Community is at the heart of our problems and solutions

Hi all. Today's message is about the neglected truth that "Community Matters" and underlies most everything that we struggle with in our area.

 

First, a note about this Sunday's missional community gathering; we are not meeting in the morning as usual (which is good since it is a Spring Forward an Hour Sunday) but will meet at the community center at 4 pm for communion and then travel to the 5 pm Taize worship service downtown at Trinity Episcopal, then out to dinner afterwards.

 

Tomorrow, Saturday, there is Pancake Breakfast from 8 to 10 am at the Odd Fellows Lodge, 6227 N. Quincy Ave., and weather permitting we have a community gardening morning at the Welcome Table park and orchard at 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. and from 10 am to 4 pm, with free lunch included, we have Community Art For All Ages Day at the community center, 5920 N. Owasso Ave.

 

In the coming week:

 

two meetings having to do with supporting McLain High School; one to hear of the recommendations being considered for changes at the school (for my take on how a holistic approach that is focused on the community is the only long term solution to what has been a long term community based problem:http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/2013/01/mclain-high-school-take-survey-get.html) and on Thursday a meeting of the McLain Foundation to bring on new leadership to help us raise funds for needed projects at the school, already vulnerable being affected even moreso by cut in state funding).. And on Monday we will be part of a Food Bank special showing and discussion of the new documentary A Place At The Table at the Circle Cinema (see below for more about the first public showing and panel discussion that followed, which I was honored to be on).

 

..on Tuesday we will have a volunteer appreciation lunch and orientation about our emerging and expanding cornerstore and food community programs...

 

...on Wednesday from Noon to 4 pm we will have our Food Community Day, along with nutrition class at 12:30 pm, and other resources available. We also have our free clothing and items day during this time. Our new The Welcome Table Cornerstore is in its new and larger quarters in our building, and getting rave reveiws for how we have created a grocery store feel and empower people to choose their own food items, and we are just beginning to develop this concept further and look for ways to continue expanding hours open. Thanks to the OU Tulsa Graduate Social Work classes for helping to move into our new space, and to work in other projects with us at the community center, the park, and in the community.

 

...on Saturday morning, March 16, we will have our Big Gardening Event beginning at 9 am, and will be hosting the Tulsa Community Gardening Association as part of it, at 10:30 am at the gardenpark and orchard. We hope to see you and friends at any or all of these events. Or call to arrange a time to visit.

 

Abandoned Properties Project:

In previous email updates from here I have been highlighting the increasing presence of burned and vandalized and abandoned buildings, residential and commercial, in our area which affects so much; decline is contagious in many manifestations, and is considered the number one factor promoting crime in an area. We have properties that have burned and continue to be health hazards and have been untouched for months or years without any change. I am happy to report that the Tulsa Health Department has been involved in a windshield inspection tour of almost every property in our unincorporated side of our service area, and they have identified the severity of the problem on a property by property basis, developing a map for our area residents to look over and help to come up with the priorities in how to focus abatement procedures to get the properties cleaned up (funds permitting of course which is often the rub, since the property owners will just let the properties go and let a lien be placed on them for any future owners, and in the meantime the county will have to pay to keep the properties clean). The map and presentation will be presented to area residents for questions and comments again at the Turley public meeting Tuesday March 26 at 7 pm, held this month at the Welcome Table Community Center instead of its regular location at O'Brien Park, in hopes of attracting more property owners and residents. This is a good first step, thanks to THD. We have so far prioritized the abandoned properties as: 1. those on North Peoria and along the Osage Prairie Trail; 2. Those residences that have been rundown the longest and which are located immediately adjacent to properties where there has been effort at beautifying the area. Additionally, we might consider if there are ways to get more funds into the cleanup, ways that people in the community can get ownership of the abandoned properties that just stay on the county ownership for a number of years, and ways that our own local folks could be hired to do the tear down and clean up. Thanks again though for these vital first steps, THD, which we have been seeking for some time.

 

Food and Health:

We have recently had volunteers receive training in how to help get more of our residents applying for the SNAP food assistance, that only has about 75 percent of the people who are elgible for it actually receiving the assistance to help combat their struggles with food insecurity, ill health, and poverty. We will have a food assistance outreach worker or volunteer helping area residents during our Wednesday Food Community Days and possibly at other times, as well as allowing our computer center to help people renew benefits online.

 

On Friday night, last night, we had several from our community join with those from across the Tulsa area to watch the showing of the documentary A Place At The Table about the rising epidemic of hunger and food insecurity, especially among children, in our nation, and our state has one of the worst rates of the nation, and our service area has one of the worst rates in the state. I was honored to be a part of the panel responding to questions following the showing of the film which did a great job of humanizing the issue and the people who suffer from hunger and its twin of bad health and obesity, and of the policy decisions that have caused our nation to lose the war on hunger that it once was well on the way to winning in the 1970s.

Several areas needed to be emphasized even more:

 

1. growing one's own food is a way to promote health and for the poor to save money (growing your own food is like printing your own money), and yet so much of the nation's resources do not go into this healthy lifestyle and ecological affirming truth, and into school programs and community nonprofit programs fostering gardens and community health, but they go into major corporate agribusinesses that grow the ingredients that are in the processed foods that cause our health problems but are the cheapest foods and most readily available ones for the poor, trapping them in a cycle of bad health and limited choices. Even the food assistance programs which do direct giving of food to those in need (such as we do) but who struggle to have that food not be just more of the same processed food, even these are being cut in funds; and even the food assistance programs which are already way too limited ($4 average a day very difficult to eat on, especially to eat healthy on), even these are being targeted for further cuts and other limitations designed to punish the poor. We need to keep addressing the issue of why we don't support local farms and local gardening initatiatives, and why it is so hard to get local folks so in need to take part of the gardening programs we do have, and to change that by starting again with the basics holistically by supporting the schools and community groups where residents are to help them shift their default mode away from the one that treats them as a consuming object and toward a default mode where they are agents of their own and their community's growing health. We need to take the long view and invest in these programs and experiments the same way we do with the other aspects of our national security.

 

2. Many in the audience watching the film and in the discussion afterwards were expressing their sense of hopelessness and despair, especially at the political system that is looking to gut the very community oriented and neighbor helping programs that could make a difference in the lives of so many. What I wish I had said, besides the fact that the very presence of so many in attendance at the film and discussion afterwards was hopeful, is that the real doorway to change and real hope is always first through despair, through facing the emotions of fear and hopelessness and angst and confusing and even shame; it is the very desire to avoid these emotions communally that keep us from facing the hard truths about the facts of life for many in our community. And so what people were feeling was in itself a sign of hope. The most powerful part of the film for me was the women witnessing to their own hunger and that of their families and taking that witness to seats of governmental power where decisions are being made to prop up corporations instead of people; I think they would say that despair work is part of their routine lives, and for those not in their shoes to use that despair work as a destination point instead of as a means to a very different end. We need to focus more on how to get our witnesses to join together and become advocates.

 

3. The film did a good job of linking hunger with poverty, and saying the real issue is not why are so many people hungry, but why are so many people poor in the first place. And I would add that the real issue is the type of poverty as well; for there is the poverty that is mitigated and dealt with by the presence of a justice seeking community and there is the kind of poverty most have now that is set in the context of no community, no extended family, no neighborhood schools or groups connecting the people in the area, no "third places" where they once thrived; we live in a much more fragmented area and that "sequestering" of one another from one another keeps us divided, especially the poor divided, from the tremendous power they would otherwise possess and use. Where there is real visible beloved community, the vulnerable are put at the first of the line for attention, not re-segregated into areas where so many of the dominant culture don't have to get to know, or see, ever. The more we focus just on food alone for example (or low test scores in school, or crime statistics (which for our area we don't any longer get access to, which is something we really need the public officials to help our residents get access to), or the rate of heart disease or diabetes, the more we will ultimately miss the mark of how we seek to turnaround the realities so many face. It is not as "sexy" or as quick to focus on growing again a viable community of connections in this disconnected age, but that is what it will take across the board to wipe out these current realities for so many. We need to keep not letting even the urgent keep us from the important. Like seeing how government is just one of the ways we manifest community, but it is a major one and so we need to put its priorities toward the poor, instead of our current rush in our state particularly to shrink government; when you do that you shrink community. We need it right alongside the other community forming entities of private business and nonprofit enterprises including but not limited to religious ones. Even for private businesses we need to emphasize that community matters, that all communities matter, and that the moral and ethical way of being in community is to have a practice of not leaving areas when they struggle, but remaining and helping to grow them back. And we need more nonprofits and more churches, etc. to not just focus on serving/saving individuals but serving/saving communities. When communities work, so do persons, and so does their health, and their families and their schools. What does it take to educate a child at McLain, or to adequately feed with healthy food that child's family in the 74126? It takes, as we know, a village. We need to keep from burning down the village. We need to make it a priority and act and fund it as one.

 

4. I hope we can better keep spreading such discussions as we had tonight, for there was so much left unsaid, undreamed, so much going on left unshared; and not only keep spreading discussions, but keep opening up opportunities for people to engage in their own service-learning.

 

Reconciliation, part one

The Realities and Vision of Reconciliation, part One

The Second of the 3Rs of Relocation, Reconciliation, Redistribution

Rev. Ron Robinson

Background Notes for Lecture for Supervised Ministry Course, Phillips Theological Seminary, Spring 2013, based on readings from John Perkins’ “With Justice For All.”

1.     As we move to the second R, note again the order Perkins uses them. Most people who want “to help” start in immediately with a focus on redistribution, giving things to other people in other areas. This is problematic, unless it is a resource like funds which the “other” can use to develop and use as part of their own empowerment and vision. Without relationship that deepens, redistribution can be an added burden to struggling communities. That is why relocating to really truly get to know people first, even if in the many ways we have described, is crucial. And as we will see, the aim of reconciliation that grows from relocation is necessary not only to be faithful to the gospel but to be wise in what and how one engages later in redistribution.  So the centerpiece you might say is Reconciliation. Theologically, that makes sense too. If one begins in relocation with Incarnation, being sent, making real, word as flesh, soul in the soil, then the Why of all that is Reconciliation, with God and with others, especially with those others whom are our enemies, our strangers, or our estranged (once close but not distant ones).

2.     A personal note: Reconciliation has been one of my personal aims, failings, and visions, and is part of our relocation efforts and ministry here in the 74126 zipcode. Especially racial reconciliation, as Perkins has also been a national leader. One of my grandfathers, my fathers father, was a member of the Klan in the Tulsa area, and at the time of the race massacre here in 1921. I was raised in an atmosphere, a poor working class white and American Indian family and community, that was both racist and struggling against that racism dynamic. I went to a segregated elementary school and then to one of the first junior high schools being integrated in 1967 in Tulsa; by 1972 when I was graduated from high school my high school, McLain in Tulsa, was about 60 percent white and 40 percent black; between the ten years of 1967 to 1977 the school went from segregated white to about 80 percent black; in the next ten years from 1977 to 1987 the community feeding into the school mirrored that ethnic change. White flight as an extension of the segregated racism of the history of the area compounded the problems of the area for which we current residents are still paying. Right now our community ministry area serves two adjacent and overlapping sections, far northside within the city of Tulsa that in our McLain area is 85 percent black, and we serve an adjacent outside the city unincorporated Turley community that is 56 percent white and in two years will be 52 percent white and soon after that projected to be a minority majority area with no single ethnic group predominating the population. It is a great place to practice and aim for reconciliation of races. 

When our small church, predominantly white but with good percentage of American Indian and with one bi-racial family also, went missional and moved from projecting itself as a “church” to a “community center”, from come to us to go to them, we immediately raised our interactions with our neighbors who were black; they would not “come to us” as a “white church” with a “white” minister, but the hospitality and neutrality offered through the community center projects made it a safer, more welcome place, what we called “a third place” echoing the global movement to create third places or spaces where people of difference meet. When we moved just six blocks closer to the city limit line, still in the unincorporated area, we saw these interactions continue to increase, especially with the expansion of our two main ministries: the food community space and the gardenpark and orchard. The gardenpark and orchard, our first actual property purchase, was intentionally chosen for a location that would be on the edge and draw residents from both sides of our service area. We are now looking at projects and places on the city side, more in the heart of the black community in our two mile service area (I like John Perkins advice though that it be more in the six block area, but there has been benefits to our bigger two mile vision). And it has only been six years since we have been setting out for this missional community ministry work.

 One of the inspirations of reconciliation for me personally has been my father and others in my family who intentionally did not go along with ‘white flight” but resisted it; even though I wouldn’t say they were necessarily proactive and welcoming of the diversity that came in, certainly not as was needed but realized by few at the time, still there was a conscious attempt. My father said that he knew he was raised prejudiced and he wanted us not to be, to the best of his ability. He was trying to break the cycle of racism. Not only did he stay, but he was one of the first basketball coaches of an integrated team during my junior high years; my black friends from those years have said what a difference that made in how he treated them and their families, how we went into their neighborhoods and into their homes and met with families and created in the team a safe place during those years when there was constant turmoil rumors and violence of a racial nature in the schools themselves we were in. His Methodist church here, predominantly white, recently had its first African-American minister; it was her whom I worked with on the vision for community gardening near her parsonage and near their church which is right on that edge between the two predominant ethnic neighborhoods, both poor but with different racial demographics. Finally, it is something that we fail out, but keep trying at, that we seek to keep before us.

3.     Perkins says a lot in these chapters not only about his own journey toward engaging with the white community that caused him so much suffering, how he saw their own suffering, but about ecclesiology, the nature and mission of the church. In a way he is laying out a vision of the church reconciling itself with the gospel and God. He says he wanted his church in Mississippi to be not just a worshipping community but a true family of God, the Body of Christ within our community. Shades of the parable of the leaven (something scandalous, and unholy, and corrupted too, the church committed to racial reconciliation, acting as the leaven amidst a still segregated in many ways community). To do this he says means letting each person’s gifts (see 1 Corinthians 12) also be something like leaven within the particular church community itself. His strategy was for the church to be the vehicle for growing relationships, while the ministry organizations created would work on the wider community projects. This enabled other churches and groups to have a way of working with the church without feeling undue pressure to become a part or identify with the church. (In our work here we talk about the church going organic while the community group goes organizational.)

4.     He struggles, to put it mildly, with the HUP (homogenous unit principle) and churches, especially for church growth aims. He says it is an attempt at avoiding conflict and suffering, and therefore isn’t gospel-oriented, as well as forgetting the early church’s commitment, and struggle too, with many different people groups coming together. “What we were coming to establish, most people didn’t want,” he says. That is not the kind of model that a consumer or market-driven model of church would follow, one that looks beyond and beneath surface wants into deeper needs both for persons and for communities. But knowing that enabled him to deepen his own spiritual growth. Knowing the hostility that would come from both sides of the racial divide, “I must be able and willing to absorb that if we are to be reconciled.” That is an important metaphor to use—absorb. As leaders of change, in an anxious time resistant to change but changing nonetheless, we must be able to bear the pain of others without letting it cause us to cause pain in others ourselves, to use it to be responsive and not reactive, and to promote this ability of the spirit. It is important to have a grounding in family systems theory, the work of Rabbi Edwin Friedman’s books, in order to model and promote this leadership stance in order to carry out this work of reconciliation. To follow with the metaphor he uses, we must be able to at different times be Teflon, Sponge, and Mirror; at times, we must be able to engage with people but let their barbs and pain slide off us like Teflon (but without remaining too distant and disengaged), and at other times we must be like sponges and able to soak up with them all of their pain and emotional overflowing (but without losing ourselves in them, without becoming co-dependent), and ideally we must try to be holders of mirrors, allowing them to see themselves more clearly, and turning it on ourselves as well. Perkins writes that “Community is a place where people can be human beings, where they can be healed and strengthened in their deepest emotions, and where they can walk toward unity and interior freedom."

5.     Relocation by itself he says is not reconciliation. And much of the work of reconciliation, of life together (see Bonhoeffer) begins with personal cost and commitment. Perkins gives examples of how he and others in his core group committed to live on less in order to be able to give more to the community, and even though they were not necessarily living in the same household, how they were living in a six block area and committed to one another and used pooled income to help start economic ventures. It reminds me of what has been called a “reverse tithe” where one aims at living on an income of 10 percent of what is earned, saving 10 percent, and giving 80 percent away to the community (easier to do when one relocates to a poor neighborhood) or what is called the “relational tithe” (www.relationaltithe.com).  

It also means “giving up” people as members of the group. One of the powerful sections of the story is about Perkins telling those who were not living within the area of the church to go join a church in their own neighborhoods (where of course there were probably few with the mission of his, with the focus on racial reconciliation and where people were from different ethnic cultures). Some used this as an incentive to move closer to the church and area, but it demonstrates a willingness to keep the mission and target clear, as the formation of neighborhood household groups were essential. Is this just another way that Perkins himself was exhibiting the use of the HUP, as if it is a force of gravity that eventually pulls all into it? In a way, since they wanted all to be committed to the mission and to be members of their own community, but the fact that they came with so many differences already kept it from being in the stated model of a HUP. And clarity of vision, mission and community goals is vital especially in endeavors like this which are themselves grounded in differences of background.

6.     Summary of Strategies: A. Living close together (that in itself is counter-cultural in our church and wider culture); B. Meeting in household groups (that too defies a lot of our comfort zones, and he mentions it particularly in regard with the black church and community); C. Making decisions by consensus (which is one of the byproducts of keeping units small); D. Rotating moderators (using the gifts of all)….In his book of essays he edited, Restoring At-Risk Communities, Perkins sums up the strategy for Reconciliation with these three broad steps: 1. Admit: witness to one’s own struggles, one’s own history, with race and reconciliation, keep looking to see where one’s racial blinders are, recognize the differences; 2. Submit: know that attempts will be messy and rocky but if all have God’s will in view then it will hold people together; the church, these writers say, is the truly only way that reconciliation efforts with race can gain real traction because at heart it is a matter of the spirit more than politics, and yet the church is one of the last places where this work takes place (also for those with privilege, submission of leadership to those without the same privilege is crucial), and a key component of submission is forgiveness to and with one another and self; and 3. Commit: see it as a marathon race, move from a model of caseworker to comrade, commit to a future despite one’s past experiences, and be intentional about creating not just friendships across racial lines but what they call “yokefellows” or a few people you are “yoked with” (and you can apply this to congregational work too, as congregations yoke with one another across divides).

More of this in part two coming up after the Spring Break…

Questions for Reflection and Response:

1.     What keeps you and/or your community from making racial reconciliation a priority?

2.     Describe other people groups within your community, outside of race and ethnicity, where you see a need for reconciliation work, and do you think the ideas espoused by Perkins would be helpful with them? 

The Power of Relocation, part two

The Power of Relocation, part two

See Part One below....

Notes on reading John Perkins, from my class I am teaching this semester at Phillips Theological Seminary.... 

1.      We notice the importance of “volunteers” who come into Perkins’ area of Mississippi to serve with them, even though they do not live there; one way of looking at volunteers from other areas is to see them as “potential residential relocaters” and thus as neighbors from the start, because as his story reveals people on fire with mission and passion do move across town, across the country, across the world, even though at first it might be just “getting the feet wet.” When the underlying basis is relational, not program outcome oriented, that fosters the possibilities of relocation and deeper transformation.

2.      Expect bumpy roads and failures as part of the growing learning relational process. Note how he discusses the “lack of social awareness” of white suburban evangelical whites while working with the social justice oriented black church and community. He called it a disaster, but it was only a stumbling block step. Most of the problems seem to stem in some ways from adopting the default mode of tasks vs. process, or of being too focused on accomplishing something visible and programmatic in a short time for the good feelings of the volunteers instead of cultivating relationships which sow seeds of much greater change.

      We were blessed with the passion and commitment and connection of a white progressive social justice whirlwind with many connections and a big deep heart, and yet his “getting things done” approach which worked wonders in many areas of town butted up against our culture of a much slower time frame, slower pace, building trust and relationships first and seeing if people and organizations were going to last and be serious or leave quickly, another notch in their annual report about what outreach they were doing; many times these personality differences can lead to great things because of a diversity of approaches, but often they lead to paralysis; the faster one person moves from outside the area, the slower or more resistant our neighbors might be in response; it is one of the ways they exert the power they do have. On the other hand, the slower relational influence gaining before you do anything approach does turn off even some of the local activists, especially the younger ones, who see all talk and all meetings and very little accomplishments; so it can cost people-resources even from within. I wish all relationships and endeavors could begin with daylong retreats, orientation sessions, sharing of personality and leadership style gifts inventories, in order to name the differences before beginning to work together. There are often also hard and hurt feelings that result on the parts of both local residents and outside volunteers due to these rushed-into projects. A take-away on this is that no volunteers, or local hosting residents, will be without fault in some ideal way, and the illusions on this actually make it worse and lead to dis-illusionment. But, fearing any mistakes, some people will resist “getting their feet wet” in any way in any form of relocation and service, which is not what is intended and helps no one.

3.      Notice how he treats volunteering also not as an aspect of individualism, just for the personal growth of the one who is volunteering, but he sees them as part, ideally, of a community, and he reinforces their own community connections, and encourages them to do things in their own backyards, connecting them with their wider community, using their time with his community as training ground, not replacement.

4.      Perkins begins chapter 9 of With Justice For All, on the strategy for the here and now by making reference to The twin towers of Christian mission in Luke 4 and Matthew 25. When people ask me how our community discerns what its mission should be (expecting a series of meetings and votes and even prayer discernment, etc.) I tell them that our mission is already laid out for us, our reason for being comes from Jesus’ mission as set out as Perkins describes in quoting Luke 4 and Matthew 25 (I can also resonate with those who find it, ala Rick Warren or Bill Easum, in The Great Commandment and The Great Commission, but usually have to nuance those or add to it a bit to explain what shape that takes; for the Great Commandment I add on that it is a preface to the deeper point of who our neighbor is we are to love and Jesus’ answer to that was given in the parable of the man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and so the Great Commission is to make disciples who carry out that radical great commandment; my way of connecting the two.) But the place and people of mission are expressly named in Luke 4 and Matthew 25. Perkins adds that no one, not even the rich or comfortable, are to be excluded from the mission of the church, but one way to bring the gospel to them, one way to commission them, is to put them alongside Jesus’ mission to the poor, to meet them where they may be in their gated communities, for example, but not to leave them there, contented. This is a change and a challenge to a church culture for many over centuries who saw getting people into such communities of safety and convenience and wealth as one of the fruits of the gospel. 

      Perkins says in this chapter that the very difficulty of the question for people reveals its power and truth for their lives, and those who initially resist it the most are often the ones whom it would benefit the most and who are being called. (A lesson from Jonah of course there.) In my case doing ministry as a newly ordained white pastor with church planting credentials and interests and ending up in an abandoned low income low life expectancy predominantly African American zipcode was not what I had originally intended. It only took a series of failures/learnings in a different upscale suburban zipcode to re-orient me back to the zipcode nearby where I am now, where I had been raised and much of my family remains even though the demographics have changed greatly around them in the past 40 years. But for some, it is actually achieving success in such an environment, accomplishing what they ostensibly set out to do, building and growing a church plant and community and getting noted and success from it that turns into leaving them floundering, stuck on treadmills of meeting continuing expectations of upward mobility and constant growth in numbers, that causes them to rethink their calling and to relinquish the “trappings” and to relocate. For some it can come from pastoring in an aging church that is stuck and trying to replicate the past in a changed environment, a process that just keeps adding stress to the system and losing members until they have to come up with creative ways of turning their buildings over to others in the community and meeting as guests and supporters in their own building; or they will out of desperation take other steps to turn themselves inside out and relocate, such as dividing up their 80 some members into eight groups based on how close people live to one another and announcing that these groups are now their church home, and to meet in homes or other places, as missional communities that will come together monthly for worship and sharing what they are doing in their neighborhoods, and the pastor who was struggling to survive as a full time pastor in the old model will have found a bivocational job that helps him meet ends and frees him to focus on connecting the groups, and he may move close to his new job in a poorer section of town, which prompts some of his parishoners to do the same. The take-away? Be open to a variety of ways you might be led to living more closely with the poor and suffering.

5.      “That’s why you need to go” Perkins says over and over again to the reasons he hears people give for not going. Each fear can be the opening to a more loving transformative relationship. But in this chapter Perkins gives a step by step path for how to relocate which says it is best not to do it impulsively, quickly, even with the best intentions. Notice the way he encourages people to keep involving more and more people into their decision on relocation, and how that also helps to slow down the decision, the move, the immediate impact (my observation is that often it is an over-drama, freneticism, anxiety that marks the very lives of people in need, and the way we can tend to “treat” them just adds to what ails them.) It is interesting also that we may seek to replace the real transformation of relocation and relationships over time with the “short term mission trips” that are now coming under increased scrutiny as people look at the problems and waste they often engender and, while mostly seeking to keep some element of them, to reform how such trips are made. These trips may actually be a way to keep from doing the discernment that Perkins is calling for about what it is that is keeping us away from more radical, more effective, life choices. Note also the options he has found that help people to relocate and address their fears in a common sense way; it is a kind of “marginal among the marginal” ministry, living in close geographic proximity with those you are serving but not directly amid them if there are reasons for it, and using that location to help you be a bridge for others.

6.       A summary of the strategy:

 A. get to know the area by working with others in it or working with a group that works with the poor in another area.

 B. Share your vision with the church.

C. Form a ministry team.

 D. Become a community over a year or two.

 E. Get special training for your team or a big part of it.

 F. Choose the community of most needs.

 G. Outline a target area: this is important as we have a tendency to take on too much and dilute our relationship power; he says if the community has a lot of subdivisions then your target area might be simply six blocks; if it is an area of apartments your area might be one single apartment complex.

 H. Build relationships and allow even the friends you have made first to help you choose where to live and to point you to it.

 I. Listen to the people, visit them, invite them. Plan to stay.

J. Once you begin to act, begin with bible study or prayer group.

 K. Work with children.

 L. Raise up indigenous leaders to take over what you start.

 M. Join or establish a church in the area; join is the first and best option, but if can’t find healthy one, start one.

 N. Respond to the needs, begin the redistribution.

O. In developing leaders to help you in the sustaining work of the 3Rs and replicating them with other people, I like to use and adapt his three ways of recognizing gifted people to work with: those who evidence

1. “lordship of Christ” or what is referred to as “people of peace” (Luke 10); non-anxious presences, people of inner abundance even amid much external scarcity;

2. Servanthood, are they willing to be led, see where their growing edges are?

3. Fellowship,  are they comfortable participating in all aspects of community?

7.      In the Update section on relocation, there is a nuance about a sense of urgency. While he has been mapping out a way of gradual and deeper engagement, he sees this need to be balanced with starting the process out of a sense of urgency, but it is an urgency about the plight of people, not urgency about project completions. It does remind me how the culture of permission-giving and vulnerability and trust we have been talking about this semester lends itself to “urgent responses” or immediate action, and I think about instances here when we have waited and waited for officials to take care of blighted intersections or properties (sometimes out of a sense of just seeing how long it will take, getting a story of powerful neglect) and then we will “all of a sudden” just go “guerilla garden or cleanup” the property ourselves without waiting on getting any permission from some out of state owner or from officials who have been neglecting the blight. We like to foster people feeling empowered to do that themselves though “not on their own” but in sharing with others. Sometimes that it taking over an intersection full of constant trash and weeds and turning it into a beautiful space (see www.guerillagardening.org), or in graffiti painting over, or giving out food at least once to someone in need even if they don’t meet all of the requirements expected simply because they are there and in need. Random acts of justice, kindness, and beauty are often done in spontaneous actions, or those where one feels the presence of the Spirit leading them, and as is usual in such cases, it is good to bring in others as well who can help you; even a sense of urgency doesn’t negate the sense of community. Sometimes it is during these acts of urgency, and these one-time practices that might be skirting regulations, that you get ideas and experiences and doorways open that allow you to take the more systemic route of justice.

      An example: once early in our relocation and community ministry here, we decided to get big planters full of beautiful flowers and on Easter Eve night in the dark we would go along all of the blighted run down abandoned business buildings along our major thoroughfare and place these big flower pots so that when people got up and about on Easter morning they would be surprised to see these bits of beauty lining the streets and turning blight into beauty; it would make their Easter and the community a little brighter. But when we got up at Easter dawn ourselves to go experience it, we discovered that they had been dumped over, the pots and the flowers in many cases stolen and a pile of dirt left instead, sometimes piles of dirt with flowers buried in them. What was meant to be beauty turned out to be adding more blight. What we had failed to understand was the culture of “kicked to the curb” and how people would take any opening to get something that they could later sell if they thought it was theirs for the taking, and these were just sitting there by the side of the avenue in front of buildings that were obviously not being used anymore either. Besides deeper understanding of our neighborhood culture, what that led to as a take-away was that we needed to use not big pots but actually flower beds into the ground, and so we shifted our efforts to actual planting of beds in front of some of these areas, which took longer but had a more lasting effect, and was still in the “guerilla” mode, and it led to our offering to do beds for free to local businesses, and so it deepened relationships.  So, an act out of a sense of urgency, even though it backfired, led to learnings which led to our original intent.

Small Acts of Justice Done With Great Love: our latest report

Hi all. Feel free to share with others...

From our beginning, one of our taglines that guide us has been borrowed from Mother Teresa, the call to do "small acts of justice with great love". By small acts we mean we are as devoted to the one on one encounters, to the meetings where two show up instead of twenty, even to the solitary act of one person going out of their way to help when no one ever knows what they did. By justice we mean the desire to "make right" or "to bring into alignment" (as in how a row of type is justified) what has been broken or put askew either by life itself, by powers of oppression and especially the powers of abandonment and neglect and isolation; it is more about the process we commit to daily than an outcome always over the horizon. By "great love" we mean with humility, with vulnerability for our shared humanness, and always with copious amounts of forgiveness and grace. In this way, we have been very busy of late, too busy to stop, sadly, and report, and we have many opportunities coming up for more small acts of justice done with great love. You are invited to participate, to support.

1. See the latest reflection on an inspiring presentation I attended at OU Tulsa, and my response to it, on health care and poverty and innovations that could disrupt the status quo, and why the status quo is killing us, literally, from our area perspective in the 74126, at http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/2013/02/a-view-from-74126-on-health-care-after.html

2. Also, from my perspective as a community resident in the McLain school feeder area, as an alum of McLain, and as a board member on the McLain Foundation, I was promoting the recent public survey about ideas for how to grow learning and justice at our area high school currently being studied from many outsiders (which has both good and bad tendencies), and so here is my response from my own heart and observations: http://www.turleyok.blogspot.com/2013/01/mclain-high-school-take-survey-get.html. More will be coming up soon about the McLain Foundation and our need for more to get involved, both with current projects like sending aviation students on their first flight and to a field trip, but also to long term systemic growth for the Foundation and its mission of helping the community and the school. See below for the coming week's projects here with McLain students and OU students.

3. We have been busy transforming one half of one of our building wings into an expanded "cornerstore food pantry" which is also opening up a new room for more meeting space, and we have expanded our Clothing Room into renovated space in our large Community Room which we have only been able to use for storage up to now. We had a wonderful visit again by the Food Bank mobile food van, and we were able to reach out to new folks in our area who were not yet a part of our food program. Thanks to both The Lighthouse Academy Charter School in our 74126 service area, and to Sperry Elementary School in our 74073 pantry service area for help in connecting us with families. We also gave out food from that visit, some four tons in total, to many other people in our area during our new First Saturday Pantry day.

4. There is still much to be done in the coming months on these projects at our The Welcome Table Community Center, and we are getting help this week on them and other projects from special events with OU Tulsa graduate students and with Tulsa McLain students as part of service learning and the Smart Choices=Healthy Living grant. Monday, Feb. 25, come from 5:30 to 8 pm, dinner included, as we work with the students as they get hands-on experiences in community renewal...Earlier that day, at 2 pm we will hold a planning meeting toward starting a community fair for seniors, age 60 and above, and for a senior citizens center in our area north of 46th St., and a survey of area seniors to help guide us. All interested welcome. And congratulations to our neighbors and partners, Sarah's Residential Living Center, north of McLain, on their 10th anniversary. What a good model of care and love they embody.

5. Or come and spread the news about Wednesday, from 10 am to 4 pm as we host the Tulsa Health Dept.'s important free screening clinic where people will not only get results of blood pressure, blood sugar, cholesterol, and body indexes, but also get the chance to visit with medical mentors and referrals as needed. That will be between 10 am and 2 pm. And our weekly food pantry will be going on as well from Noon to 4 pm. Share info on both of these events. And the OU and McLain students will be working with us on this day, too, from 1:30 to 4 pm....At the very start of the day Wednesday, 7:30 am breakfast at the Regional Food Bank, Deb Carroll and I will be talking with a group from the Tulsa Metropolitan Ministries about our food justice and faith commitments.

6. Before that, Don't forget Tuesday Feb. 26 our weekly preparation volunteering at 10 am, all welcome to come and help us get ready for the week, or that evening's two meetings at O'Brien Park Center with the Turley Community Association, 6 pm planning meeting to get updates and work on the Fire Dept.'s important and much needed Fire District campaign; see the attached flier, and reports on other matters in the community, and then at 7 pm for the Town Hall public forum.

7. Other opportunities to grow as a person and help our community grow, to serve and connect with other people: Turley Area Alliance Against Crime, neighborhood watch, Thur. Feb. 28, 6:30 pm at the Community Center, every last Thursday.....Our Art Studio Free For All Ages, lunch included, Community Art Days at the Center, Fri.-Sat. Mar. 8-9, Fri.-Sat. April 5-6, and Sat. Apr. 20, 10 am to 4 pm each day...Turley and Far North Legal Aid. Call Sara Cherry 918-295-9461 for appointments...

Community Pancake Breakfast, Sat. Mar. 9, 8 to 10 am, Odd Fellows, 6227 N. Quincy Ave. $5 for all you care to eat; kids under 10 eat free....

Every Saturday, 9 am. Get Your Own Garden Bed, Seeds, or Help Grow for the Pantry, at our Community GardenPark and Orchard, 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. call 9183463475.

On Sat. Mar. 16, we will host a gathering at the park of the Tulsa Community Gardening Association....

Recovery 12 step groups. Saturdays, 6 pm and 7:30 pm, at the community center....Turley Water Board Public Meeting, Last Working Day of Month, 8:30 am, 6108 N. Peoria Ave. Turley Fire Dept. Meetings Thursdays, 7 PM, Fire Station, 6408 N. Peoria.

8. The Welcome Table missional community is holding a series of weekly Sunday 11 am movies and prayers and meals for all welcome during Lent and Easter, focusing on reconciliation, redistribution, relocation, the 3Rs of community renewal. Feb. 24, Chocolat; Mar. 3, Jesus of Montreal, Mar. 10 Spitfire Grill, Mar. 17, Pay It Forward, Mar. 24, The Mission, Maundy Thursday, Mar. 28, Babette's Feast, and Easter Sunday, Mar. 31, Places in the Heart....Those 3Rs are inspired by the work of the African-American civil rights leader and community renewal guru at the Christian Community Development Association, John Perkins. Here is a great article about him in the Jackson, MS paper: http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2008/dec/17/radical-faith-the-revolution-of-john-perkins/. And speaking of Lent, it was a great honor to be a part of this year's Ash Wednesday Ashes to Go ministry on the streets of Tulsa. I worked with a colleague saying prayers and giving the imposition of ashes with people outside the downtown bus station on a cold Ash Wednesday day made warmer by the hospitality and sharing of those who came by and received ashes and gave of themselves and the hopes and struggles of their day. more at www.ashestogo.org. Did the same to some who requested it at our food pantry time that day. We had our Ash Wednesday service that evening before a leadership informal circle of sharing and planning and coordinating and meal.

9. Much more is happening on big issues, on small little projects, on outreach to others, on inreach to grow leaders, on building our own capacity to respond quickly to opportunities that are congruent with our mission. Chances are if you have a passion, a project, a partnership, we will have a way to connect with it.

10. I have been invited to preach in April at the annual convention of the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Philippines in Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental province, and am trying to raise funds to get there since they are among the poorest of the islands and can't afford the airfare, but will provide hospitality once there. I figure if we all kick in a little we can help make it happen so I have a site for donations and more information, particularly about their fascinating history, at http://www.gofundme.com/22w3r4. I hope you can contribute and spread the giving opportunity. I look forward to bringing their good news back to you all.

11. I am tremendously enjoying teaching this semester a supervised ministry course at www.ptstulsa.edu, especially concerned with ministry in and with and to the wider community. Here is a recent blogpost about The Power of Relocation, and its many varieties but centrality for mission. http://progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com/2013/02/the-power-of-relocation-part-one.html Check back often for updates and other lecture notes and comments that give background to why we do what we do where we do it with whom we do it.

12. On March 7 we will be getting training in order to better educate area residents about the ins and outs and benefits of the SNAP program of food assistance (old food stamps program), and also that Thursday at 3:30 pm we will have our important monthly planning and work sessions for partners to connect with our needs in the area.

Hope to see you soon, or visit with you online, and thanks for your support as we seek to "do small acts of justice with great love."

blessings, and more soon, Ron

ps I had a refreshing time late last month meeting new friends and partnerships at the recent gathering of the www.christianuniversalists.org and look forward to more connections.

Other websites that influence our ministry here:

www.uuchristian.org

www.turleyok.blogspot.com

www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com

www.ptstulsa.edu

www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com

www.missionalmonastics.blogspot.com

www.ccda.org

http://redpillbrethren.tumblr.com/

The Power of Relocation, Part One

Some missional reflections on the power of relocation and leadership development from my seminary class I am teaching this semester, from John Perkins book With Justice For All, on community development: 
Week 3: Relocation, Part One: A Strategy For Community Development
Background Lecture Notes to Reading, chapters 6 and 7, and Discussion Question

Which of the 3 Rs (relocation, redistribution, reconciliation) do you begin with? That is a question I get asked when I do workshops and talks on community renewal and the 3Rs, and it is one I have pondered as well. It is the desire for the end or aim of reconciliation that often causes us to want to relocate where greatest need is, and in a way it is the willingness to re-distribute ourselves that leads to re-location. But, as Perkins says clearly in this week’s reading, re-location comes first. Action, instinct, trust, showing up is the first step, even when we don’t have things worked out in our heads and heart, even when the aims aren’t clear, even when reconciliation seems unattainable and broken and our very actions cause setbacks.

Perkins talks about the shocking scandal of his “being alongside” the people in work, in play, in life, throughout the week and not just on Sunday or evening committee meetings. This is a frame that is echoed in the recent work of community mission, “Right Here, Right Now: Everyday Mission For Everyday People” by Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford in their four “moves”: move out (into missional engagement), move in (burrowing down, or incarnational living), move alongside (engaging in relational networks), and move from (challenging certain aspects of our culture). In a sense, Perkins pivotal moment of faith and transformation came when he was in California, after he had left the initial struggles of growing up in Mississippi’s oppressive land, when he was engaging in biblical study with prisoners, reading the bible with them began to open up his own eyes, and he was struck by the verse from the Apostle Paul in Galatians:” I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” This is at heart a scripture about relocation within one’s relationship with Christ, emptying one’s sense of the world, moving it out of one’s lives, so that Christ’s sense of the world and of you can move in. As Perkins often writes about the incarnation of God into the world as a critical act of relocation, so Christ moving into him/us is an act of relocation that then prompts our own into the world. The famous “praise speech” in Paul’s letter to the Phiippians, of “kenosis” or emptying in order to help fill up the world with God, exemplifying servant leadership, is another often inspiring text for church in community settings.

Perkins quotes the black liberation theologian James Cone in order to posit the primacy of Christians becoming and living out faithfulness as they identify with the poor. This is something that Jim Wallis of Sojourners also holds forth when he reminds us of scripture pointing out that the community, the person, that follows Jesus faithfully will always “have the poor among you.” That is one of the ways one’s Christian faith will be known by others, to the degree one has the poor among them. What happens when this happens, Perkins says, is that “your needs become my needs” and this shared approach creates relationship, and in the relationship the church becomes as much a receiver as a giver. To what extent are we as communities of Christ putting ourselves in the position to receive? This in itself has benefits for the church because the church that only sees itself as a giver, as a doer, will begin to take on the idolatrous notions that it is indispensable one, and often as that church may age or find itself in the midst of cultural change and not in the same position of power and giving ability as it once had the church will then be filled with shame, sense of failure, of helplessness, and in turning inward will put its limited energy into its own destructive conflict; it is a classic case of community burnout as the always giving church, never putting itself in a position to receive from others, never having shared needs, will burnout and not be able to do any giving at all.

You might be amazed at the breadth and depth of the ministries and programs and initiatives begun and that took root through the ministry Perkins was leading in that abandoned part of the Empire; so many are listed and chronicled in our reading. You might think that the church was a mega-church for all that was mentioned, but in some ways in its own local area it has de-centralized and spread its influence rather than amassing it; and Perkins re-located again from Mississippi back to California in the 1980s and most of the 90s, back to one of the highest crime areas and gang areas in California. Such re-seeding spread his influence nationally and helped his own learning, but it meant not growing only in one particular place with his organization, especially after he started the national CCDA. And, his methods were not always understood and were not popular by even many in the African American religious community in Mississippi, but his local connections and ministries were aided by the relationship and relocation of others to serve with his ministries there.

One question that often comes up, in looking at the kinds of social services and helping ministries that he and others in his group helped launch, is “But aren’t those things that others are or should be doing, such as social and civic groups and the government, so that the church can focus on its own agenda?” But that often betrays a position of privilege and expectation, one that assumes that there are civic groups and that government has resources and willingness to renew poor and suffering communities, when in reality the decline of the communities and of any of their residents being people with influence, and the difficulties of the poor making it hard to take time to organize and advocate and to be able to support their own non-profits in their own communities means that there are really no other groups in the area that can, or will, fill in the huge gaps. Perkins ministries became engaged in these projects because no one else was, though they succeeded through cooperation with others. As he describes the various groups that have been involved in their community renewal work it reveals that all the legs of the anti-poverty stool have been used as a foundation: non-profit, business, and government cooperating with one another.
While the social service and organizing of neighbors became the visible face of the ministry, don’t neglect Perkins point that it was also a way of evangelizing through action, because people astounded at what was going on would begin to ask why they were doing what they were doing in the place they were doing it, when people with sense they would say, had left the area, including churches. But that gives them an opening to then share their testimonies of faithfulness guiding them, and sharing in a way that might not be possible only on the face of it without the corollary stories of holistic needs being met.

Relocating helps to inoculate against the tendencies he describes of people starting programs that those in the community don’t need, as badly at least, and thus creating things meant to save a people that instead helps to further their own demise. It is important for us to keep this uppermost in our minds and to question our ministries and our partners on how their laudable desire for helping could be hindering. At the other end of the spectrum you have an equally destructive tendency: those who stay out of making any connections or relationships or commitments to communities of the poor because they are afraid of stumbling, hindering, putting their needs first.
So, in the second chapter in our reading for this week, we see one alternative for this dilemma of who gives leadership, who controls and decides on programs, etc. It is for the community itself to create and grow and multiply its leadership from itself instead of having to rely so much on the presence of those from outside, even from those who have returned and relocated. Bear in mind too how he says those who are returning, like himself, often have the hardest difficulty in relocating, because of their having the experience of desiring to leave in the first place. And note that this undertaking, of growing leaders who will return and help the renewal, is shaped by a long-range vision, multi generationally in some cases. This is another distinction of the Christian Community Development strategies or practices that set it apart from other approaches, especially governmental ones, but even personal ones, that want to see quick results and statistics to prove success. Note also the section on success in chapter 7; it is a good description of that difference he wrote about earlier between God’s Dream and the American Dream. This being success in the eyes of the world approach can be counter-productive though to the long-term health of the community. It reminds me of the 300 year trajectory of the early church, even from before it was identified as a church, and how the early followers of Jesus left a model that is being picked up by many today like Perkins. One good resource for seeing how relocation, remaining, redistribution and reconciliation all worked together in the early church is in Rodney Starks work The Rise of Christianity.

As you look at the impact of your ministry sites and partners, consider how leadership development factors in, presenting challenges and opportunities. How focused are they on people or on programs, and how much of a permission-giving culture (see Bill Easum’s work on this too) has been created to facilitate leaders, granting authority and expecting responsibility and accountability?
For other experiences, related but also different, in community renewal and especially honoring the centrality of leadership development indigenously, become familiar also with the work of the Industrial Areas Foundation and its practices of partnership. See more at http://www.industrialareasfoundation.org/ There may be such faith work going on in your own community.

Question For Reflection and Response:
It takes relocation to fully recognize and engage in leadership developement, and Perkins writes that “I am convinced that the key to bearing lasting fruit is not in developing programs but in developing people—leaders. I believe that developing creative leaders is both the most essential and the most difficult part of community development. It was the heart of Jesus’ strategy. It must be the center of our strategy too.” How is, or is not, or how can, your community ministry site and partner follow this admonition and vision quoted by Perkins regarding the centrality and necessity of leadership development?