Resurrection Still Happens!! Pass it on.
When our business culture lacks the moral fiber to invest in areas abandoned by businesses, when realtors continue to steer people away from our area, when most of those who do teach and police and work and do business here don't live here, when churches are locked throughout the week, when local state and federal government thinks so little of our capacities for greatness and community spirit they are afraid to ask us to pay for what we value and need the most, when our zipcode is the unhealthiest in the unhealthiest state in the U.S., when community centers are being closed by the city and neighborhoods are struggling to find ways to be neighborhoods, a small band of faithful dreamers and doers have been taking matters into our own hands and hearts and lives. Still, we need your help. Thank you.
Donate now online to our Welcome Table Kitchen Garden Park Project. See www.turleyok.blogspot.com for how to do so safely and easily. Show the powers that be that nothing separates even the least of these from the Love of God.
This is being church. And stay tuned for more. When it rains God it pours. We met with bankers in a good visit yesterday at the old and also abandoned rundown 10,500 square foot old Methodist church building we have our eyes and heart set on to transform and expand into for an urban monastery with a progressive bent, with our free health clinic and classes and fitness for the body, the A Third Place Center food pantry and food justice center and community space and library and kitchen and giving space for the mind, and the sanctuary for worship and prayer and meditation and meetings for the heart and soul. And we have space there for a community garden too, and perhaps a community garden office center in the old parsonage.
It was just three years ago our church opened up itself to become A Third Place Center in the spirit of incarnation. I can't believe myself what all has happened since. We weren't sure we'd pull even that first version off. But putting 100 percent into mission provided the right soil for growth. We still end up every month at zero or below in the bank but continue to grow.
Just imagine what might happen in the next three years because of what happens this month. Now envision three hundred years.
It has happened before (see Rodney Starks The Rise of Christianity: How a radical fringe Jesus movement on the margins became the dominant force in the Roman Empire in 300 years, or some such subtitle). It can happen again.
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