continue the mission of loving the hell out of this world, especially the part of this world where we focus our love, on the places and people others find unloveable, continuing in different form and fashions to grow healthy lives and neighborhoods through small acts of justice done with great love. At heart, ours and other missional churches say that the church does not have a mission; instead, The Mission has, creates, the church. The why of what we now call The Welcome Table Church is what determines the how of The Welcome Table. In talking about our church, we always start with the people in our zipcode. That is one of the key markers of what is called the missional church movement. The problems of the world come before the problems of the church because the church is a response to what ails the world. The point is not to become the Best Church In the community but the best church For the community. It is wrong to have a healthy wealthy church in an area where people are sick and poor and oppressed and suffering. We live and have our ministry in the 74126, a zipcode that covers far north Tulsa, on the edge, part in the city and part outside the city limits. The main number we focus on as a church is not how many are worshipping with us, but that we die 14 years sooner than in the zipcode with the highest life expectancy just 6 miles away down the same street we are on. In 2009, the University of Oklahoma did a nutrition study with us that found in our area 60 percent cant afford healthy food even if there was access to it; 55 percent worry about amount of food they have; 29 percent skip meals. In 2013 we did another study with OU of those who came to our free cornerstore pantry. It showed that 52.6 percent have high food insecurity; and 42.1 percent have very high food insecurity, experiencing hunger symptoms when surveyed; 68.4 percent of households have at least one member with nutrition-related chronic disease; 53 percent suffer depression and admit it; 47 percent with anxiety; 53 percent have high blood pressure; 32 percent high cholesterol; 47 percent obese. 42 percent of those we serve are black, 36 percent white, and 63 percent have under $10,000 annual household income, meaning they are part of the couple hundred thousand Oklahomans who are too poor for Obamacare because our state didn’t expand Medicaid. 47.4 percent are disabled. 42 percent have less than a high school education and 16 percent have a high school education. 40 percent of the vacant residences in our two mile service area, our “parish”, have been abandoned, are not for sale or for rent. Many are damaged, burnt. And that doesn’t count the abandoned commercial buildings. Recently several of our public elementary schools were closed, our post office was closed (even though many the people in our area don’t have computer access for email and there are no alternatives like ups or fedex, and we have a rising aging population and there is limited public transportation or the means to have or keep up an automobile or pay for gas; while the government kept open post offices in wealthier zipcodes with many resources) and our community swimming pools fight closure as each summer approaches. We live and serve in what is called an Abandoned Place of Empire. The term makes reference to the early centuries of the common era as monasteries and alternative communities left the major cities to live a different way of life and in a different set of values than that of the Roman Empire’s dominant culture of war and wealth and power and honor and shame. Now it is used to designate those very uncool, unhip, under resourced high poverty low life expectancy zipcodes of the American Empire where business investment and public investment flees, where people who remain often feel shame for their lives because if they were only rich enough, smart enough, had made better choices in their lives, hadn’t gotten sick and broke, they too they often believe would be able to move to the places where the supposed American Dream good life happens. The point of the mission of the missional church, you might say, is to let these people know that the American Dream might have left them behind, in a kind of worldly Rapture it feels like in our area, but that they are still and can be still a part of a Loving God’s Dream of justice for all. While those statistics describe some of our world, it it too we have great people working to connect and improve it because we love living there. We love being in a place where a little bit goes a long way. Where we are reminded daily that life isn’t ultimately about how much we have, or how much we can experience and take in and feel good about, but about how much spirit of life and love and liberation we can grow with and for others. Now that I have talked about our world and its needs; here is some of what we have done to make an impact on our small two mile radius part of the world. We have started a community center out of abandoned church building, for community meetings and holiday events and a free bookstore. A computer center. And we offer free wifi access even when the center is closed. We have a free foodstore that serves between a thousand and two thousand people monthly. We have a free clothing and household items room. We have a community art room. A 12 step group. For four years we hosted a health clinic, and now partner with the local health department which built a new medical center and clinic in our area. We bought a block of abandoned houses and turned it into a community gardenpark and orchard where events and meals are also held. We worked to get more than 25 abandoned burned out houses torn down and up to 250 pieces of property cleaned up. We partner with three of our schools in our area and helped start a foundation for support at one of them, our public high school, my alma mater. We support the few other nonprofits in our area and work together to throw community resource fairs, and have helped provide beautification at some of our struggling local businesses. By paying some of our local neighbors on contract at $10 an hour when they work for us we seek to set a standard of fairer wages, and through it have helped several to remain in their homes. Speaking of homes, we are waiting word from a government agency that might allow us to take ownership of 34 public low rent houses in our area, only 14 of which are occupied. Our goal is to get them occupied, to promote home ownership and to use them for neighborhood projects and through them to turn more blight into beauty. We have done all this because few others were, and because it is how we live our faith, how we follow our missional motto of “loving the hell out of this world.” Now here is the kicker statistics that set us apart from some mega church or some big nonprofit doing things like this: We have never had more than 25 or so in worship; we usually have between three and a dozen in worship; the smaller we got the more we were able to do, and the more we have done the smaller we get; the more relational and organic we get. We don’t have church membership; no one gets paid a salary either in the church or nonprofit we created (we are not averse to that; we would like to see that happen but with limited resources it hasn’t yet taken top priority); and the church which started it all now doesn’t have a budget, a board, or bylaws, or a building of its own. We have done it through putting mission with and to others first, community belonging second, personal growth third, and worship fourth though all are important. We have done it through partnerships with others and not caring whether they became a part of the worshipping part of church or not, whether they believed like us or not. We have done it by risking doing things poorly, and failing our way often, and learning from our mistakes. When we get stolen from, when we get vandalized, when we have our buildings burned down by people passing through and using them, we curse then we realize our blessings of being in the right place serving the right people and getting the chance to grow our spirit of generosity and abundance. We have done it with whole new groups of people who cycle in and out of missional relationship with us. Only a very very few have been with us from the time we started in 2003 trying to build a normal kind of church in a fast growing suburb. Even almost all of those who were with us when we made our missional transformation leap in 2007 and created the community center for others in which we as a group would then gather for worship have moved or died. We are continually recreating ourselves as church in order to meet our mission of making justice and love visible in the world to people and places others choose not to see or love or live with. In this way, we are living out Unitarian minister Theodore Parker’s admonition in his famous 1841 sermon, The Transient and Permanent in Christianity, when he said the church that did for the first century didn’t do for the fifth century, and the church that did for the fifth century didn’t do for the fifteenth century, and the church that did for the fifteenth century wouldn’t do for his 19th century; and I would update it and say the church that did for the 19th century, did for the 1950s and 60s and even did for the late 20th century does not do for some people and places in the 21st century. The mission is the Permanent; the form of church is the Transient. Or another way to talk about our radical changes for this radical new spiritual landscape is that as we failed at what we thought we wanted to be and should do, we became what the world, what the Divine I would say, needed us to be and do. We are an example of what is being done in many denominational and non denominational and different faith and spiritual communities today that are rethinking and re-embodying, re-incarnating church and religious organizations. Some like us are called missional church, others a little different are called emergent, still others a little different are new monastic, new friars, the organic church. Lots of different names for what is called the new “bigger bandwidth” of church expressions, church frequencies. And so-called traditional congregations that focus on attracting people to worship services are still needed and a part of this bigger bandwidth too. This is in keeping with a culture that has moved away from a one-size or one-kind fits all world. Even within each of these categories there is a bigger bandwidth; so that we are only one spot on the missional church spectrum. We need groups all across the bandwidth in order to connect with more folks living in more disconnected times, especially with the growing places like ours where there has been so much social fragmentation and such rising need for community. Quoting the theologian Jorgen Moltmann we try to remind our folks that the opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of both is community which can make us rich in the deepest ways. Surveyors of the spiritual landscape in North America have talked about how we have entered not only a Post Modern culture, but a post-Christian one, a post-denominational one, and now a post-congregational one as people seek newer and newer venues for their spiritual growth. This doesn’t mean that any of those things is not present and significant in our culture; they definitely are; by post we just mean they don’t hold the same central privileged place as they used to. One forecast indicated that whereas in the year 2000 some 70 percent of people in spiritual community were in congregations, that number will drop to 35 percent in 2025; the other 65 percent will be spread across a variety of different forms of community. Part of that is generational; another survey said of those over 70 years old some 70 percent were in congregations but the percentage is cut in half to 35 percent for those over 55 years old; and cut again to 15 percent for those over 35 years old; and is down to around 5 percent for those under 30 years old; and that the percentages aren’t changing as the youngest get older. Our health as a spiritual movement, as an association of congregations, might not be solely in the strength of our congregations anymore but at least equally in the strength of how diverse we can embody ourselves across that new bigger bandwidth. This holds true for individual congregations and areas as well as for the Association as a whole; it is the reality behind what the UUA now calls its Congregations and Beyond focus. It was exemplified in the theme of last year’s General Assembly in Providence, RI, Love Reaches Out, and in this coming year’s General Assembly in Portland, OR called Building A New Way. And especially I would say we need to rethink church forms if we want to build a new way with people and places of class and ethnicity and perhaps age where we have little presence now; not only us but little presence of any progressive religious body. When we use the word missional, it is important to note that it comes from the Greek word mission, to be Sent. We are to be not members of a religious club, not even ultimately bearers of a religious message ready with our elevator speeches and brands and bumper stickers, but to be ourselves and through our communities living missives, embodiments of what we find Sacred, and incarnating that in places and peoples so many in positions of power and influence and wealth seem to deem profane. In doing this We and the many new church missional manifestations in the world today, some much more radical than we are, are shifting from church as a What to church as a Who. You don’t attend church; you become church. Church isn’t built around getting people to “come to us, become like us” but “going to them, loving and serving them, where and as they are”; anything else that happens is a secondary byproduct. Church in this new way is really like it was in the older ways when it didn’t require it to be a 501c3 organization, with a building of its own, bylaws,boards, budgets. Those may be helpful to carrying out the mission, of course, but they aren’t what makes a church a church; that is its mission. Missional is different than mere mission as purpose. Missional means a people being sent to connect and serve with other people, going to where the most suffering and the least resources and abilities for healing are present. One’s mission could be simply to take care of people in one’s own group; that would in most cases be the opposite of missional. Missional is also the opposite of the old Missionary Church; the missional church goes into the world not to convert the world to becoming like it, to grow its membership, to meet its budget, but it goes into the world now to be converted by the world and its needs, it hurts. Especially change is needed in our changed environment where institutional church is not at the center of community life anymore as it was not too many years ago (some date the change to a Sunday evening in 1963 when the Fox movie theater opened up in Greenville, South Carolina, breaking the church lock on Sunday even in such a churched place and time). In this new air we breathe, our mission, our end, our desired outcome is not to make more Unitarian Universalists, that is at best just a means to the real end of creating a just and beloved world, especially in the most unjust and least loved places. When we get our ends and our means mixed up we cut ourselves off from the real lifeblood that will sustain us. It is not just growing a church, but what kind of church are we growing, what difference is it making in the community around it; not just adding members, but what are we adding into members themselves, how transforming them from being a part of what Conrad Wright our great UU historian calls “a collection of religiously interested individuals” into a church of boldness changing the world. How to form a people that will discern where those are whose broken hearts are breaking our hearts, calling to us to respond, who remind us that religion is not ultimately about us and for us alone, what we believe or even how we are feeling, just a bunch of different “us’s” filling the airwaves with our truths, no matter how right they are, while suffering deepens around us all. In the Book of Proverbs, there is a famous saying that without a vision, the people will perish (p-e-r-i-s-h). Now, especially as I survey the American Empire this week, I say that having vision, even the right vision, is not enough. Now what is needed, as UU colleague, Dr. Brent Smith, used to say, is for people with a vision to parish (p-a-r-i-s-h), or as I would put it to go on a mission trip to incarnate ourselves as diverse communities of two and more together in and for our parishes. Without parish-ing anew we will continue to perish. For Those with Empire visions and values have been parish-ing, have been committing time, talents, and treasure to creating and sustaining new communities and growing relationships even among those who are hurt I would say by the very visions of a nostalgic reactionary divisive world. Messages and visions are lost in our world today without being magnified in and through community relationships. I know that by us forming the kinds of relationships we have in our area where life and death concerns beat out other kinds of concerns, that we have been able as a result to be trusted when we share facts and truths about poverty and health care, about the environment, about voting rights, about race and oppression and privilege and welcoming differences. To love the hell out of this world means first being willing to, so to speak, go to hell. This is the way forward that too many religious progressives have not taken as we spend all our energy it seems on our ages old identity issues and thinking we can think or argue or persuade our society into new ways of acting. Instead we need to be, now more than ever, acting and embodying our values and addressing the real life and death and hell-ish issues of people in the community, creating the kind of stories of healing and change and new life that will capture the interest and imagination and participation of others. We have, and have had for quite some time, barely over a thousand plus congregations in our religious association, continuing to have an ever shrinking percentage of the national population. “Ministry in abandoned places” could be another way of describing life in congregations for a huge portion of our association. But if we change the scorecard of success and the kind of numbers we focus on, I believe in a dozen years, we could, really could, have easily a thousand new diverse communities of all shapes and sizes in a thousand different ways and places, ones that are committed to the ancient and still needed mission to bless the poor, heal the sick, free the oppressed and imprisoned, feed the hungry, welcome the resident aliens, and end unjust debts. Do that and the love we give away will bring new life to all, even us.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 21:48:00 +0000
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