Ministry In Abandoned
Places
The 3 Rs of Reaching
Out
Church Focused on
Relocation, Reconciliation, Redistribution
On Ministries in the
World, not Members
Rev. Ron Robinson, The
Welcome Table missional community
www.athirdplace.org www.progressivechurchplanting.blogspot.com follow us on facebook at TheWelcomeTable Mission, and The Welcome Table
GardenPark
also learn more at our www.missionalprogressives.blogspot.com
1.
Video and Slideshow of Our Presence
in the 74126 zipcode of Tulsa---what 3-12 people in worship accomplish by
turning their church inside out and connecting first with neighbors and
partners
2.
Our 3Rs Missional Transformation that
is Transforming Our Community—Rev. Ron Robinson
3.
Impact on Lives, on Church, and on
our Movement: Witness by Rev. Debra Garfinkel, Rev. Cecilia Kingman, Rev. Susan
Smith
4.
Questions from the Gathered
How to Help: Go to www.faithify.org and donate to our ministry projects: 1. Kitchen Greenhouse Community at
our GardenPark and Orchard where abandoned houses once were. $6,000
2. Missional Community Room to serve
our neighbors and create hospitality for those (you) coming to stay and serve
and learn with us. $7,500.
45 days to raise the funds; all or
nothing campaign; you are not charged unless the full amount is raised; during
the campaign your money is put in escrow and returned to your account if the
full amount is not achieved.
Please Share Widely. Join the Online
Facebook Event for support of both projects:
Come to Life on Fire: Missional
Spirituality Retreat: Growing spiritual practice and discernment in abandoned
places. A missional gathering, May 29-31, 2015, at The Welcome Table. Just $50
total fee for program, lodging, meals with us.
Come Stay and Serve and Learn in our
“University of Poverty” With Us: contact revronrobinson@gmail.com 918-691-3223
If you come just for a half or full
day, no overnight, a “love offering” per person recommended.
Overnight stays: Daily fee, no meals
provided by us: $10 per person; one meal provided, $20 per person; two meals,
$30 per person. Lodging on site or in area included. Scholarships may be
available.
The Welcome Table
Missional Community/A Third Place Community Foundation
Renewing The Far
Northside: Volunteer Grassroots Response
History Highlights:
Epiphany Church began in Owasso in
2002-03; fast growing predominantly white suburb but didnt have the resources leadership or culture match to grow and sustain as an attractional church model.
moved to 6305 N. Peoria Ave.
Turley/McLain School area in 2004; a declining low income multi ethnic area.
became The Living Room Church in 2005
and began partnering with Turley Community Association and Cherokee School on
beautification projects
Opened A Third Place Community Center
at 6416 N. Peoria Ave. and moved in it in 2007, began working with OU Graduate
Social Work program on community forums;
hosted OU Health Clinic in 2008; began calling ourselves simply Church At A Third Place.
created A Third Place Community
Foundation in 2009, began demonstration gardening with Turley United Methodist
Church and providing school gardens and landscaping for Cherokee Elementary
School and helped form McLain School Foundation;
bought a block of abandoned houses
and trashed property at 6005 N. Johnstown Ave. in 2010 to begin transforming
into a community gardenpark;
bought an abandoned church building
at 5920 N. Owasso Ave. and moved the community center into it in 2011, and
planted the community orchard;
created The Welcome Table Free Corner
Store Food Pantry in 2012. Became using the name The Welcome Table Church.
5-7 people transformed the small church into a missional community that serves more than 1000 people a month; our worship service is still 3-12 people usually when we worship as our own group; we also worship with other churches each month as well. Grow smaller to do bigger things.
Area We Serve:
Primarily from 46th St. N.
to 76th St. N. and from Highway 75 to Osage County Line; all within the
McLain School boundary; far north Tulsa and Turley community area but our food
store also serves the Sperry area. We are located in 74126, one of the lowest
income zipcodes in the Tulsa area with a life expectancy 14 years lower than
midtown Tulsa. 12,500 people.
Current Offerings:
Twice a Week Free Food Store; 4-5
times a year Mobile Pantry giving out 5 tons of food in one hour; occasional
Mobile Eatery from Food Bank
Computer Center/Free Wifi….Free
Books….Clothes and More (take what you need; leave what you can)….Community Art
Studio and Art Events…Washer/Dryer…Community Recycling Bin…Weekly 12-Step
Recovery
Community Holiday Events and
Festivals…Monthly Community Planning…Monthly Turley Area Seniors
Community GardenPark and Orchard and
Free weekly meals at the Park
Current Community
Projects
Abandoned Properties: Demolition or
Upkeep….66th and N. Lewis Intersection Transformation…Welcome to
Turley Sign Project…Roadside Wildflowers/Trash Pickup….Prairie Trails
Wildflower Preservation Rest Area
Planting Project Seeds:
In Conversation or In Vision
Cherokee School Repurposing…Scattered
Site Low Rent Housing Program, plus “Relocation Homes” transforming abandoned
homes….Osage Prairie Trail Awareness and Appreciation Event(s) and Community Info
Kiosks…Far North Main Street from 46th to 66th St. on N.
Peoria Ave….Community Lay Health Advocate Program (turning health clinics
inside out)
Current Partners
University of Oklahoma-Tulsa…Community
Food Bank of Eastern Oklahoma…Tulsa Health Department North Regional Wellness
Center…Tulsa Food Security Council…Tulsa Community Gardening Association…McLain
School Foundation…Turley Community Association…Turley United Methodist Church…Turley
Fire and Rescue Dept…Tulsa County O’Brien Park and Recreation…Sarah’s Residential
Living Center…Newsome Community Farms…Oklahoma State University Extension
Dept…The LightHouse/Gilcrease Elementary Schools..Tulsa Sponsoring Committee,
Industrial Areas Foundation.
Background
on the 3Rs
Relocation, Reconciliation,
Redistribution
Comes from
the life and work of the civil rights leader and community development activist
and African American pastor and author John Perkins of Mississippi who moved
back to the south in the heart of the civil rights struggle, was jailed and
beaten, and grew ministries that greatly impacted his community, launching a
national organization and 3Rs movement. www.ccda.org. He has also been an influence on
the new monastic movement and the new friars movement. See the books by Shane
Claiborne and Scott Bessenecker. It is a “holistic church” approach, as he
often says, that truly balances worship, learning, living in community, and
service instead of churches that spend so much time and energy and resources on
“proclaiming a message” that they don’t make practicing and embodying their
faith, making it real in the world, equally as or more important.
Form
missional teams in an abandoned place with
Remainers, Returners, Relocators for they each have their particular
experiences and gifts.
Relocation:
Go where the
need is, not where the numbers are.
A spectrum
of ways to relocate: from moving in to poverty areas to spending time, money,
resources in them and forming relationships there on a regular basis even if
you live elsewhere at the moment.
Relocating
helps you to truly understand the “felt needs” of those in need and therefore
is critical to understanding your mission. Spend time learning from those in
the area before you relocate there.
To every
fear expressed about relocating, Perkins would respond: “That’s why you need to
go.”
The Relocation 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 with your team for 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. (He encourages
people to commit to 15 years).
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 work of the 3Rs, I like to use and adapt
his three ways of recognizing gifted people to work with: those who evidence
1.
“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?
Reconciliation:
For
Perkins, and for us, Reconciliation is most directly focused on racial and
ethnic reconciliation, giving the history of our service area and its current
demographics. But reconciliation is a broader mission that includes all kinds
of ways the culture tends to disrupt and divide and oppress peoples.
Reconciliation
is the ongoing spiritual work of vulnerability, trust, forgiveness, letting
others from a less privileged position take leads and be teachers; it means
working on reconciliation with those within the ministry team as well, and with
our closest neighbors, all of which can be tougher than a vague commitment to
meeting with and working with people across ethnic, etc lines.
It means
not being too illusioned at the onset of relationships and relocation that it
turns into deep disillusionment and causes us to leave.
Don’t
rush into the third R of redistribution without not only working on relocation
but seeking reconciliation; this is what will help shape and inform the
redistribution work.
Perkins
points out that a church working on reconciliation won’t be a consumer church
because it is not what people are seeking to engage with; it goes against the
grain of church adopting the homogenous unit principle of people seeking and
staying with those like themselves.
Reconciliation
begins with the person and the church reconciling, or keeping in balance or
right relationships, their polarities of Doing (action) and Being (reflection
and nurture). The challenges of relocation (returning, remaining) and the hard
work of redistribution can only be met with the centerpiece of reconciliation
focus.
Redistribution:
This is
scary to many because it focuses on shared common goods as well as sharing the
Common Good. We tend to think of people who do this as “saints” but that is a
way to distance ourselves from the calling of engaging in redistribution.
There is
not just one model. Not only the person and family and church commit to sharing
goods, but also working to see that government does its job of caring for the
vulnerable with resources, and calling on businesses to invest in abandoned
places and projects and partners, and for a variety of non profits to be
created or nurtured in the areas.
Commitment
to a “God’s Dream” Economy vs. the “American Dream” economy.
Also not
just focusing on people as receivers of goods, but helping to create them as
producers, owners of businesses; that way they grow community health by already
living in the area and not like business people who use the area but live elsewhere.
Church as
an economic institution for the impoverished area, employing neighbors and
helping to start and spin off businesses.
The Missional Church Background
1.
We have entered an era where we need a “bigger bandwidth” of church
manifestations because we are not in a one-size fits all world any longer.
People increasingly are finding spiritual community and relationships outside
of congregations. Barna’s projection: 70 percent in 2000 connected in
congregations; down to 35 percent in 2025; will be co-equal with alternative
faith communities, and close behind will be communities based on popular
culture media and arts.
2.
Terms. Missional: Being Sent, to Serve. Not necessarily the same as a
Church Mission, or Mission Statement; The opposite of old style “Missionary”
church which went to others to convert them to become the church; the
mission-al church goes to be with others and to be converted (especially in
focus and in forms) by them, and their needs, in order to better serve. “Mission
Field” is the place where church becomes itself missionally, where it is sent,
and lives out its covenant with the world beyond it; it is the answer to the
question who does the church exist for, why does it exist, and in particular
for whom does one’s heart (or God’s heart) break for? Can be very narrow and
specific, such as one apartment complex or school or zipcode or group of people
struggling with a specific situation. “Missional Community” can be on its own,
or connected with others and with a church or group of churches; can be various
sizes though usually core groups no more than 12 to 20. Can be Two or More.
Other names often associated are Incarnational Church, Externally-Focused
Church, New Monastic. It is sometimes seen as a category of the “Emergent or
Emerging Church” but Emergent is most often seen as a postmodern worship
reformation movement, with missional overtones and connections; Missional in
focus usually includes worship, but doesn’t have to, and worship may be with
various churches as well as or in place of its own worshipping group.
3. The Shift from The Churched Culture
where Church was Primary and Mission Field was secondary and was a resource for
the church, to Unchurched/DeChurched Culture where church has been marginalized
and Mission Field has become Primary, so church now must flow toward the mission
field rather than expecting the mission field to flow toward it. In the old
culture, Church found its mission in how it differentiated itself from other
churches, which put the focus on the church institutionally and making more
members was its mission, especially if it was a church where most of its
members came from other churches; this put added stress on institutional
membership; in the emerging culture, where mission field is primary, as the
external community put less focus on churches, the churches increased their
focus on themselves. “The mission” used to be to perpetuate churches in a world
where the “missional field” flowed toward the church; but in a world where the
church as institution has been marginalized, and the missional field has become primary, so too the church should
shift from focusing on building itself up to engagement with and building up
the world around it, its missional field. The movement resulted in movement from focus
on membership to ministries in the world with or without people who identify as
members or even as adherents to a particular church or faith.
4. Church Doesn’t Have or Create A
Mission; The Mission Creates and Has The Church. Theologically speaking,
the mission of the church, or ecclesiology, is a salvific, healing response,
soteriology, to the suffering and the ways that we have been separated,
hamartiology, from the image of God and from the aims of that Imago Dei being
manifest in beloved community. So we are to be oriented toward those who are
suffering; suffering comes in many forms. Discover the suffering you are called
to address and create church to respond to it.
Church is not to be content to be a safe home until all homes are safe. Church is not to be content to be growing and thriving in a community that is suffering and declining. Don’t be the best church IN your community, but be the best church FOR your community. Start making shifts in focus From internal to external ministries, from program development to people development, from church-based to world-based leadership.
Church is not to be content to be a safe home until all homes are safe. Church is not to be content to be growing and thriving in a community that is suffering and declining. Don’t be the best church IN your community, but be the best church FOR your community. Start making shifts in focus From internal to external ministries, from program development to people development, from church-based to world-based leadership.
5.
Four Paths, or The Loop, of Church-ing: 1. Missional Service; 2.
Community Life in order to better serve; 3. Discipleship/Leadership in order to
have healthier communities in order to better serve; 4. Worship that refreshes
the soul and deepens the community and sparks the desire for
discipleship/leadership for the missional service.
6.
Focus not on “a church” but on “the church” which can have many
manifestations. Church not a what, but a who; Church anywhere, anytime, by
anyone. Grow smaller to do bigger things.
12 Marks of New Monasticism (many of these can be easily adopted by theologically diverse groups in case of #6, and in the case of #8 can be expanded)
12 Marks of New Monasticism (many of these can be easily adopted by theologically diverse groups in case of #6, and in the case of #8 can be expanded)
1.
"Relocation to Abandoned Places
of Empire."
2.
"Sharing Economic Resources with
Fellow Community Members."
3.
"Hospitality to the
Stranger."
4.
"Lament for Racial Divisions
Within the Church and Our Communities Combined with the Active Pursuit of a
Just Reconciliation."
5.
"Humble Submission to Christ's
Body, the Church."
6.
“Intentional Formation in the Way of
Christ and the Rule of the Community Along the Lines of the Old
Novitiate."
7.
"Nurturing Common Life Among
Members of Intentional Community."
8.
"Support for Celibate Singles
Alongside Monogamous Married Couples and Their Children."
9.
"Geographical Proximity to
Community Members Who Share a Common Rule of Life."
10.
"Care for the Plot of God's
Earth Given to Us Along with Support of Our Local Economies."
11.
"Peacemaking in the Midst of
Violence and Conflict Resolution."
12.
"Commitment to a Disciplined
Contemplative Life."
Books
For Learning More About Missional Church:
*The
Almost Church Revitalized, and Church Do’s and Don’ts and The Church We Yearn
For, by Michael Durall;
*Missional
Renaissance and also Missional Communities by Reggie McNeal;
*The
Shaping of Things To Come, and The Faith of Leap, by Michael Frost and Alan
Hirsch;
*Exiles
by Frost, and The Forgotten Ways by Hirsch; and On The Verge by Hirsch and
David Ferguson;
The
Road to Missional by Michael Frost; The Permanent Revolution by Hirsch and Tim
Crimmin; Right Here, Right Now by Alan Hirsch and Lance Ford
Introducing
the Missional Church, and also Missional: Joining God in the Neighborhood, by
Alan Roxburgh
Launching
Missional Communities by Mike Breen
The
Abundant Community by John McNight and Peter Block, see also McKnight's Turning
Communities Inside Out
Christianity
Rediscovered by Vincent Donovan;
*Welcoming
Justice, and Let Justice Roll Down, and With Justice For All, and Restoring
At-Risk Communities, by John Perkins, and Follow Me To Freedom by Perkins and
Shane Claiborne
*The
Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne,
Houses
That Change The World, Wolfgang Simson,
*Change
The World by Michael Slaughter
Emerging
Church by Ryan Bolger and Eddie Gibbs,
The
Organic Church, and Search and Rescue, and Church 3.0 by Neil Cole,
Life
of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen,
*The
New Conspirators by Tom Sine,
*The
New Friars, and also Living Mission by Scott Bessenecker,
*The
Tangible Kingdom, and The Gathered AND Sent Church, and Bivo, by Hugh Halter
and/or Matt Smay;
The
New Monasticism and School(s) for Conversion, and The Awakening of Hope, by
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove,
Economy
of Love, by Claiborne and others
The Church is Flat, by Tony Jones
Revolution,
by George Barna, Pagan Christianity by Frank Viola, UnChristian by David
Kinnamon;
The
Secret Message of Jesus, by Brian McLaren
American
Religion: Contemporary Trends, by Mark Chavez
Church
Morph by Eddie Gibbs,
Reimagine
The World by Bernard Brandon Scott,
Under
The Radar by Bill Easum,
An
Altar in the World and Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor,
Planting
Missional Churches by Ed Stetzer,
Inside
The Organic Church by Bob Whitesel.
Lyle
Schaller’s books especially Discontinuity and Hope, and The New Contexts For
Ministry, and What We Have Learned, and Small Congregation, Big Potential, and
From Geography to Affinity;
Postmodern
Pilgrims by Leonard Sweet
The
House Church Manual by William Tenny-Brittain
Small
Church At Large, Robin Trebilcock.
