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.

Both Christianity and Judaism assert that humanity is made in the image of God, a bold and provocative claim that projects both intentionality and potential for all people.  Maybe this partially suggests that to be made in the image of God means that every person has the life-giving capacity to be a creative and unique individual, and to find inimitable ways of self-expression and growth.  Part of being spiritual is to be a creative. And developing self-expression is part of fostering a healthy spiritual being. 

Beginning with this claim has implications for what it means to “respect the dignity of every human being,” a core value of most all religions and the words of the Baptismal Covenant of my own Episcopal tradition.  For Episcopalians, this is the imperative for how we should live our lives.  If we are to respect people, we have to find ways of creating the space where people can be authentic, where self-expression freely flows.  What would happen if we began to see outreach or church ministry, not as a way of just fulfilling other people’s basic needs, but empowering others to be authentic, creative, and to claim who they are as spiritual human beings. 

Katie Whitfield, a volunteer with H*Art Gallery, has been spending the past few months doing just this.  Every Wednesday morning, Katie spends a few hours with individuals at St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, most who are homeless, and all with different levels of artistic ability but a willingness and desire to be creative.  When they leave the Cathedral’s space, each person has the opportunity to take a H*Art pack, a pocket-sized container which holds a box of crayons, a few sharpies, a pencil, and some 3 x 5-inch index cards.  People are encouraged to be creative throughout the week.  H*Art Gallery’s mission is to empower homeless and nontraditional artists. 

H*Art Gallery started in Chattanooga by Ellen and Jay Heavilon as a way of developing and empowering homeless and nontraditional artists.  In 2015, they purchased a building on Marshall Avenue in Memphis in an effort to expand their concept.  The mission is to empower creativity.  It’s about dignity.  Occasionally they find those who would like to share their art with others which is then showcased in the gallery.  A requirement of the gallery is the expectation that a portion of the proceeds from the sale of artist’s work is to be given away to a charity of the artist’s choosing. An opportunity is created to invite a person who society has deemed as having limited resources to be empowered to transform others’ lives. 

The impact of the work of the participants who engage with H*Art is tremendous.  When asked about how art transformed his life, Ron, a recently housed Navy veteran shared “In a world where I hear ‘No!’ all of the time, this is the one place I can hear ‘Yes, you can do it!’” Jasen, who was homeless when he first got involved in 2010, earned a partial scholarship to Virginia Culinary Institute and now works for The Chattanoogan.  Isela, a victim of domestic violence and mother of a six-year-old, blossomed in jewelry making. She became an art and jewelry instructor.  Her daughter’s image of her mother as a teacher and artist is life transforming. Isela’s jewelry line is named after her daughter.

Maybe the lesson we can learn is the notion that to respect the dignity of every human being might require a much deeper commitment than just the fulfillment of others’ basic needs.  It is to unlock the creative and life-changing potential of the other.  Maybe it is as easy as offering a small box of crayons, sharpies, and index cards.

To learn more about H*Art Gallery, go to www.hartgallerytn.com

To learn more about St. Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral, go to www.stmarysmemphis.org

Published first on www.Buildfaith.org

What is Crowdfunding?
In 1997, the British rock band, Marillion, used the Internet to raise $60,000 to finance their US reunion tour. This radical concept is considered by many to be the birth of modern day crowdfunding. In the late 2000s as social media platforms developed, and our interaction with technology changed, new platforms emerged to make crowdfunding possible. IndyGoGo was created in 2008, Kickstarter in 2009, and by 2011, entrepreneurs had raised $1.5 billion dollars for innovation.

The idea is simple: create a way for the average person to invest anything from a few dollars to thousands to support an idea or innovation. Social media allows for people to gather around ideas and projects. If you find a project on a friend’s Facebook page or Twitter feed, you can invest in that idea through a small gift or grant, helping it come to life. However, something else happens when people make donations towards a cause: they invest social capital. A relationship is born.

Churches Step into Crowdfunding
Historically, faith communities have been most skilled at using the resources of members to benefit the outside community. But with the emerging uses of crowdfunding, there exists a new platform to form relationships and invite faith communities to partner with their neighbors. Together, they invest in the work of transforming communities, all while generating social capital, which is arguably much more valuable in terms of the sustainability of congregations.

In the spring of 2015, three churches in the greater Memphis area began playing with IOBY (In our Back Yards), a crowdfunding platform for projects in neighborhoods. St. Mary’s Cathedral wanted to beautify a portion of Alabama Street and raised money for the Alabama Street Tapestry Project. They raised over $2000 for fabric which would be woven in the iron fence. When asked why they were doing this project, St. Mary’s responded:

“This tired, forgotten, stretch of road does little to uplift the individuals that pass by it regularly. St. Mary’s would like to help create a mini oasis to convey to all the individuals that live and work in proximity the important role each one plays in the tapestry of the neighborhood. Our self worth is closely paralleled to the environment we inhabit. When the world around us feels discarded, so to do we. This project endeavors to convey the importance we believe each person brings to the world.”

On the other side of town, two Episcopal Churches, Church of the Annunciation in Cordova and Calvary Episcopal Church downtown partnered to raise money for honey harvesting equipment that would be used as part of an apiary located in Cordova. The group is creating a business that aims to employ survivors of sex-trafficking and prostitution modeled after Thistle Farms in Nashville. The group’s IOBY platform raised over $3500 from investors far beyond the Episcopal Church and each congregation’s faith community. The proceeds from the honey sales this fall will support hospitality at Lives Worth Saving, a prostitution intervention program in Memphis.

Building Relationships through Mission
In a climate where many churches are wondering how to build relationships with people who are not connected to faith communities, one strategy is to turn more missional, to find ways of becoming a part of the fabric of the community. Beginning a relationship can be as simple as inviting someone to invest in a transformational project.

Thanks to platforms such as IOBY, there are more ways to invite people to become part of the fabric of the faith community; to create a new door to the church, and to work to strive for justice of peace. This is far broader than church membership – it is partnering in transformation. This kind of work will not be measured by average Sunday attendance or the number of pledging units, and I find that incredibly hopeful.

Spoiler Alert:  This is just my stream of conscious, a few thoughts, not even a suggestion.

I realize that this is probably a somewhat provocative title, maybe a little unsettling for those who feel especially called to do good deeds in the world. “How could our church give up the sandwiches we make for the poor and homeless in our community, or the trip to South America to build a home or an addition to an orphanage, or the $5000 we give each year to the food pantry downtown?”  “Why, this is how our community spends the 10% of our budget, or time, which we earmark for doing the good work that Jesus has called us to do!” Which is why I want to suggest that the Church really needs to abandon the language, which presents outreach as an isolated concept, not outreach itself. 

Establishing structure and governance can provide the organizational framework for ministries and churches to thrive.  There is the added benefit of holding people accountable for decision-making. And so we segregate the work of the church to make sure that all tasks are accomplished.  We hire ministers who are in charge of outreach or pastoral care.  We create outreach ministries that enable people to occasionally engage in opportunities to serve others.

I read an article from the Harvard Business Review (you can read the article here) that articulates quite well that the goal of mission related enterprises shouldn’t be membership, but engagement.  Every year Episcopal churches measure membership by calculating the average Sunday attendance and the amount of money spent in the operating year. Two factors are supposed to report church wellness: money and membership. 

And yet money and membership have never been part of the goal. To quote Ed Bacon, Rector of All Saint’s Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, “But what really makes our hearts beat fast is transformed people transforming the world. Membership isn’t our business. Turning the human race into the human family is.”[1]  The goal of being Church is not increasing the budget or number of people on Sunday. It is to be a part of the divine work of God that is restoring all people and all things to God’s glory. It is to be a part of helping to build God’s kingdom on this earth.  If we need metrics to assess our success, we could be measuring how our own community is being transformed and how we are part of the transformation of individuals and entire communities.

I wonder if the problem of having explicit outreach programs or an outreach budget, is it establishes a disconnection from the whole mission of the church. I worry outreach then becomes the focus of a handful of people in the community, something that a few do for the benefit of the rest. Instead we should learn how to make all of ministry, everything we are engaged in a part of transforming our lives and the lives of everyone we encounter.  We are called to love God and to love our neighbor with all our heart, mind and soul. These are the greatest commandments given to us.  What if our liturgy, our Christian formation, and our pastoral care shaped our relationships with our neighbors?  Maybe we should drop the whole outreach language so that everything can become outwardly focused.  Isn’t that what the Gospel is really about?