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Permaculture as Proclamation: Understanding the Land as Neighbor

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This week’s story is written by Marie Page, a congregational learning partner at Church of All Nations (CAN). She shares about CAN’s experience of understanding the land as their neighbor. 

Throughout the past year, our leadership discerned that learning how to relate to the land as neighbor would be the most far-reaching and impactful focus for our RIH partnership. Over the past

People dig in a garden
The community members at Church of All Nations work together to prepare the land for new plants.

winter, we had a core group of pastors, staff, youth, and adult members who met regularly to study the guiding philosophies and practices of permaculture in preparation for spring. The multi-year plans for our property were made after many discussions with our friends at Ecological Design [the women-owned design group behind Main Street Project, Tiny Diner, and more]; they incorporated a kid’s play area, culinary and medicinal herbs, fruit and nut trees, berry bushes, a pergola, and an outdoor worship space- all priorities for our community. 

 

When spring [finally] came, we got to work! Our regular core group meetings turned into work days, and we even had a few “Permablitz” events with the whole community to kick start some of the most needed projects: removing typical sod, spreading compost, reseeding bee-friendly lawn, planting trees and perennials, and a lot of weeding.

 

We were honestly surprised by the number of people who came out regularly for core team meetings and that even more came out for our Permablitz and work day events. We could see the enthusiasm spreading as real visible changes took root around the church- wildflowers and grasses that we’d maybe only seen in stores or pictures, and especially our herbs. Our community has been blessed by several meals made with herbs grown right outside our doors, that many of us planted and watered and weeded. 

 

We’ve also had many positive interactions with neighbors we’d not talked to previously. Many  were grateful for the work we’re doing and curious to learn more. In addition, we’ve had talks with the local park just down the

person gardening
Working with the plants.

hill, on our same lake- they’ve been working to foster native species all around their property and are enthusiastic. There was one individual who must’ve been upset over the temporary visual changes when we were doing initial digging and reseeding- they reported us to our local watershed district, but when the district came out and saw our plans, they were thrilled with the work we’re doing, as it will greatly slow the water flow and prevent erosion down into Silver Lake at the base of our hill. 

 

Our children have responded beautifully. They were deeply impacted by our VBS program we put on this year, which we crafted intentionally as an offshoot of our permaculture project, to help them understand what we were doing and feel included in it. As we’d spent a lot of time studying how water moves around our property (in preparation for the addition of swales and rain gardens), we created a curriculum around the many ways God uses water to bring forth and sustain life. We were astonished by the degree of attention, focus, and enthusiasm for the stories and activities this year- far more than any of the standard programs we’ve put on in the past. At the end of the week, they each got a watering can and helped water the herbs in our front yard.

 

A few weeks ago we had a special Sunday program where 20 of our grade school children helped us harvest some of those same herbs they’d helped water this spring, which we will be processing for our craft fair fundraiser this winter. We were able to teach them how to care for the plants and pick gently with gratitude for the work they have done to make this gift for us. We also showed them how to notice which flowers have bees but to not be afraid of them- because the bees don’t want to hurt us, just like we don’t want to hurt them. They also learned how to notice when the herb is too young or too old to be picked.

 

This aspect has been the most profound for many of us. In bringing many forms of nature closer to our building, we’ve been able to reshape the narratives that many of us were raised with: nature is an angry “other” that will harm us if given the chance. Instead, we’re able to experience and share with our children that the land is loving and abundant when we approach respectfully- full of food and medicine both for us and for the many forms of crawling friends that have moved in to enjoy the harvest. (The variety and quantity of bugs, bees, butterflies, and frogs has surprised even those of us who’ve lived in this area our whole lives!)

 

people posing with their construction
Permablizters pose under what will become a pergola, for plants to grow on and people to meet under.

It has been profoundly healing for many of us not just to learn these things ourselves but to watch our children grow up in a community where the land as neighbor is part of the air we breathe- seeing them greet their favorite plants, not scream and run from grasshoppers or even bees but approach carefully, with curiosity. This re-narration of “other” into “neighbor,” then friend, and then family is fundamental to our ministry as a church. It fills us with profound joy and hope to work towards a future where the natural open-hearted curiosity of our children can be guided with love to carefully navigate and embrace the unknown, rather than shrinking back or isolating from it in fear. Their hearts and minds, shaped in this way, will shape a better world. 

 

Thanks to the support of our members and partners like RIH, God is bringing forth a harvest far beyond what we could’ve asked or imagined- in our land, and in our lives. We can’t wait to see the new developments next year will bring!

From Frustration to Transformation: The Public Church Framework as a Process

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This week’s story is written by Stephen Richards, a congregational learning partner at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Steve writes about his transformation throughout the process of practicing the Public Church Framework. 

Ever had an argument in the car with your partner about the “right way” to get somewhere? My wife and I frequently have such “debates”, and it often boils down to this: she likes to plan how to get somewhere in advance, whereas I’m more of a “wing-it” guy. She likes to pre-navigate potential traffic snarls and find the most economical route to get somewhere, whereas I know where I need to go, have a vague idea of how to get there, and if there are any holdups along the way I’ll navigate my way around them based on what looks like the best option at the time. Needless to say, my wife and I often find driving together a frustrating experience.

 

church with people outside
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.

This past year, working with the Riverside Innovation Hub has felt a lot like driving with my wife. When St Luke’s first started this journey and I was invited to be part of the team, I was excited about the idea of working to get more young people to come to church. Of course I wanted more young people coming to church; I wanted lots of people to come to church. However, I quickly began to realize that this was not the point. So I pushed back. If this is not about getting people into church, then what is it about? I remember regularly expressing a sense of frustration to our coach that I simply had no idea what we were trying to achieve. The “goal” was to find ways to connect with young adults in our community, but how to do that and what that might look like was opaque. “So what” and “What next” questions dominated my thinking. I found the process frustrating. I wanted a road map. I wanted a planned route from Point A to Point B. The trouble is, that’s not the way this works. You see, when you start asking “What is God up to in our community?” you’re heading into uncharted territory. 

 

For too long I’d been looking for God inside the church building, and many “solutions” for how to address the dearth of young adults in our churches often begin there. If only our services were more exciting, if only we had better programming and the like. Using such reasoning we also talk about how God is or is not working in our midst. More people in church equals God is working, and vice versa. But instead, we were told to reflect on Ezekiel’s vision of the river flowing from the temple, and imagine this flowing out into our community. I liked the image, but continued to push back. I made the point that if the river was flowing from the temple then surely this means the river is flowing out from our church building? Our coach patiently allowed me to navigate my way through this. 

When I joined this project I thought it was about connecting young adults to God in church. However, as we began to follow the river (both inside and outside of our community), I suddenly realized that it was about a different kind of connecting. In fact, it was me who was connecting with God as I began to realize my entire understanding of mission had been grounded in the notion that there was nothing of God going on outside “in the world.” Sitting inside a church building, I’d been staring at the walls wondering why more people weren’t inside with us, rather than going outside and asking them. The walls were preventing me from engaging with people. They were a physical barrier between our community and our neighbors. Whereas the veil separating us from God had been torn down in Christ, and in the years since then we had been physically and theologically putting it back up.

 

As we walked the three art forms, I became to see where God is at work outside the church. I should not have been surprised, because God is always at work everywhere! How do I know this? Because God is everywhere. There is no place where God is not:

 

“Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there” (Psalm 139:7-8).

 

Once I began to realize that church is not the Ground Zero, the modus operandi of God’s activity in any community, I began to realize that the roadmap of mission I had been using had been leading me away from young adults; leading me further inside the church building (where they are not), instead of outside and into our neighborhood (where they are).

 

As we continued with Interpretation and Discernment work, I sensed that not only I had changed, but the team had also had a transformation. Our focus had shifted. We had begun to dream and imagine how we might go and meet people, rather than sitting in church waiting for them to come to us. Jesus told us to “Go,” and we were going. We began to look at ways we were already connecting with our neighbors; the Montessori School in our church building was an obvious one, but also the green space out front. We learned that people were using the chairs we had placed out there, they were tying ribbons to the Peace Pole and using the food box. We decided to focus on that as space as a place where God was present; Holy ground where we could start wading into the river.

people talk in groups outside
Folks from the congregation and the neighborhood gather at St. Luke’s “front porch” to be together and share ice cream.

And so we began. It was the start of summer and one of our team suggested we might offer people free ice cream after church on Sunday. So we did. We named it Ice Cream Sunday. For three months we stood outside the church eating ice cream, and inviting our neighbors to join us. In doing so we met lots of people and got to know their stories. We got to tell them our stories, but we never used this as a recruitment tool; just a way of showing love to those around us, you know, doing the very thing Jesus told us to do (Matthew 2:39). And as we did this week after week, relationships began to form. Barriers came down. We began to wade into the river; first ankle deep, then knee deep and finally waist deep. Some people came back just to hang out with us; people who had never stepped inside our church building. And as we listened to their stories we realized that God was at work in their lives and in our community. In fact, God had always been working in our community, we’d just never taken the time to go outside and listen. But now we were outside, and listening, and starting to see the walls come down. We’d torn up the roadmap, and with the Spirit’s leading had started to “wing-it”…

The Healing Power of Dirt

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This week we hear from Ellie Roscher, a congregational learning partner at Bethlehem Lutheran Church. Ellie shares a story about the mutual transformation that comes from listening to and empowering young adult leaders. 

 

plants and welcome sign
The Garden at Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Minneapolis.

Siri, a talented and emerging folk singer, spends significant time on the road playing music. In between tours, she works at the front desk at Bethlehem even though she is skeptical of institutional religion and questions the existence of God. 

About a year ago, Siri found herself in a cycle of despair. She was feeling adrift and unsure of where her community was. And she was feeling cynical, angry and overwhelmed about climate change. She could hear the earth moaning and see it crying out. One night, in response to her lament a friend kindly offered, “Would it help to do something about it?” 

Siri took the challenge to heart. She floated her idea of starting a community garden to me and some other folks at Bethlehem. Yes, yes, yes. We helped her flush out her vision and celebrated with her when she received a generous Foundation Grant. Then it was time to begin. 

At the Riverside Innovation Hub, our guiding text is from Ezekiel 47. In it, we are led away from the temple to deeper water. Along the riverbank there are lush trees with fruit for food and leaves for healing. Siri had a prophetic vision to grow a garden outside the walls of Bethlehem. Bethlehem, a large and resourced church, had not yet leveraged its voice and power to address climate change in real and meaningful ways. We recognized Siri’s passion and vision as beautiful, and we met her there, downriver, to put her plan to action. 

Planting a seed requires the audacity of hope. Tilling the soil quiets the mind, brings peace to the heart, and slows time just a bit. Weeding is a spiritual practice. Watching seed transform is a living metaphor. Fresh air shakes the dust from our souls. Billowing clouds invite us to look all the way up and remember that we are small.

flowers
The late-fall blooms of the garden.

Siri was ready to move from despair. Her leadership invited others to do the same. She built beds, planted seeds, watered them and tended to them. She showed up week in and week out and created a space outside the walls of Bethlehem for folks to gather. Sunday school kids came out into the sunshine to guess what sprouts would become. A neighborhood kid asked if he could help water the beds, another asked if he could have a cucumber. More neighbors, who previously did not engage started congregating when Siri and volunteers showed up to work. More congregation members lingered outside the church. 

Now, at the end of the summer, the garden has exceeded all of our expectations. It is bursting with life. The sun flowers tower over us. The pollinators bring life and vibrancy and splashes of color. We tended to the earth and it is showering us with bounty. The neighbor who was the most skeptical has thanked Siri for creating a space for folks to gather. Congregation members have thanked her for inviting them out of the sanctuary to God’s nature. 

Siri, too, has been amazed at the transformation inside of herself. She is a pastor’s kid, and she has a lot of hurt toward the Christian institution. She sees the harm the church has caused in the world. “It has felt like

gigantic tectonic plates shifting in my being,” she said. “It has been truly transformational to go from overwhelmed to empowered. And to grow a garden on the grounds of a church has been important for me. I’m not ready to worship yet, but growing flowers and vegetables here and having the community rally around me has ushered in healing.” 

garden boxesBethlehem’s innovation team recognized Siri’s vision and leadership. We built our vision around the growing garden and our growing partnership with folks doing conservation and reforestation in the cloud forest of Guatemala. Siri will be one of the young adults traveling to Guatemala come January, after our garden is harvested. She kept asking me if I should send someone else instead, someone who has more clarity about God and church. I think of Ezekiel and smile. “No, you are perfect.” 

The garden has been a blessing. A physical reminder of God’s abundance. A place to gather and listen to the soil and and remember whose we are. It brings dignity to get down on our knees and get dirty. Get some earth under our fingernails. Siri said yes to an invitation to grow something new and rich and beautiful. It has given her hope. And community. Fruit for food and leaves for healing. We are all better for it. We are grateful. 

Summary of Phase Two: Equipping and Discerning

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On June 1, 2019 we wrapped up Phase Two of the Riverside Innovation Hub. Eight young adult Innovation Coaches worked with sixteen local faith communities over ten months to discern a new way forward for those congregations’ ministry with young adults in their context. This blog post will give you a quick overview of what happened and what we learned. However, the best way to learn what we discovered is by reading our learning report, “Mortal, Do You See? Innovative Ministry as Place-Based Vocational Discernment”.

10 people sitting on log in nature
RIH Staff went on retreat to the headwaters of the Mississippi to wrap of Phase Two of the project.

What Happened?

The Riverside Innovation Hub trained 8 young adult Innovation Coaches during August 2018. Each coach was assigned to 2 partner congregations. These coaches spent 20 hours a week working with each of their 2 congregations from August 2018 – May 2019, walking with them through our Public Church Framework towards discerning the future of their ministry with young adults. We also supported 9 other congregations who were interested in this work but did not have a coach working directly with them. 

The innovation teams at these congregations were taught the artforms of the Public Church Framework and spent the year putting these artforms into practice in their context. The artforms of the Public Church Framework are intended to help a faith community establish and deepen relationships with their neighbors in their context so they might see and hear how their neighbors are longing for good news. This is the work that leads to innovation. These innovation teams were also asked to invite young adults into this process and to allow these young adults to lead this process. 

At the end of 10 months of accompaniment, interpretation, and discernment each congregation submitted a grant proposal outlining the ways in which they hope to experiment with being a public church with their young adults over the next two years. These congregations were awarded between $25,000 – $30,000 for this experimentation.

Here is a summary of what we learned about young adults, congregations, innovation, the Public Church Framework, and how to effectively support this work.

What We Have Learned . . .

Young Adults

The most important thing we learned about young adults is that they are not very excited about being “known about”. They would rather you take the time to know them than know about them. They are not a demographic or a target market, they are unique individuals who often resist categorization. They are busy and very committed to their careers and their friends and to holistic living. They are willing to put time into leadership and the local church if they are being asked to invest their time in things that matter and make a difference. Many are not able or willing to move into traditional volunteer roles in the local church (committee member, Sunday school teacher, etc.). So they are looking for new ways to be plugged in. Your local congregation might not get young adults to return to worship. That’s okay. The question and challenge is how will your local congregation find the ways the places where young adults are actively living out their faith and how will you partner with them in those places? 

Congregations

Congregations are eager to be in meaningful relationships with young adults. There are some congregations who expect young adults to simply change their ways and become committed to the traditional church and its traditional practices and simply take over the leadership from previous generations while maintaining those traditional practices. But those congregations are few and far between. Most really want to become meaningful communities for young adults and are willing to do the hard work to become that type of community. Those who had the most success were the one who trusted the process of the Public Church Framework and stepped out in faith into the practice of accompaniment – meeting and listening to the neighbor. 

There are two necessary hurdles a congregation must overcome before being successful in this work. The first hurdle is their “why”. Why do they want to do this work? Why do they want to become a public church? Why do they want to engage their young adults in new ways? If your “why” is driven by anxiety about the church shrinking or dying, then the work will most likely not be successful. However, if the work is driven by compassion for your neighbor and for young adults, then your work will be fruitful because you will be more committed to developing relationships than simply numbers.

The second hurdle is your congregation’s threshold. Our partner congregations who have benefited the most through this project thus far are the ones who have moved beyond their church building and spent significant time meeting and listening to their neighbors – those who live and work in the neighborhood around the congregation. This work beyond the threshold often led to important relationships, insights, and partnerships that have truly shaped some innovative approaches to ministry. And it all started by walking out the door and being willing to meet the neighbor and hear their story.

Innovation

We are learning that innovation is hard – of course it is! Innovation is especially hard when we think its outcome must be something new, or shiny, or “better” than what we had before. We are learning that innovation is best understood vocationally. This means that innovative ministry grows out of simultaneously deeply listening to the neighbors’ stories and to God’s promises. Those two things inform one another. God’s promises change the way we hear and respond to the neighbors’ stories. And our neighbors’ stories change the way we hear and understand God’s promises. Innovation comes out of a disruption, or what we call a disorienting dilemma. The neighbor is always a disorienting dilemma. God is always a disorienting dilemma. The gospel is always a disorienting dilemma. When we are sorting out the relationship between these things, we are discerning vocation. Our partner congregations who are listening deeply to their neighbors AND simultaneously pondering God’s promises are actively discerning their vocation. This listening and pondering and discerning is what leads to innovation.

Public Church Framework

We are learning that the artforms of the Public Church Framework and their relationship to one another make the most sense when put into practice. This does not mean it is easy to be put into practice. There are many things that impede this public work – tradition, fear, lack of time, not knowing where to start, etc. But what we have learned is that it begins to make complete sense once a community of people begin to put it into practice. Once you begin practicing accompaniment you begin to understand what accompaniment is all about and why it is important. Once you begin practicing interpretation you begin to realize how important those stories you heard in accompaniment are and you begin to learn how to put those stories into conversation with God’s promises. Once you’ve done this interpretive work you begin to find yourself naturally asking questions that lead you into the practice of discernment and out of that discernment work you will a hear a call to proclamation. We are still convinced the Public Church Framework is a viable method for helping congregations faithfully engage a discernment process in relationship with their context.

Supporting This Work

We are learning that we learn better together. No two faith communities are the same but they all desire to be vibrant and effective. The most transformative learning happens when we allow our partner congregations to learn from one another. The Riverside Innovation Hub is committed to facilitating mutual learning relationships rather than functioning as a consultant. The key to supporting our partners has been the establishment and maintenance of trusted relationships, patience, and curiosity. We are also learning to leverage other cross-disciplinary resources at Augsburg University that will serve our faith communities well as they seek to develop the skills needed to engage their neighbors. Honest conversations, curious questions, and deep listening have become our most important tools for supporting congregations in their innovative work. 

 

We are eager to continue learning with our partner congregations and young adults as we move into Phase Three: Experimentation & Adaptation (September 2019-August 2021).

God in the Present Tense: A Story of Unfolding Proclamation

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Congregations in the Riverside Innovation Hub partnership have spent the better part of a year moving through the public church framework and taking stock of the learning and wonderings these experiences have generated. In the spring of 2019, teams submitted proposals for grant funds that outline their vision of the proclamation work they want to live into over the next two years. One of our innovation coaches, Baird Linke, shares the story of how this movement towards and into proclamation has and continues to unfold at New City Church.

Let’s hear it for the good news! Ten months gone by, and the churches connected to the Riverside Innovation Hub are preparing to put all their hard work and learning into implementing their grant applications! We are gathering to share our stories, to celebrate work well-done, and give thanks for the ways we have grown together. This is the stage in the Public Church Framework called proclamation, but it is not complete just by sharing the stories of the past year. Proclamation is not reporting—it does not live in the past-tense—to proclaim the good news is to invite others into the exciting “we know not what we will be” of what God is doing in the here and now. Proclamation is both remembering together where God’s been with us and joyfully participating in where God is going.

Team member gives presentation
New City presents their grant proposal to other RIH learning partners at the June 1st Learning Event.

I have worked with New City Church in Powderhorn-Phillips through this program, and I want to share their good news with you. New City Church is trying to do church in a new way (shocking, I know). The planters of New City recognize the complicity of mainline Christianity in the history of white supremacy, cis-heteronormativity, patriarchy, and environmental degradation. Their goal in planting the church was to counter that history with a model of church that centers marginalized voices. They do that by prioritizing the experiences of people of color, the environment, LGBTQ+ people, and women in the life of the church. They have grown quickly since starting out in a living room and have done so while talking explicitly about Jesus to a community that, by percentages, does not necessarily identify as Christian.

 

Their plan for the Innovation Hub grant is to use the resources for a new effort called

the Incarnation Fund that will connect people of color in the New City community to healing practices including somatic experiencing therapy, nature-based therapy, and spiritual direction. Participants will work in small cohorts to grow in community while, as individuals, work with practitioners of color on healing from trauma. New City believes that investing in individual healing makes communal healing possible. This vision hinges on a key belief that guides New City Church (and illustrates proclamation well): inward transformation leads to outward

transformation and vice-versa.

 

Many members of New City Church are already engaged in projects for outward transformation in the community. It is an activist church and the wealth of talents and community connections that New City holds was overwhelming at first. How could we choose just one cause to come behind, especially when there are already groups whose entire focus is on one of the many needs that New City cares about?

 

We realized that we needed to dig into New City’s young identity to find a use of the money that fit. We asked people about what value people found in New City and realized that it wasn’t that New City was doing the same justice work that the members are doing. People value New City because it gives them a place to root their work into a relationship with the divine and challenges people to learn how to be in a diverse community that centers marginalized voices. The community organizers didn’t need New City to be another organizer. The advocates didn’t need another advocate. They need a place where they can hear that they are not alone—that God is moving through a community with them. They are hungry for inward transformation.

 

A lot of resources have been spent over the last year on the inward transformation of white people in order to be in a racially diverse community where the cultural norms around white-body supremacy are broken down. That work has yielded huge dividends for the health of the New City community, and at the same time has dedicated time and energy into formation for white folks. Recognizing that disparity, New City wanted to balance the scales and use the Innovation Hub grant—the largest financial investment to come to New City outside of the Methodist church—to prioritize ministry for people of color. The Incarnation Fund took both of these needs we identified and aligned the creation of something new with the story of life that New City Church has been telling from the start.

 

The story of God is evolving and diversifying in different places and circumstances. Small changes in the genetic code result in wildly different forms of life, but it is all life. Our job in proclamation is to be spiritual ecologists, surveying the landscape for life in its abundance, celebrating old connections, new growth, and working to make that growth possible. The Incarnation Fund is rooted in this ecological vision of our communities—the healing of the whole is directly tied to the healing of the parts. The story of New City Church and the Incarnation Fund is just beginning, and it is one of many. I give thanks for the ways that God is moving in your hearts and communities, and I pray for courage and faith as you move forward sharing the good news you have heard and are a part of creating. Let’s hear it for the good news! Amen.

From Decision Making to Discernment

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The following story is from Amanda Vetsch, one of RIH’s Innovation Coaches. She shares her team’s experiences with discernment at University Lutheran Church of Hope (ULCH.) ULCH is located in Dinkytown near the University of Minnesota campus. Their work this year has focused on the challenges and opportunities of being a church in meaningful relationships with young  neighbors who are experiencing frequent transition.

 

In theory, our idea was rooted in the intersection between God’s story, Our Story, and Neighbor’s story so it should have felt good, but we trusted our guts and realized that we had made plans and decisions. We hadn’t actually practiced discernment.

 

The Innovation Team at ULCH had a meeting to begin discerning their next most faithful steps in response to all that they had been hearing, seeing, and learning through the artforms of accompaniment and interpretation. The conversation began with a grounding reflection, responses to that reflection, and flowed into naming the main themes from the stories we’ve heard or learned about thus far. Then, we began to brainstorm the ways that we might respond to those stories and came up with a couple of ideas to write into the grant. We moved toward making a plan to write the grant and set some due dates for ourselves.

ULCH presents at June 1 event
Innovation Team members from University Lutheran Church of Hope share their proposed idea at the RIH June 1st Learning event.

 

There was very little enthusiasm to begin writing or researching. As the Innovation Coach, this concerned me. I want my team to be excited about the work they are being called into. I didn’t want to shut down their idea, but I did need to investigate why the energy was low. Maybe it had nothing to do with the grant idea and more to do with the post-lunchtime lull, or the busyness in their work or personal lives, or maybe it was me projecting my own ideas onto what I expected them to come up with for the grant. As all good coaches do, I sent out an evaluation form. The form asked questions like:

  • On a scale from 1 – 10, how much energy do you have when you think about the work of the Innovation team?
  • If we were to start ALL over at the beginning of this work, where would you focus the accompaniment energy?
  • If there were NO boundaries to money, energy, or anything, what would you do for the grant proposal?

 

These questions were strategic. I wanted to know why the energy seemed low at our meeting. I wanted to know if they felt content with the listening they had done thus far and I wanted to push them to dream a little bit bigger in a more anonymous form. We also had a few one to one conversations amongst ourselves and multiple folks self identified that the group energy was low.  In reflecting upon this meeting, one team member said, “I think we felt a certain pressure to produce something in that first meeting. So we were pushing ourselves to come up with a really tangible product, and I don’t think we felt like we had the freedom to say that we had more listening to do.”

 

On the surface this meeting went well, we talked about the things we were supposed to talk about, we reflected on what we had learned, and came up with an idea.  In theory, our idea was rooted in the intersection between God’s story, Our Story, and Neighbor’s story so it should have felt good, but we trusted our guts and realized that we had made plans and decisions. We hadn’t actually practiced discernment.  

 

Then, the question is how do we go from decision making to discernment? For the ULCH Innovation Team, it meant reconvening our team. This time we started by rooting ourselves in a reflection practice that pushed us away from the tendency to intellectualize and into dwelling in the embodied responses. We took thirty minutes at the beginning of the meeting to reflect, dwell in, and share the ways that we had felt the Spirit moving in this work. The specific question was, “During the artform of  (accompaniment / interpretation / discernment) , when did you feel most alive? Remember the specific moment. What did it feel like, sound like, smell like?”  Each person at the meeting had an opportunity to share their memory. In some ways, I’m sure this activity could have felt like a waste of time. We weren’t learning any new information and we weren’t following the action plan to complete the grant by the impending due date. Yet, we needed to take time to reflect in this way because it allowed us to reorient ourselves. We needed to shift out of the comfortable way of reflecting on our learnings as nuggets of information and into a reflection of experiences and awareness of where we sense God at work.

people recieve gift from innovaiton coach
ULCH team receives a gift from Innovation Coach, Amanda.

We challenged ourselves to dream a bit bigger. We tried to imagine a proposal idea that had no limitations to money, time or energy. This lead us to collectively realizing we didn’t have the information or experiences to represent what our neighborhood and congregation is dreaming about. So we dreamt up ways to begin to hear our neighbors’ and congregations’ dreams. In reflecting on the second discernment meeting, a team member said, “It was helpful to name the fears, or what feels risky. There’s a tendency to want to know beforehand that it’s all going to work as we plan it to. And we needed to be able to say, well it’s risky and it’s supposed to be.”

 

There is no magic formula for discernment. One of the biggest lessons we’re learning in this process is that discernment takes time and trust. There is a desire deeply ingrained in us to achieve and be productive, but discernment cannot happen when we focus on the product more than the process. A shift in rhythm has to happen and we have to trust that we have heard, experienced, seen, and felt God at work. For ULCH, this shift in rhythm means slowing down, giving ourselves permission to push back some due dates, and taking notice of where the energy is or isn’t so we can reorient our attention to where it is most needed. Being freed from expectations to produce a flashy new thing is allowing our team at ULCH to tend to relationships, stories, and life in our ever-changing neighborhood.

Being Born Again: Public Church as a Conversion Experience

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This week, we hear from Mason Mennenga, an Innovation Coach at the Riverside Innovation Hub. Mason shares his understanding of the Public Church Framework and how this approach changes the way faith communities experience their own community and the local neighborhood.

 

“A religious experience is not simply another experience, but rather a reconfiguration of the way in which one experiences.” — Peter Rollins

Public Church1  is not another program, ministry, or outreach in which we hope for churches to add to their already-too-long list of programs, ministries, and outreaches. For far too long, churches have resorted to adding a food pantry, a sexy new Instagram account, or the latest curriculum to their Sunday school programming to engender upon people the need to have a religious experience within their walls. However, perhaps — and just bear with me — it is churches who need a religious experience: to be born again. It is the telos of Public Church to do just that — to reconfigure the way in which a church experiences its own congregation and local community. A church oriented to encountering their neighbor might just discover places of mutual transformation–places, people, and experiences that breath new life into itself and its adjacent communities alike.

Steph, a congregant and Innovation team member from one of the churches I coach through the Public Church Framework, recently had what one may describe as a religious experience. This church had a month-long adult and youth class leading participants through conversations reflecting on why they are Christian and why they participate in church. At the first session of this class, Steph and I were at a small table with other congregants. During a discussion around the table, several of these congregants voiced concerns about the number of young adults leaving the Church. While our tablemates’ anxieties were undeniably real, it seemed to Steph and I that there is more to the cultural trend of young adults leaving the Church than met our tablemates’ eyes. Nonetheless, Steph and I remained quiet and simply listened to them. After the session, Steph approached me and told me that if it was not for what she was learning by participating in the Public Church Framework, she would have perfunctorily went along with what our tablemates were saying. Without a doubt, many other people would do the same. 

Accompaniment, the first part of the Public Church Framework, invites people to listen to the neighbor. In this case, Steph and her church’s innovation team listened to young adults. Steph spent time listening to her young adult coworkers and read resources on the engagement of young adults with the Church. She even picked up a copy of Phyllis Tickle’s The Age of the Spirit to learn more about the theological changes in our culture. All of this work of accompaniment was focused on listening to her neighbors and seeking further understanding of the cultural milieu in which her neighbors live.

 

Two photo side by side to show the difference of Foss Chapel in the winter versus in early summer
Photos of Foss Chapel in mid-winter versus early summer illustrate how experiences vary depending on different lens we use to see the world.

Because of her work with the Public Church framework — listening with young adults and learning about the rapidly changing culture in which they live — Steph gained the lens to better understand the complexity of young people leaving organized religion and more faithful responses to such a shift. Her experiences of accompaniment, provided Steph with a lens that opened her up to a religious experience that did not resort to a better catechesis or a catchy new program but a wholly new way in which she experienced young people and their reasons for engaging, or not engaging, with the Church. Steph and the rest of her church’s innovation team have learned the shift of young adults leaving the church is complex, such as different ways young adults relate to religious affiliation and problematic theologies that are no longer relevant. They are also recognizing that young adults, like most everyone, prefer to be encountered uniquely as a person and not as a demographic label or a problem to be solved.

 

In the Christian tradition, we have a name for such a religious experience: born again. To be born again was never intended to be a switching of one’s experience from one or no religious tradition to another another but a conversion of how one experiences the world. Public Church, penultimately, attempts to provide a framework for churches to be a born-again in the way they experience their own congregation and local community. Therefore, allow your church to be born again through the learning framework of Public Church — not to lead your church into another program, ministry, or outreach but to fracture the way in which your church experiences your own congregation and local community. It begins with listening, one neighbor at a time. It continues through leaning into the curiosities that emerge, being willing to set aside old assumptions, and allowing God to invite new life that can mutually transform church and its surrounding communities alike.  

 

1 Public Church is not another program, ministry, or outreach, but rather simply a framework by which churches can cultivate a reconfiguration of culture within their congregations to be more attentive and more faithfully responsive to their local communities. 

Palm Sunday and The March for Our Lives: How Can We Live Out Our Faith?

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This week, we would like to share a blog post written by Cassie Dong, our Communication Coordinator. Cassie was inspired to write this after participating in the “Palm Friday” chapel at Augsburg University last Friday. This blog post illustrates the Interpretative work our faith communities are working on.

 

If you are looking for a straight answer, stop here; there is none. If you would be willing to dwell into your neighbors’ story, your story, and God’s story, then keep reading. It will be long, but it will all make sense at the end. After all, only when you weave these very different stories together can you find how God is calling us to show up in our community. Be patient for this work is slow and challenging.

 

Our Story:  Are we feeling guilty with “being Christian”?

As a young leader, I am used to being vocal about my beliefs. I speak up for people who have been marginalized and have no voice. Yet, one of the most difficult things for me is to learn how to publicly proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in a way that speaks true to the communities that I serve. It is challenging to find the right balance between living out my faith in the public square and to be compassionate toward people who have experienced trauma and pain at the hand of the church. I am disheartened to see faith communities resistant to use “God’s language.” Many faith communities come forward to acknowledge mistakes the church has committed in its long history. However, instead of closely looking at and changing policies, systems, processes, and cultural norms of white supremacy, colonization, and toxic masculinity, many people respond by no longer talking about their Christian faith in public. Are there ways for us, as Christians, to declare that Christianity is a religion of love? Can we live out our faith and allow God’s stories and our stories to guide us in accompanying our neighbors?

 

God’s Story:  Palm Sunday

To answer those questions above, let me first share with you one of God’s stories. I would make an assumption that many of us have read or heard of the story in Mark 11:1–11 in which people “spread branches they had cut in the fields.” They carried these palms as they followed Jesus entering Jerusalem while shouting praises to God. From this Biblical narrative, we have Palm Sunday—the Sunday before Easter when many churches celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem by carrying palm fronds.

Let’s stop here for a moment and ask a few questions. During church service on Palm Sunday, when being given those palm branches, what do you do with them? Do you wave them while entering the chapel? Do you hold on to them throughout the entire service? Bring them home when the service is done? Do you know what exactly do these palm branches represent?

 

Our neighbor’s Story:  The March for Our Lives

I would need to tell you about my neighbor’s story in order to answer those questions above. In support of stronger gun violence prevention measures, on Saturday, March 24, 2018, the March for Our Lives took place in Washington D.C. where between 200,000 to 800,000 people participated. In other places in the country, thousands of people—many were high school students and young adults—marched onto the street with protest signs sending strong messages against gun violence and demanding for change. Among those protest signs, there were some palm branches: some were held high above the head; others were tied to protest signs. Yes, Saturday, March 24, 2018 was the day before Palm Sunday.

People worshiped during Palm Friday chapel at Augsburg University. Photo credit: Janice Dames

 

Weaving together our neighbors’ story, our story, and God’s Story

On April 12, during the “Palm Friday” chapel, Augsburg University’s associate pastor Justin Lind-Ayres told us about his experience participating in the 2018 March for Our Lives. He compared those palm branches with protest signs we have today. He shared, when people held onto the branches and followed Jesus into Jerusalem, they were marching with Jesus to demand for a change and to celebrate the good news of Jesus Christ. Similarly, people who were marching with palm branches at the March for Our Lives were also advocating for social justice while celebrating the incredible leadership of young people who organized and led this national demonstration. Moreover, these people were explicit about their identity. They sent out an important message: the Christian community is standing with the victims of the Parkland shooting and those young leaders who fight against gun violence.

 

I shared with you about our concerns as Christians, Mark 11:1–11, the sermon about Palm Sunday, and the presence of palm branches during the March for Our Lives because these stories teach us how to live out our faith.  No, it is not enough to just listen to our neighbors, or to only understand our identity, or to only know God’s story. Faith communities must be able to weave together these three stories to discover: Who is God calling us to be? What is God calling us to do? How is God calling us to show up in this community?  Instead of ambiguously saying “we are not that kind of church” or “we are not that kind of Christian,” we must be explicit about our identity and our values—with words and actions. How can we fix our mistakes and/or remove misunderstandings and assumptions that people may have about the church and our faith without actually showing up in the community and being clear about our true Christian values? I strongly believe, as faith communities, we are called to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ to challenge the particular bad news in our neighborhood. Only when we show up in the neighborhood—with humility and compassion—can we understand the bad news and truly discern the good news in our specific context. This is how we live out our faith.

Our Tendency to be Musty People (Part 2 of the Lent Series)

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Written by Kristina Frugé

As we move through Lent, into Holy Week and eventually Easter, Christian communities across the globe are moving through story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection as they gather together.  This three-part blog series by Riverside Innovation Hub Program Manager, Kristina Fruge, reflects on how we struggle to steward the gift of this complex but beautiful story and why we must continue to come alongside each other in our call to live into its promise.

The first post of this series leaned into the truth of life and death’s necessary relationship and the complicated beauty of being called to be a dusty people. This second post reflects on how often Christian communities forget their dusty calling and replace it with musty practices and habits.

 

Kristina’s children exploring nature. Photo credit: Kristina Frugé

I remember as a young child playing in my Granny’s basement on rainy days when the backyard garden was too soggy for rowdy kids to explore. The cement floor was cold on my bare feet, and the cinder block walls were lined with stacks of boxes and other household items. There was enough room to run and play in the dim light and even kick a dodgeball around for a modified version of soccer with my brothers. These rainy days would bring a burst of energy into what was, on most days, an unlively place. Our shouts of child’s play would cut through the musty air that filled the space—the thick fragrance of time and artifacts of my grandmother’s life and family’s history that had been hidden from the light and elements for years. When the sun would return to dry out the neighborhood, we’d rush up the stairs and out the screen door to join the lady slippers, dragonflies, pine trees, and cardinals playing and alive in the backyard.

Granny’s house and neighborhood hold many of my earliest memories. It was one of several places I felt at home growing up. Another home away from home for me has been the church. The particular faith communities have changed over the years, but together these communities nurtured within me a sense of groundedness in understanding my purpose and identity through the story of Jesus. There have been times in my life when I forgot who I was and whose I was. It was the story of Jesus showing up in my life—through a faith community, a friend, or even a stranger—that helped me remember. I am a child of God, and so is my neighbor—and, this world doesn’t work if we don’t love each other and ourselves as God so dearly loves us all.

I have deep roots within the church and its people. I hold in tension an immense gratitude for the church and a deep heartache for the ways we, as the church, have too often played it safe and fallen short. I have witnessed and contributed to the ways we, as the church, have grown musty in our ways and our places.  Much of what I have experienced in this church often reminds me more of my grandmother’s basement than her backyard.

In my experiences of worshiping in and working with the church over the years, it has often felt like an underlying goal of the church is to recruit people to our team, our activity, or our faith. This objective is not always explicit. However, the desire to see people participating in our churches in the ways we have enjoyed being a part of the church seems to, functionally at least, be shaping where leaders and congregations invest much time and energy. Getting people to show up for our stuff is seen as a marker of health and success. If it’s not happening enough, we are anxious and work harder to get people to come. If people are showing up, we assume we’ve found the solution to buck the trend of declining church participation and just need to keep doing more and better of the same thing. But if how we measure “success” or health is based on how many and how often people show up for our stuff, then we have forgotten who we are called to be.

We cannot forget.

The gospel in fact displays a much different way of being church. We are the ones who are supposed to show up—in the world, in relationships, in places of brokenness, of community, of complexity. We are a dusty people, and this should propel us to live boldly and humbly in the unsheltered and uncertain places. Remembering our dusty calling should embolden us to not be afraid of death or loss because we know it’s only part of the whole story, and the whole story is God’s and it is good.

When we forget these truths we are tempted to let cultural markers of success or anxiety about our survival motivate our actions. We default to habits and ways of being church that are musty.

Musty and dusty should not be confused with each other. Both connote a sense of agedness, but one has seen the light, and the other has not. Musty things may have been dusty things when they came to be—ways to worship or be in relationship with others or gather community in ways that were meaningful at the time.  But they haven’t been given space to let the light, the neighbor, or the elements shape or change them. Musty things do change, in their own way. The longer they are removed from the impact of the world around them, the less vibrant they become, the less life they hold or offer. They may even pick up an unpleasant odor. They lose their impact, significance, and transformative power because we remove them from a relationship with a world that places demands on us. Yet, we MUST keep them around as they are, inadvertently assuming it’s the thing that brings life—the way we worship, the program we built, the ministry structure that worked, or the building that has housed a particular worshiping community.

We forget.

It is not the buildings or programs or things we’ve made that are the source of life and promise and joy. The Holy Spirit’s activity in the world is not contingent on the church’s participation. At best, we work to pay closer attention so we can point to the work of the Spirit and get caught up in it. At times this means we need to get out of the way.

We can also nurture spaces and invest in relationships where the Holy Spirit can show up and do what She does. These spaces and places of community and relationship in its many forms create the gaps in our lives and assumptions where God can get to work touching, transforming, healing, reconciling. When we hold on to the musty practices and programs, we miss the point. We focus on the wrong thing. And stuff starts to stink. The gaps for the Spirit to work within and through get smaller and smaller. We rigidly work to maintain ways of being church that focus on preserving buildings, leadership structures, programs and our sense of control and this distracts from where God is pleading for us to focus—on people, on creation, on the dust present in death and new life.

What is one musty thing in your congregation? What would happen if your congregation got to the work of letting it become dusty? What if we took that musty practice or belief or program out of the basement, into the light and the world and risked how it might be impacted, challenged, or transformed by encountering the neighborhood? Would we be willing to risk even the death of our musty ways, trusting that death and dust are a needed part of new life?

The sky after a rain. Photo credit: Kristina Frugé

The reality of death hits close to home for a declining church, but this absolutely does not mean God’s activity and love in the world is in decline. In the wake of death, we dusty people know that good news is rising to take its first breath. As dusty people we can trust this good news and even participate in it.  If we remember who and whose we are, we can let our musty ways die. This is sacred and faithful work. We can lean into the truth of our dusty calling, remembering, not forgetting, that when things die they give over their space and energy for new life to emerge.

The rain is letting up, and the neighborhood is eager for us to burst through the doors, into the sun, and breath in new life together with creation.

Our Calling as a Dusty People

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As we move through Lent, into Holy Week and eventually Easter, Christian communities across the globe are moving through the life-giving story of Jesus as they gather together. We are reminded in this season that this resurrection story has the reality of death as a cornerstone of the truth it speaks. This blog by Riverside Innovation Hub Program Manager, Kristina Frugé, explores the complexities of being a people whose Christian story requires us to hold death and life in the same desperate grasp. The blog will reflect on how we struggle to steward the gift of this complex but beautiful story and why we must continue to come alongside each other in our call to live into its promise.

 

Roxy and Marie (Kristina’s youngest daughter) on a beach

Nearly 15 springs ago we brought a tiny spry Vizsla pup home. We named her Roxy. She was our first “baby” as a newly married couple in our new-to-us home. She brought joy and mischief to our family through all it’s ups and downs. She was the constant source of comfort and companionship through the birth of three children, the loss of three other pregnancies and the many other in between moments of our life together. She worked her way into the hearts of our family and our children and taught us all how to love and let others love us.

This winter Roxy also taught us how to grieve. Our family huddled together over her aged body, shedding tears and final kisses knowing that her spirit had accepted the end. She impressed upon the hearts and minds of my young children that love is costly. She also clearly showed how it’s all worth it. After especially long days, I often find my 8 year-old son huddled in a corner or on the stairwell trying to push the tears back into his eyes with his fists.  “I miss Roxy,” he sniffles. She was always his most faithful ally, at the ready to comfort and cuddle with him at the close of the day. I sit next to him, with tears welling up in my own eyes and press my hand to his heart. I say, “Do you feel that hurt right here?” He says, “Yes.” I tell him, “This is the greatest gift. Not everyone gets to feel this. This sadness in your heart is proof that you got to love and be loved unconditionally. You will always have Roxy’s love and it will remind you how to keep loving.” Logan shakes his head knowingly and we hold on to each other and the cherished memory of Roxy’s love for us.

This loss has created a gap in our family. It feels similar to what I see when I look out the window at a winter that has overstayed its welcome. Daily, I pine for a glimpse of green grass and the hope-filled promise of new buds on trees. I strain to hear the sweet songs of the birds beckoning spring to takeover the chill of this season. We are in a gloaming, in-between time. Winter’s barrenness holds fast as signs of a fresh season begin to spring to life. Christians have a name for this season that parallels the truths that creation has on display this time of year. It is called Lent.

Lent is a season that works to open a gap in our routines and our false assumptions about ourselves and our neighbors. It parts the veil, shedding light on the vulnerabilities and fears that we work hard to keep at arm’s length. It names the unpopular truth that from dust we have come and to dust we will return. Churches find their pews most full on Christmas and Easter, the joy-filled seasons of the year. We prefer the glad-tidings of celebrating the birth of Jesus and the triumphant Hallelujahs of Easter’s resurrection chorus. But Lent disrupts these two seasons with the harsh, brutal reminder of the necessity of death. The fullness of God’s love for the world as embodied in Jesus is not complete without this part of the story. The most vulnerable truth Lent points us towards is the intimate and integral relationship between life and death.

The rhythm of life, death, and new life is woven into every fiber of the world God created and is creating. Each day on my way to work and home, I drive a few extra minutes out of my way to follow the parkway along the Mississippi River. The trees that reside along the riverbank state this truth each season, a constant reminder of how creation is called to be.

For months, their brittle branches arch naked through the chilly sky until spring emerges with signs of new life budding and humming and growing larger as the days get longer. This makes way for summer’s flourishing green cover that helps the planet breath and shades the soil and its critters from the sun’s warmest days. Finally, and always, autumn arrives with a vibrant burst of color as the trees beautiful hues point to what always must follow life and flourishing—death. This dying display of beauty gives way to the barren and dormant winter season, and the waiting begins again.

And so as this gap in the seasons daily displays the complexities of death and life, how do we pay attention to the truth? How do we let the soil filled with decayed bits of life from last summer teach us? How do we be aware that the stuff of loss all around us is also creating the space for life to breath anew again? These are the things I will ponder this week as we honor what would have been Roxy’s 15th doggie birthday. We will spread her ashes in the places she loved to run, play and explore, adding them to the mix of muck and spring mess that is preparing for a new thing.

The season of Lent begins by reminding us that from dust we came and to dust we will return. This is not a morbid sentiment, but a statement of the sacredness of the cycle of life and death and new life again. The trees along the Mississippi River speak this truth as they move through the seasons, just like the memories of our silly, loving, bed-hogging dog Roxy will remind my kids that love is worth the risk of loss. The dust pressed into our foreheads on Ash Wednesday reclaims this holy life giving element of dust, soil, ash—the remains of what was once living which holds the power to bring about life and love again.

We are a dusty people. This is our calling. In a culture where death is perceived as the enemy, we are called to embody this mystery and live it out defiantly.