As I continue to dig into the work of empowering communities and leading congregations to develop better practices of community ministry, I am finding that the learning curve is a steep one.  We often jump out in the work aiming to fix all sorts of problems, only to find that our own expectations are unable to be met.  Sometimes the very way we aim to meet the needs of others falls drastically short, and it is those who aim to serve others who become educated. 

A new friend shared a story about a meal program she was once involved with in Baltimore.  She had been participating in the program for a long time.  The idea of providing food resonated with her.  She felt that people are hungry and if you can feed them, you are doing something positive in the community.  One day she was serving a meal and a man walked up to her after finishing his food.  “You soup is too watery and you all have no idea what you are doing.  You’re disorganized and this is a mess!”  He continued to share with her that he had just been released from prison and had worked his way up to running the kitchen program in the correctional facility.  She intuitively invited him back to work with her volunteers and asked him to run the meal program. In just a few short weeks, the man was running the kitchen much more effectively than before and the meal program was considered wildly more successful. The program ran for several more years successfully under his leadership.

I share this story because it causes me to reevaluate how I understand success.  What I find successful was not found in serving meals or feeding the hungry, but in helping a person live into his gifts and talents.  I wonder if we are often lured into the trap of believing that in order to help someone we must impart some sort of knowledge, skill, or craft on that person.  At the core of most outreach or community engaged ministry is this idea that we have something of value that someone else needs.  We hold the keys to another person’s prosperity.  And yet, what my new friend offered was a story of a person who was perceived to be in need, teaching a whole community how to more effectively run their program.  Success was the empowerment of an individual to use his gifts and talents. 

I wonder if many of us, myself included, have been doing this whole outreach thing wrong, or maybe not making the best use of our time and talents. We have spent countless amount of hours, dollars, and energy trying to fix problems by focusing on people’s deficiencies as opposed to seeing their gifts and talents as resources.  Maybe respecting the dignity of every human being is about drawing forth their gifts and talents so they can be the people God has called them to be.

This spring and summer, I have been working with my friend Mills Polatty, (many others have helped as well), to build an aquaponics pilot project just behind the Episcopal Bookstore at St. Mary’s Cathedral, in Memphis, Tennessee.  The project is an attempt to answer the question, “What role can faith communities play in local food systems?”  The pilot project is the creation of a relatively small system designed to hold about 900 plants and grow up to 200 lbs. of fish.  The fish waste reacts to bacteria in the plant roots to create nitrates which in turn fertilize the plants.  The plants in return clean the water for the fish to live in. This type of system can grow food with about 4% of the water used in traditional farming and with a fraction of the space. 

One beautiful illustration from our experiment is the value of waste. Early in June, 100 lbs. of catfish arrived as a donation from Pride of the Pond catfish farm in Tunica, Mississippi. Children for the Vacation Bible School at St. Mary’s were invited to gather around the fish for a “Blessing of the Catfish and Catfish Poop.” As children gathered to give thanks for the fish and their waste, they learned a valuable lesson: everything that God has created is sacred. The fish waste is a necessary ingredient for the plants to grow. This celebration raises the question if we as Christians have a theology of waste. And how could we participate in life if we found value in everything we used or generated as opposed to our practice of consumption, which draws what is useful and discards the rest?

I have no idea if this type of farming is the answer to food sustainability issues in our world. I do know that we need to think about how to make food more local, and to move away from industrial farming practices. And maybe, more importantly, we need to think about what is waste in light of our understanding of creation. We need to take seriously the sacred nature of all things, and if we are serious, maybe this will change the way we relate and interact with the world. Maybe this would call into question our relationships with human beings, our understanding of justice, and the way we advocate for our resources.

While this project is just a pilot, the hope is it might lead to the ability to provide both food and jobs in under-resourced communities and create a more just economy. I hope this summer, it will lead to a farmer’s market on a Sunday morning that has employed a person or two from the St. Mary’s neighborhood, connected people to local food, and been a visible and tangible sign of resurrection and justice in the community. And I hope for those children and the larger community, we see waste for what it really is, a sacred gift from God.  

Listening is a critical component of gracious leadership. In Peter Block’s seminal work on building community, he says, “This kind of leadership, convening, naming the question, and listening, is restorative and produces energy rather than consumes it.”[1]  In Holy Currencies language, we must listen to the voices of those whose voices have been suppressed in order to circulate the currency of truth. This is a shift from seeing ministry as something we do to someone else, and instead, the allowing of others to find their voice. It is a ministry of empowerment. 

St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral has just begun a new ministry, one of listening and empowerment. During the Currency of Truth workshop as a part of our Holy Currencies model for ministry, the Cathedral team came to a crucial realization.  While there was transformative and holy work taking place on Wednesday mornings with worship, job preparation, art, and community breakfast for over a hundred of the housing-insecure people of the neighborhood, there was a much-needed vehicle for learning the story of these individuals and building a more holistic community. 

The Cathedral’s Holy Currencies team member, Denise Dinkins, suggested creating a leadership team from guests of Wednesday morning. The team created a process in which once a month volunteers set communication guidelines, study scripture, and dream about the possibilities for the neighborhood and community.  Together, the Cathedral and the residents of the neighborhood are discerning a collective vision. 

One resident suggested that programs in the summer for children would be helpful.  A clergy member of St. Mary’s reflected that programs were done the summer before but were not well attended.  The resident offered to go door to door and recruit as she would be trusted in the community.  Here, a person, who had been seen as a guest of St. Mary’s was being empowered to become a leader in the community on behalf of the church.  The Very Rev. Andy Andrews, Dean of the Cathedral shares, “In the listening session I attended, a participant shared that what they were really looking for in the Cathedral was a safe space to be present, to be heard, and to be prayed for, and not a place to be fixed or where programs would supposedly make them better.  I am learning that more programs are not always the answer.” 

St. Mary’s has now conducted two leadership rounds, one in April and one in May of 2016.  There is a healthy tension between wanting to respond to many of the concerns that are being raised by the residents of the neighborhood and those who are housing-insecure. St. Mary’s is learning more about the issues of the community, the challenges of bad credit, dishonest landlords, of issues of safety and the need for mental health advocates, drug addiction programs, and literacy help.  The Cathedral team is learning that as their community creates more porous boundaries, many of those who had been seen as clients or guests are empowered to be agents of change as they live into their ministry.  This is not the result of creating programs to fix others, but instead learning to listen which in turn turns a guest into a partner in the holy work taking place at St. Mary's.  

The main focus of my work with the diocese is to lead congregations through a formation process that helps the church build relationships with the community and work to shift their ministries to be both missional and sustainable. Sustainability is about making sure that ministry is infused with different currencies: truth, relationships, wellness, gracious leadership, time and space, and money.[1] It is a shift away from fixing what are perceived as problems of others, and learning how to be in relationship and work together towards holistic transformation.  It’s a shift in the way we think to say the very least.

Recently, one of our congregations that is engaged in the work hosted a “Currency of Truth” event.  I am grateful for this reflection, from Dr. James Gholson, a parishioner of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church and a member of their Holy Currencies team and I think there are a few insights that can be gleaned.

"In the past few months, members of Holy Trinity Episcopal Church have engaged with the Holy Currencies process through our diocese.  This process has been helping us explore how to infuse each of the currencies into ministry. On April 2^nd at 10:00am, we hosted our Currency of Truth event. 

For our Truth event, we invited the newly elected council-person Jamita Swearengen. Council-person Swearengen is a teacher with the Shelby County Schools and daughter of former Memphis Judge James E. Swearengen. Our Priest-in-Charge, Fr. Cubine kicked off the meeting with a short synopsis of the concept of Holy Currencies and the efforts of Holy Trinity Church to connect and dialogue with citizens in its immediate physical community. This area includes Getwell to the east, American Way and Lamar to the south, Semmes to the west, and Park Avenue to the north. Holy Trinity has created a network called a Shalom Zone with the Center for Transforming Communities as a way of building the currency of relationship to bring enabling tools and dialogue to this effort. Several citizens from the community attended this event.

Council-person Swearengen was vigorous and specific in her dialogue with attendees. Along with staff from MLGW, she outlined procedures for using the 311 application, recently rolled out from city government to report blight and non-emergency issues to MLGW (and government officials). Jamita also presented a story of how citizens in the Cooper-Young district funded street and security lights in that area. They used unique technical definitions to fund additional lights and security options. Citizens from the community responded with questions and used the meeting, not only as a quest for information, but as an additional opportunity for fellowship. Members of Holy Trinity Church were especially interested in lighting for the church parking area and fresh options for security at St. George's Memphis. One member sought answers for a question regarding Ethernet broadband in the Memphis employment/education enterprise. Attendees were respectful and dutiful in their questioning. Part of the Currency of Truth is making sure that people who traditionally have not had a voice, not only have a seat at the table, but are empowered to speak and share. At no point was the meeting susceptible to the kind of emotional hijacking that sometimes occurs when citizens of an angry and frustrated community engage for good. Holy Trinity is deeply committed to Holy Currencies and walks arm-in-arm with our CTC Shalom Zone to enable sustainable success on the part of Memphis citizens. Thank you council-person Swearengen!"

When I really think about connecting with people, those moments when time seems to dissipate enough to feel like something new has been generated, a truly organic moment with others, it always seems to come from the sharing of stories.  Maybe it is hearing the reflection of another that resonates with something I have experienced or felt before that rests fallow waiting to emerge and find new life.  The world is now home to over 7 billion people, yet loneliness seems to be one of the most pervasive human conditions.  Maybe that is why storytelling is so important, we need to hear of others’ experiences and know that we are not alone. 

The Bible is important in how I understand my faith.  For me, it is the story of people wrestling with what it means to be faithful. The more I study the story and the more I dig into the story of people wrestling with God, the more I am invited to become a part of that story.  I am reminded that I am not alone. For me, it doesn’t matter if events happened the way they have been recorded because truth exists in how that story shapes the way I view the world. 

As I reflect on the missional church, I am more and more convinced that one of the key tenants we should be focused on is collecting the stories of those whose stories are aching to be told, and yet maybe because of the power that exists in the historically dominant culture, or just a lack of seeking, those stories also lie fallow waiting to be told.  How can the church be the collective of our experiences that help a community make our story a part of the great story of our faith? Isn’t this the missional church?

My new friend, Bob Leopold, is a part of a community called Southside Abbey in Chattanooga.  He helped start a community which has been asking the question, “Can there be an Episcopal Church with, by, for, and in the poor?”  He has been on a beautiful and challenging journey for the last three years as the Southside Abbey community grows.  He shared a story recently about coming into possession of some cucumbers.  Someone thought his community could use fresh food and unloaded a ridiculous amount of cucumbers.  They handed them out until no one could handle any more.  Yet he was still left with a massive surplus. 

Bob is a storyteller. I believe he even has a degree in storytelling, so he gets the importance of creating the space for people to share their stories.  So he took the cucumbers, turned them into pickles, and began knocking on the doors of a hotel in their neighborhood where many people without permanent housing lived.  “We have pickles for you and we would like to hear your story.” A little ingenuity became a storyteller incubator as a way of continuing to generate the community in Southside Abbey.

For the Southside Abbey congregation, community is about creating the space to hear the stories of others.  This community used pickles as an instrument for storytelling. It makes me wonder what we have an abundance of in our own lives and communities that could be used as a vehicle to empower others to share their story.  Maybe this is what it means to be missional.  And maybe then we could expand the human story helping others become a part of the larger narrative of our own faith story.  All we need is a little creativity (and maybe some vinegar). 

Next Diocesan Holy Currencies Workshops:

Currency of Gracious Leadership: April 23 @ St. Mary's Cathedral

Currency of Time & Space: May 21 @ St. Mary's Cathedral

Currency of Money: June 25 @ St. Mary's Cathedral