Spencer's Reflection on Sabeel Conference in Palestine

In between the two-to-three second lulls and jam-ups of the assembly line of buckets winding their way up the rocky hill from the demolition site, I have just enough time to wipe my forehead and press my sunglasses back up my nose, which are perpetually taking gravity's lead, aided by the sweat pouring down my face. Just as quickly as I can accomplish this, it's back to flinging chunk of broken stone and concrete rubble from the buckets onto the growing mound just above us. And so the cycle goes. As a group, we've talked a lot about "moving mountains" over the last few days. Here, at Beit Arabiya, as the joke has been made several times, we're actually moving a mountain "from down there to up here."

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Creating a Space for Yes

I'm a “yes” man. I'll admit it, though maybe not the way you are imagining. As facilitator of a non-traditional community, people approach me with all kinds of questions: 

• This All Souls' Day, can we host a meal and worship service at our local homeless center that honors all of the homeless who have died in the previous year? 
• Instead of washing feet this Maundy Thursday, can we collect shoes for our neighborhood elementary school? 
• Can we embody ministry equality and hire a Lay Missioner? 
• I heard about a Church with a Theologian-in-Residence; can we have a Theologian-in-Residence? 

I have been filled-with-the-Spirit or foolhardy enough to answer, “yes,” to all of these questions.
While it is better than being a “no” man, I did not set out to be a “yes” man. I set out to create a safe space for those I serve – a space safe enough to ask questions, but also a space safe enough for the questions to become declarations: 

• We are going to print prayerbook breviaries full of our favorite prayers and readings to give to people we love. 
• We are going to buy a Loaves-and-Fishes Food Truck to share food and celebrate Holy Communion with the poor in our city. 
• Our worshiping community is going to raise $700,000 to give away, making 2014 the Year of the Jubilee.

I was miles away from home when it happened, when the questions turned into statements. A group of lay leaders got together without me and decided to make 2014 the Year of the Jubilee in our community. They decided to raise the aforementioned $700,000. While this might sound pretty good to some of us involved in parish leadership, they also added the caveat that every penny of this $700,000 would go to justice ministries and not one penny of this sum would be spent on our own worshiping community.

I returned home to this news, and it hit me: this is what can happen when a community is open to the movement of the Holy Spirit. This is way bigger than anything I could have dreamed up. I can already hear my inner cynic clearing his throat, but I'm a “yes” man now. The conversations among community leaders have already begun. We will raise that $700,000 and my “yes” will turn into a “YES!!!”

This blog post was originally posted on the Episcopal Church Foundation's Vital Practices Vital Posts Blog on August 21, 2013, and is reprinted with permission.

Being the Beloved Community

“The beloved community may then finally be described as a gift of the kingdom of God introduced into history by the church, and thus it exists within the provenance of Christ’s mystery in the world.”

-Charles Marsh, The Beloved Community, p 207

Within eyeshot of our beloved worship space at H♥ART Gallery there is a beautiful, red brick church building.  The sign in front of the recently restored old edifice identifies it as THE CHURCH ON MAIN.  But this moniker can be misleading for two main reasons.  First, THE CHURCH ON MAIN is located at the corner of Rossville and Read Avenues, not Main Street.  Second, THE CHURCH ON MAIN isn’t actually a church; it’s a rentable event space.  Now, to be fair, a church is currently renting the venue on Sunday mornings.  And this summer, quite a few couples have decided to rent out the space so that – presumably – they could have the appearance of a Church wedding without actually having to deal with the Church.  But all this raises the question: If THE EVENT SPACE ON ROSSVILLE can proudly call itself a Church without anyone batting an eye, what do you call a building-bereft worshiping community like Southside Abbey?

The question is not whether we are a church or part of the Church.  As a worshiping community of Jesus-followers, of course Southside Abbey is a member of the Body of Christ – (part of the μίαν, ἁγίαν, καθολικὴν καὶ ἀποστολικὴν ἐκκλησίαν [One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Assembly]).  The real question is what type of member are we?  What gifts has the Spirit bestowed on us as a community and to what ministry is She calling us in our larger community here in the Southside of Chattanooga?

As our community has been discerning the answer to these questions, we have stumbled on an answer to the initial question of what to call Southside Abbey.  What we have hoped to be, what we are longing to be, what we will strive to be is the local embodiment of the Beloved Community here in our neighborhood and city.  This is a term used by many of our heroes in the faith – most notably, the Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr.  The Rev Dr King spoke of the Beloved Community as that group of Christians and followers-of-Jesus and even those who do not know the Lord, bound together to work and live out the Gospel’s promise and challenge of nonviolent reconciliation and healing.  That’s a tall order, no doubt, but it is surely Southside Abbey’s calling. 

So, by God’s grace and with the help of our friends and neighbors, Southside Abbey will continue to live into our calling as the Beloved Community in Chattanooga’s Southside . . . (and THE EVENT SPACE ON ROSSVILLE can keep the name, THE CHURCH ON MAIN).

Fishing Together

The way the Church has historically done outreach ministry is embodied in the familiar adage: Give a person a fish and he or she eats for a day; teach a person to fish and he or she eats for a lifetime. Through the Middle Ages the Church was in the business of handing out proverbial – and sometimes literal – fish. In many pre-Modern places the Church still functions this way, giving out bread or other staples. The rise of Modernity saw the Church shift to the model of teaching people to fish: creating or staffing agencies to help people help themselves.

I don't want to downplay this important work, as these models have served countless people, but they are prone to the danger of thinking that the Church has a monopoly on fish or on the knowledge of fishing. The Church after Modernity might just have to be in the business of fishing with people.

Fishing with people is necessarily contextual, in many ways relying upon the hospitality of those we are called to serve. It engages us with those in our communities, opening our eyes to the work of the Holy Spirit that is already happening there. Fishing together fosters relationship, which changes all who participate. There is no longer a one-way exchange of stuff “we” have and “they” need.

Thrust into these crashing waves we realize that there are ways to fish of which the Church has not yet dreamed. Moreover, some areas of the Church hunger for the fish that only can be provided by the men and women already fishing outside the Church's walls. Even fishing experts (read: Church professionals) can learn something from getting out there and being open to the experience of others. Jesus taught the fishermen Peter, James, and John something about fishing even though that was not Jesus' vocation.

The Church needs these new ways to fish. Some parishes might simply need the fish. Have I stretched the metaphor too far? You bet, but there is some urgency as the Holy Spirit is out there, at work in the world. It is time to get on board. To stretch the metaphor just a little more, perhaps it is time to disembark, to get off our boats (our naves) to wade in the water, and cast our nets with those who are already neck-deep, trying to catch fish any way they can.

This blog post was originally posted on the Episcopal Church Foundation's Vital Practices Vital Posts Blog on August 7, 2013, and is reprinted with permission.