This is the ninth in a series of reports on initiatives funded through the budget of The Episcopal Church in its grants to Mission Enterprise Zones. Acts 8 Moment also has a series of reports on those receiving Church Planting Grants.

On the westside of Los Angeles there is a compact community called Palms that is known to have a dense and diverse population. At the intersection of Watseka Avenue and Faris Drive you will find St. Mary’s Episcopal Church. Due to Palms’ dense population, St. Mary’s plays a vital role by hosting the only hispanic service within five miles of the church. Folks can attend a Spanish mass on Sundays at 1:00 pm along with English speaking services throughout the week as well.

With 40% of the congregation being hispanic, it is hard to ignore the need for a ministry dedicated to this population. With the grant money St. Mary’s was able to hire a quarter time priest. So far St. Mary’s has received half of the grant. The grant pays for the Rev. Juan Barragan’s salary and for other expenses. These expenses include things like educational materials and musicians. The grant is simply allowing St. Mary’s to keep this existing ministry going under the leadership of a new priest.

In regards to this ministry, it’s all hands on deck. Since Barragan is only there for a quarter of the time, he emphasizes the importance of support from the congregation. Through a dedicated network of volunteers, they help each other to do everything. Barragan notes that they are a young congregation in which they offer their time and are eager to help. They work together to go over financial needs, prepare bulletins, and music. Volunteers will also host yard sales, youth lots, and sell meals after mass to fundraise for other aspects of the ministry.

As of right now, there about 25 to 35 people attending the Spanish Mass on Sundays along with Sunday School and Christian Education. By going to door to door and visiting supermarkets and handing out information, Barragan insists it is the most ideal way to invite people to church. He explains that, “they come to the church because they feel the necessity to be a part of God’s Kingdom.” This is evident in their eagerness to love God and their neighbors. As purported by their website, “St. Mary’s congregation is small in number and large in love for God, for one another, and for all of God’s creation.”

One way to share God’s love is to welcome people by making church a more personal experience. Barragan does this by reassuring congregants, “you are not a number in the church, you are a person that we care about.” An interesting way of communicating this message is through the phone. Through this outreach tool, Barragan is able to take pastoral care to another level, with Facebook, texts, phone calls, and the Internet. This seems like evidence that the Kingdom of God can happen here and now, at the speed of light.

This is the eighth in a series of reports on initiatives funded through the budget of The Episcopal Church in its grants to Mission Enterprise Zones. Acts 8 Moment also has a series of reports on those receiving Church Planting Grants.

The years from 18 to 35 offer a very difficult transition period for many young adults. Many worry about finding a job and more importantly finding something meaningful to do with their lives. They worry for the state of the world and want to positively impact their community. And for many who grew up active in churches as teens, this can also be a time of disengagement with any community of faith of any kind. The Diocese of Iowa is actively working with the young adults in the diocese to bridge this divide and a Mission Enterprise Zone from The Episcopal Church is helping to fund that work.

Lydia Bucklin (pictured here at EDS with her family) is a seminarian in the Distance Learning Program at Episcopal Divinity School and the Diocese of Iowa’s Missioner for Young Adults. As a part of here Field Education for seminary, she met with a group of young adults who had grown up in diocesan youth ministry, but who were no longer attending church. She wanted to know why there seemed to be a disconnect between the needs of young adults and what the church was offering. She reports, “I heard from them that they wanted to remain connected to one another and that distance did not necessarily need to be a barrier.”

She used her field placement as an opportunity to create an intentional community for young adults called “The Well”. The Well is a hybrid community that includes a Facebook page, regular gatherings through Adobe Connect video conferencing, and regional in-person gatherings inAmes, Cedar Falls, Des Moines, and Monticello. Currently, there are more than fifty members in this community throughout Iowa and beyond. Bucklin saysm “We celebrated Christmas with dinner at church, Passover at the bishop’s house, had a week-long summer retreat, went boating and had Eucharist at a park around a picnic table, and ultimately together have formed a spiritual community that holds one another in prayer and celebrates the joys and challenges of life together.”

Her work expanded to the creation of a Young Adult Ministry Development Team (YAMDT) for the Diocese. Ministry Development Teams are built around an understanding of baptismal ministry, a collaborative way of being, in which all gifts are honored and all voices are heard.

The Mission Enterprise Zone grant, which required matching funds through the Diocese of Iowa, has provided the ability to gather the Young Adult Ministry Development Team and to host a variety of events around the diocese focused on young adult ministry. The Young Adult Ministry Development Team now consists of a group of more than 35 people passionate about ministering with and among young adults in the Diocese of Iowa. They represent congregations in rural and urban areas, with young adults both on and off of college campuses. More than half of our members are under the age of 30.

One of the YAMDT’s first tasks, when they gathered in February, 2014, was to define young adulthood and to explore what life looks like for this particular social location. Young adults, for the purpose of our ministry, are those post high school, roughly between the ages of 18-35. The diversity of this population is great. With some in college (universities, private colleges, and community colleges), others working full time, some serving in the armed forces, some living at home with their parents, some with children of their own, and many financially insecure.

In late June, the Diocese and the YAMDT hosted “Camp Ruah”, a retreat for young adults ages 18-40 as an opportunity for refreshment and renewal. Each day included opportunities for spiritual direction, meditation, worship, fellowship, and physical wellness. The Pictured Rocks Camp provided a climbing wall, the Maquoketa caves, many hiking trails, outdoor worship space, an olympic sized pool, and a river for exploration and tubing.

As the YAMDT gathered, they could point to some hopeful signs of engagement with young adults happening around their Diocese. In addition to The Well, some examples include:

• St. Paul’s, Grinnell which bakes birthday cakes and delivers them to students on campus. They have been doing this ministry for more than 60 years and hear from students and parents that this gift means so much, with birthdays as one of the hardest times to be away from home for many students.
• A number of church communities, such as St. John’s in Dubuque, Trinity in Muscatine, and Trinity Cathedral in Davenport, have hosted meals for young adults, providing an opportunity for fellowship and deeper conversation.
• The Cathedral Church of St. Paul launched a Saturday evening service that met both outdoors and in the smaller Chapel space. The alternative worship time and format seemed to draw in a number of young adults.
• The Church of the Savior, Orange City, a relatively new church plant located in a house on the edge of campus that continues to fill their space each week with students from Northwestern College.
• Threehouse, a campus ministry at the University of Northern Iowa in partnership with the United Methodist Church is truly a “third space” and an example of radical hospitality. Hundreds of students utilize the space, which includes a rotating art gallery, innovative worship space, a community kitchen, meeting rooms, a game room, and a large space for dance and fitness classes in the basement.
• James Tener, Campus Chaplain at Iowa State University engages students through music with the choir, as well as other Episcopal students on campus in regular programing and formation. Jim and the students at ISU are in the process of planning a spiritual retreat for college students that will most likely take place during the upcoming school year.
• The University of Iowa in Iowa City continues to invite students into the powerful ministry of the Agape Café, a weekly feeding program that serves breakfast free of charge at Old Brick, a historical building located on the campus of the University of Iowa. The Rev. Raisin Horn’s pastoral presence and engagement with students, faculty, and staff weaves the campus ministry into the fabric of Trinity, Iowa City.

So how can a congregation or diocese reach such a vastly diverse population as young adults? Bucklin says, “I believe the answer lies in the hands of the local community.” Congregations can ask “Who are your young adult neighbors?” The members of the YAMDT, bolstered by the examples above, believe there are things every community might do to reach out to this population. With assistance from the Mission Enterprise Zone Grant they are continuing to gather and to explore how best to support this ministry to the 18-35 year olds in their midst who are navigating a difficult transition period in their lives.

This is the tenth in a series of reports on initiatives funded through the budget of The Episcopal Church in its grants to Mission Enterprise Zones. Acts 8 Moment also has a series of reports on those receiving Church Planting Grants.

Is evangelism something Episcopalians are known for? What kind of reaction do you think you will get when you tell someone you’re going to go door to door to get more people into your church? More recently, you would get a negative reaction. Evangelism is not what we typically do. In fact, it is definitely something we should do.

After chatting with Dennis McManis, Canon for Mission and Outreach in the Diocese of Southwest Florida, he explained that is exactly what they do. This diocese is working on developing a Latino Leadership Ministry. He explains, for a priest to be successful, “the priest needs to walk the streets, go door to door.” By word of mouth and personal invitations, they were able to gain interest in a couple of families and then things took off from there. McManis emphasizes it’s about risk taking, “don’t be afraid to take a chance.”

When reaching out to the hispanic community, an important question to ask is, “what can we do for you and your family?” Right now St. Mary’s in Palmetto has a Hispanic Service every Sunday at 1 p.m. In addition, by offering first communion classes, the parents that come with their children end up being confirmed as well. Last easter there were 45 confirmands and last month they had 40 confirmations and nine baptisms. The diocese had their first Spanish Cursillo last spring and it was extremely successful, they already have a waiting list for the next event.

After attending a conference on Latino ministry, McManis learned the key to a healthy congregation is lay leaders, and possibly a deacon to go out into the community. He also learned that you don’t necessarily need a Spanish speaking priest as Latinos know the sacramental part of the Mass. Thus, the grant is allowing this diocese to raise up Latino Ministry Leaders. McManis’ vision is to work with the diocese’s seven Latino worshipping communities which will identify five English speaking and five Spanish speaking potential leaders from each church. Through training and workshops, the plan is to discern the gifts and needs of each church. Then, through their diocesan School for Ministry Development, training will occur for these leaders in the church’s seven canonical areas for licensing lay people.

To date they have completed workshops for one church, underwrote the Cursillo, provided training in the use of the Book of Common Prayer and the training of Eucharistic Visitors. McManis noted that just a couple of years ago, the diocese had two Latino congregations and today they have seven and are foreseeing more growth in the future.  It is his hope that they can develop Spanish courses for the formation of deacons in the future.

The concept arose from Richard Lambert’s doctoral thesis. The only setback McManis spoke of was when Lambert retired, the process was delayed. With this delay very little of the grant has been spent to date, but McManis feels they are well positioned to realize the full capacity of the grant this year.  McManis noted how there were so many people interested in volunteering their time and resources that the grant money allows them to explore opportunities for creative programming.

This is the seventh in a series of reports on initiatives funded through the budget of The Episcopal Church in its grants to Mission Enterprise Zones. Acts 8 Moment also has a series of reports on those receiving Church Planting Grants.

Moving from merely feeding people to opening the door to long term lifestyle changes is far from easy. Trinity Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, is seeking to do just that as they tackle issues of food, health, and justice through a creative garden and kitchen ministry. Their Bread and Roses ministry seeks to transform lifestyle choices surrounding the acquisition, cooking and eating of food in an urban context. The ministry came together out of a year-long consideration in which members of Trinity studied Thomas Keller’s Generous Justice: How God’s Grace Makes Us Just. Using the book as a guide, they focused not only on the biblical foundation of justice, but also on what that justice might look in their community involvement.

“There’s not only a need to feed people, but to attempt to address some of the systemic issues behind that hunger,” said Bailey. “This ministry is really geared toward transformation, and really trying to change the way people think and relate to food. We are interested in long-term and lifestyle changes.”

One issue is that food assistance to low income families comes largely in canned food and instant soup and other non-perishable food. Not only are they poor on nutrition, but these low cost options high in sugar content which can lead to obesity, diabetes, and other health issues. Even when non-profit gardens offer mounds of fresh produce, that only works if those receiving the food know how to cook the fresh vegetables they receive.

Trinity’s Vicar, the Rev. Cass Bailey, says, “O.K., you get fresh food, but then how are you going to cook it? What ways do we need to learn and re-learn how we prepare our foods in order to get the most taste and the most nutrients from them?”

Founded in 1919 as a Diocesan mission in the historically black neighborhood of Vinegar Hill, Trinity has a history of being engaged in the community. Using a garden to better its neighborhood is a logical extension of that history. Partnering with health care professionals, farmers, and other churches, Bread and Roses uses its garden and kitchen to teach low-income residents to cook unfamiliar foods, to preserve produce so it can be eaten out of season, and to create meals that bring the family together.

In the initial phases of the Bread and Roses Ministry, Trinity raised $70,000 of the $90,000 project total to renovate its kitchen. The commercial-grade kitchen will be the hub of the project, offering a place to provide afterschool meals, as well as teach classes on cooking homegrown and farm-produced food. The church also received a $17,000 United Thank Offering grant which provided commercial equipment for the church’s kitchen.

In 2014, Trinity received its Mission Enterprise Zone Grant from the Episcopal Church to fund the second phase of the project in which a staff is hired one day a week during year one and two days a week during year two. The role of this staff person is to foster partnerships within community and oversee program development. Trinity matched the grant with funds from a diocesan Mustard Seed Grant, Region XV and three other Episcopal churches in the Diocese—Christ Church, Charlottesville; St. Paul’s, Ivy; and St. Paul’s Memorial, Charlottesville.

“One of the things we are trying to do with this effort, given our size and the scope of what we want to accomplish, we really can’t do by ourselves,” said Bailey. “We really need to rely on partnerships with other churches and community organizations. We began this ministry by really focusing on establishing those partnerships and relationships with other churches.”

By summer 2014, the garden in front of the chapel was burgeoning with raised beds of cabbages, tomatoes, greens beside the parking lot and a rock garden in the rear of the property. Benches for contemplation add to the inviting grounds. All ages, abilities of volunteers gathered at the garden on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from 4:30-6 p.m.; Saturday mornings from 9 a.m.-noon; and Sundays after church. The church uses this garden and their kitchen to teach about food from seed to soup.

www.trinityepiscopalcville.org

This is the sixth in a series of reports on initiatives funded through the budget of The Episcopal Church in its grants to Mission Enterprise Zones. Acts 8 Moment also has a series of reports on those receiving Church Planting Grants.

Since 1869, Christ Episcopal Church in Biddeford, Maine had lived into being the blue collar church it was created to be. For many years this meant being the parish church for mill workers who were primarily coming from England for work. After the mill closed, the church membership dwindled down as the local economy took a major hit.

This is not an uncommon story in the area. In Maine, one in every 8 people live below the poverty line and don’t always have enough food to meet their family’s basic needs. Food insecurity is 43% higher than the average of other New England states and ranks 11th highest in the nation. In the Biddeford School System more than 50% of the children participate in the reduced or free lunch program.

By 2006, Christ Church could no longer afford its 3/4-time priest and in 2007 the congregation called the Rev. Shirley Bowen to be its half-time priest in charge. Bowen could see that as the community around the church was comprised of poor, working class families, growing the church attendance would not secure the congregation’s finances. But given its location, church members could also see the great needs in Biddeford. The church already hosted multiple community organizations in its parish hall and the 15 congregants felt that the church’s mission was to serve those in need. With its small endowment, the church could afford to once more reduce the time expectations on clergy and stay open for many more years. But the congregation decided to take a different path.

Bowen and the remaining church members charted a course that could result in the discontinuance of regular worship services in order to focus on the creation of what the church was to become—The Seeds of Hope Neighborhood Center. To support this move, Christ Church applied in 2008 to the national Episcopal Church’s Jubilee Ministries office to become Maine’s second Jubilee Ministry site. Jubilee Ministries offer “a ministry of joint discipleship in Christ with poor and oppressed people, wherever they are found, to meet basic human needs and to build a just society”. Together with the other center, Trinity Jubilee Center in Lewiston, they seek to partner with others in the community to aid their town, both of which are small towns with big city problems.

The new initiative opened a drop-in center in September 2008. The next month, the Diocese of Maine’s annual convention approved Seeds of Hope as a Jubilee Ministry Center. Providing support to the people of Biddeford, Maine and surrounding communities, Seeds of Hope offers a drop-in center that offers hospitality to any who show up at their doors. They seek “to offer hope for those who are struggling, care for those in need, advocacy for those who have been silenced, companionship for those who are alone, and compassionate love for all.”

The center is now open 9 am to 1 pm, Tuesday through Friday and offers a continental breakfast and lunch, donated clothing, a career resource center which includes free internet use for job searches, a twice monthly In A Pinch program for necessary items not covered by Food Stamps, and occasional events with health education. The center is staffed by trained volunteers to facilitate the needs of those using the center. The volunteers offer a hospitality of presence with a cup of coffee, expanded continental breakfast/lunch and a warm comfortable space. Volunteers serve as a resource to neighbors who need anything from a sympathetic ear to accessing local forms of assistance. Seeds of Hope collaborates with other local health and human services organizations and churches to be sure our efforts are complimenting each other and better serving those who seek assistance.

Christ Episcopal Church continues its weekly Eucharist at 10 a.m. Sunday and from April through September also offers Twilight Tuesdays at 7 pm with “music, meditation, musings.”

The Episcopal Church Foundation captured the Seeds of Hope story well in their article the Vestry Papers: Vestry Papers: Seeds of Hope

www.christchurchbiddeford.org
seedsofhope4me.org