I’ve been trying to imagine what the ideal relationship between a church and the neighborhood where it is located should be.  I’m not sure that I have landed on the perfect answer, but I have been struck lately by thinking it can be more. 

I had one of those moments a few weeks ago when I walked out onto the porch and there were three amazon boxes including books, shoes, and another article of clothing, and I had a moment of panic about what our society is becoming.  I love the quick access to my consumer choices, but I worry that the desire for immediacy is driving me to be more disconnected from other people.  I see the hope for the church to be the community gathering space or the “Village Green” where people gather and interact with each other.  Our society desperately needs more of these spaces. 

If the church is the new “Village Green” how can the church aggregate its resources to cultivate a new economy or marketplace that directly impacts the health and viability of the neighborhood where our churches are located?  I wonder if the key to this question is seeing the faith community as a resource for creating market-based solutions and connecting people to their consumer actions.  If giving of our financial resources is a spiritual discipline, then maybe spending money should be as well.

My friends Adam, Roger, Mike, and Margery have been dreaming of a bakery in the St. Mary’s Cathedral / Diocese of West Tennessee neighborhood.  They live in the neighborhood, sometimes with others, who are housing insecure.  Just behind the cathedral, my friend Mills and I, and now one of the neighbors, Joe, have been building an aquaponics farm to grow lettuces, beets, greens, and tilapia.  My friends Eyleen, Madge, and many others have been working hard to create a production and business to empower survivors of trafficking.  They have a garden a few miles away.  The Bring it Food Hub, located a block away, aggregates food from local farmers in a 150-mile radius.  Dennis and Mark have a farm forty-five minutes away, but are parishioners of the cathedral.  These are viable businesses, many that are a response to people’s faith, that are connected to the community where the cathedral is located. 

My friends and I are dreaming of how to be community.  Last weekend, we all decided to host a pop-up market just outside the parish hall of the cathedral.  As people left the Sunday church service they were invited to purchase romaine and oak leaf lettuce from Episcopal Aquaponics Experiment and spice rubs and tea from Thistle and Bee Enterprises.  People purchased beef and eggs from the Oaks at Winfrey Farms.  People bought jams from the Sisters of St. Mary’s Monastery and squash and beans from the Bring it Food Hub.  The bakery sold all 20 loaves kicking off their business.  The congregation found a new way of investing in the neighborhood of St. Mary’s. Consumer choices helped foster relationships with the people who live where the community worships.  People built relationships with the people who grew their food.  And maybe even more importantly, the local businesses and neighbors networked, shared stories, and dreamt of how they might work together.

I have always imagined that the kingdom of heaven looks just like a diverse worshiping community engaged on Sundays going forth into the world. Yet, I wonder if we haven’t fully lived into the breadth of possibility.  Could a marketplace be part of the kingdom, the direction the church should be moving in? Maybe there is more that we can do to live into a holistic and transformative community?  Maybe the kingdom is the “Village Green” where stories are shared, partnerships forged, lives empowered, and goods and services exchanged. 

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!"