the drum|rob fairbanks

Moving Into the Neighborhood - Guest Blogger, Holly Clark

From guest blogger, Holly Clark. Holly serves on the Leadership Team at Immanuel Church. 

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The Message version of John 1 puts it this way, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” Literally Jesus became flesh and blood and starting living with us in our neighborhoods, in our villages, in our places of worship. He was not a God somewhere in the heavens, He was on earth, living in the flesh – eating fish for breakfast and teaching his disciples what it meant to live abundant life. He healed the sick and interacted with “the undesirables” of society and gave those who had no hope a reason to live. He struggled alongside people, he lived in community and he interacted with those who were right around him.

Now what does that mean for us today? What does it look like for us to “move into the neighborhood” as the church? Well, for Immanuel, we are doing just that. We are trusting in the movement of the Holy Spirit over our community. We prayed together and we moving together.

Our community is embarking on a journey of living out intentional ministry in the West Central neighborhood. Starting this week, our Sunday morning services will be held in the West Central Youth for Christ building.

Our hope for this change include:

Partnership: We believe that God has been moving us toward West Central for a while now. Our church is made up of many YFC volunteers, employees and students giving us the opportunity to build relationships in the neighborhood even before our official building change. We believe supporting this ministry, that is effectively creating indigenous leaders in the neighborhood, is a crucial part of our work as the church.

Service focused: We believe the church is twofold: worshipping together as a community and serving those around us. Being a part of the West Central neighborhood provides us with a tangible opportunity to reach out beyond our own community.  We hope to continue to meet new students and eventually provide a place that the entire family can come to build community and worship.

Diversity: The body of Christ is made of a diverse group of people. We have felt called to be with people who can teach us a part of Christ that we wouldn’t know without them. We need to be with people who are different than us and be open to learning what God is doing through us even when we live differently, when we disagree, when we need to work through messy situations.

We are excited to see where God takes us on this new season of our community. We are fully aware that God is going to blow our expectations out of the water. Let us begin this journey together and continue to learn what it means to be Jesus in our neighborhood.

Holly Clark

Racism, My City and Privilege

I am stirred up today. Perhaps anger would better describe my feelings. The reason? I woke today to the news that a restaurant that I frequent was vandalized last night with racially charged graffiti.

 

I'm exercised "partly" because I feel like I'm supposed to be. See, I identify myself as a social activist type. I speak and write frequently about issues of poverty, class, oppression and yes, race. The reason I say that I'm "partly" is because it is sometimes difficult for me to move beyond sympathy.

Hold on, I'm not suggesting I don't care. I care deeply! Deeply enough to act. Deeply enough to change. But, to become empathetic is a different thing. See, empathy means, "..having the ability to understand and share the feelings of another."  The reality is I admittedly don't completely understand. I'm a white male. I am of the “majority”…of the “privileged.” I don't contest that. The only place I can even hesitantly empathize is in my utter bewilderment.

As a former collegiate athlete I would on many occasions find myself in gyms where I was the minority. On several occasions, I was categorized immediately by my “whiteness.” Assumptions were unfairly made of me before my name was even known. Okay, here is where I think I can possibly empathize (though I share this hesitantly) with the owner of "Ha Ha's" in the awful gesture sprayed on the side of his building. My feeling was, "Why would you think something of me just because I'm white?  You don't know me. You don't know if I'm a 'cracker' or not. You don’t know that I can’t jump! (I had to throw that last one in).” Whatever hurtful stereotyping the person who runs HaHa's and his amazing eating establishment experienced, the reality is the perpetrators don't know him. It was a dehumanizing gesture. One in which the owner of HaHa's and his Korean race were stupidly slid into the category of objects. Objectification is the process of representing or treating a person as an object, one that serves. Subjects are those acting and objects are those being acted upon. It is a gesture, often violent, of subjugation or power. This is most certainly found in racial hatred, but also in gender, sex in the form of pornography, politics, and a whole array of other issues where people seek to use power over others. I don’t know for sure, but I would assume that in seeing the graffiti, the owner of HaHa's may have asked, “Why did they do this to me? I am a good guy. I offer good food at a fair price. They have no reason to hate me. They don’t even know me.”

I suppose the question that must be asked is; are there people in our world’s that we dehumanize. People of other skin color? People who are gay? Folks with mental illness? People from other religious backgrounds? People from other countries?

Here is one of the main reasons this matters so much to me. I'm disturbed about this morning’s incident (perpetrating hatred against another) is because I have a passionate dream that my city would be different. I attempt to live my life with the future in mind. In theological terms, this is called an eschatological hope. See, biblically all things will ultimately be reconciled or righted. It is best represented in Revelation 21:4 where it says, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away."  If you read “the book,” you will also realize that race is a big deal to God. Over and over it states that at this wonderful culmination there will be a massive multi-racial worship service going on which includes every “tongue and nation.” No exclusion based upon race, definitive inclusion. As we endeavor to imagine the way things are supposed to be, objectification of others is…well, unimaginable! My goal then is to, with all I have, live into the future now. Where I see injustice, or poverty, or any type of hatred, I must both speak and act to demonstrate the grand reign of God. This future of wholeness animates my life now! In my thinking, when my current reality, my current city in this case, does not align with God’s ultimate proposed hope for His creation I must attempt to act out as an instrument to bring about what ought to be…

Now!

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