Jubilee

Last night was Thursday night dinner. It was a great time, new faces, some invited by other new faces. Lots of connections, lots of re-connections-- both in terms of some folks who have not been in a while, and one of the new faces is the younger sister of a guy I used to work with. Have not seen her in 10 years or more. Just showed up, not knowing. Awesome.

After dinner, John Gallaher and I started jamming. We were just going to work on some old tunes, "I'll fly away," and "the Unclouded Day." Him in guitar, me on banjo, Kamryn on an African drum Jessie has. People clapping, singing. We kept on-- some Johnny Cash, more gospel hymns-- "Power in the Blood," "On Jordan's Stormy Banks I Stand." Whew. Should have taken an offering...

Letting Go

Values Clarification brings rewards. Let me back up: The Rock La Roca needs to shift to being a community-based church, a church for its neighborhood. Not a mission station, not a place where people come from somewhere else to do ministry to the neighbors. But that is a hard shift, because our bread and butter has been attracting people from outside to come in and be part of things here. It was a good start, but now we are at the place where we can enter into the neighborhood, seeking the people who live here as partners in, not objects of, ministry.

The tension arises when, in making the shift, and you’re in no-man’s land, and the community people are not quite here and the “old guard” is feeling dissatisfied, it looks like nothing is going to work.

It’s at that moment that you have to make sure that you stick with where you are going. The point about values clarification is that you move to where you want to be, you don’t stay where you’ve been.

The first big issue it seems that we face is not identifying the leaders for the church from the community. We look to the same people to do the work, we seek to do what we’ve been doing, all the while missing that we need to look for and welcome leaders from the neighborhood.

In children and youth ministry, it means seeking parents to grow into leadership. Already, we have found some who have vision and desires for the work among the children of the neighborhood.

In mission, it will mean opening up leadership and development of programs to people who need the help we can give.

Where it has most hit me is in evangelism. Community congruence—the idea that the church is in dialogue with the community to develop ministries and worship—means that somehow, the church has to know about the community. Who better than the folks who live there? My friend Cliff has stepped up, asking to go out with me to do evangelism. We have been building a relationship for two years now, and it is bearing fruit in real friendship. It doesn’t surprise me; Cliff is what Jesus called a “man of peace” (e.g. Luke 10:5-7). Jesus’ plan was so simple, no one believes it. Go visit, find the people receptive, and build on them.

I hope that one day we can turn over the church to leadership from the neighborhood. It’s a hard task, but the right direction. The change has already brought turmoil and turnover, hard feelings, even. Birth is painful; but this time has also already brought new life.

Big Changes, Notes, and a Collocation

There have been lots of changes at the Rock La Roca since the year began. Two new staff people have brought new life and productivity—Andres Doimeadios and Martina Ockerman. And we have made positive steps towards aligning our ministry with what we need to do.

To that end: we have revamped the Monday night mission. We were frustrated that we saw next to no growth in church from our efforts at passing out food and clothing. So, while we will continue with food and clothing, we are tweaking it: adding a meal and a service, and streamlining the process for our friends who come.

We’re going to start a sort of children’s music academy.

We’re looking at having a couple days a week to help kids with tutoring, feeding them, and generally loving on them.

Yikes, we even have Sunday School. We might actually start to look like a church.

And we finally got around to something we have needed to do for a long time: get to one morning service. We got there, but not by the expected route. On the one hand, we have been trying to be one church, and that much of the vision remains. But on the other hand, we had to face the fact that privileging contemporary worship in our community is just not going to work. The neighborhood seeks more old time gospel. So we’re doing that—one somewhat traditional service with our curious mix of white, African and Hispanic. We’ll see how it all shakes out.

It’s a tough thing to consider, much less do. You run the risk of looking foolish as you lose people, as it takes time to get your activities aligned with your purpose, and then get the word out on the street. There will be so much opportunity for “I told you so.” But like I say, you can’t imagine how much you can get done if you don’t give a rip what other people think…

It’s not actually that crass; but if you know something is the right thing to do, the hardest thing to do is get it done before it is absolutely obvious to everyone it has to get done. I have tried my hardest to prepare the people on staff for the pitfalls of leadership: you have to keep everything in mind, while complainers can obsess all week on their one issue; you have to lead in directions that are not always clear to the people you are asking to come along; and finally, when you’re doing the Lord’s work, you have to be ready to get hit and hit hard. But it’s just like the devil to bring a knife to this gunfight.

_____________________________________________

Andres, some of the youth and I hit the garden Saturday morning. We got most of the fall stuff planted last week, but we had another section to clear. So we had some work weed-eating, digging out the thick stuff with a pick, and then tilling. We were nasty and sweaty and dusty, but at the end, we were happy. We sowed some beets, got in some sweet potatoes, thinking we might beat the frost.

We laid out about 25 rows for carrots. We have this idea that a big patch of carrots will be pretty.

I think that the work of the garden has been there to remind us that evangelism is hard work. We want everything to be easy. Or at least routine after some hard prep work. No such luck.

_____________________________________________________

This is from last week:

Vegetable evangelism has been a little different this year. We made some progress towards getting away from having so many tomatoes, for example. We grew some stuff we did not last year (beets, turnips, radishes, eggplant, lenga, potatoes, and sweet potatoes). But I think the best thing has been in distribution. I sat down and identified a few families that would receive the most regular bags of produce. I tried to put a good variety of things in a package for them.

Basically, I was looking for folks that we have a relationship with, that we are trying to cultivate. I guess that was 5 or 6 families. This year, it really produced: 2 families in church, 1 more pretty close. There’s not just goodwill that develops; you can talk for a while, too, over a sack of vegetables.

Last week, we put in the first plantings for the fall garden: plants of cabbage, spinach, and broccoli; seeds for carrots, beets, radishes, turnips. This weekend I will sow some collard and mustard greens in between some rows.

We harvested probably 100 lbs of potatoes Saturday. I think we’ll grow mostly potatoes, beans, onions, and cabbage next year.

We can always use donations for the garden. Plants are greatly appreciated. With some cash gifts, we were able to buy enough hose to get from Andres’ house to the garden, and lots of tools to keep things going.

_________________________________________________

Back in Winchester, Alice Quisenberry was one of our older saints. The parsonage I lived in was the farm she grew up on. She was fond of telling me that they grew corn and tobacco where the house is. Anyway, Alice was happy that I planted the apples in the back yard. She remembered that in the front of her house, where Charlie Moore used to live, was a big apple tree. They would sit under it to take a break from summer work and drink cold water. The tree was a sheepnose apple. Tasted great, best apple she ever had.

I like old fashioned heirloom apples. I’d like to plant some sheepnose apples.

Back in the day, 30 years ago now, I read a book, Onion John. I checked it out to see if maybe the boys would like me to read it to them. They will. It’s a favorite book of mine from childhood. Anyway, page 24: “We found Onion John tying rocks in a tree. The tree grew in sheepnose apples. They’re a yellow kind that comes down to three rounded points like the muzzle of a sheep, if you want to think about it that way. You wouldn’t want a better apple to eat, more juicy. And they’re early. The first apple you have every year, usually, was out of the sack Onion John brought to town when you happened to meet him and he’d give you one.”