April breakfast

Sorry I missed this one, but I heard things went well.  Apparently I missed biscuits/gravy and some conversation about politics and the church.  Hmm, too tasty things that have the potential for heartburn.  Glad to hear it went well.

Our next gathering is set for Wednesday, May 9th at 8:30 at Green Pastures Church.

See you then if not before,
Ken

March Breakfast - Church With

Friends,

Good breakfast.  I hope that the nutrition of the apples and bananas balances out the sugars of the fritters and maple bars.  Then again, the fritters were made with apples and the bars with maple syrup and those are both natural so they must be good, right?

It was good for John, Rich, Ken and myself to get together and check-in with one another.  If for no other reason than to just be reminded that we are not alone in this endeavor, then I still think the breakfasts are worth it.   As usual we did a little update with one another which ended up focusing most on our kids; health, growing up, daffodilium and the expense of college (may that bubble burst soon). 

We spent the second half of our time in a really good discussion on the Christianity Today article "Church-With: Small churches find their future in neighborhood renewal."   I really appreciated the questions, discussion and interest.  I agree with Rich that the Rosewood community does have a lot of similarities with South Tacoma; high rental rate, few gathering places, struggle with communal identity...  I also agree with YFC Ken that one of the hopes is for neighbors to get to know neighbors; to build healthy relationships.  South Tacoma is a big space to try and do that (13 square miles) unlike the hilltop or fircrest.  However, we do have smaller neighborhoods that compose that larger area; manitou, oakland/madrona, edison and arlington each of which used to have their own identity.  We concluded by discussing the STAR center and its potential role in building community.  The jury is still out on this one, let's hope it does. 

Though we didn't come to any conclusions or action steps (which was not really the goal), i feel like we raised some good questions that I'll try to list here:
1.  Are their resident leaders in the neighborhoods who could use a little encouragement?
2.  Does it take great anger or great hope to motivate resident leaders?  If so, what might be the source of that anger?  The object of that hope?
3.  Is there a role in community development for churches whose building is in South Tacoma but members aren't?
4.  Do we serve congregations that might be willing to invest (time, talents & treasures) in something that we would not own (like the Rosewood Cafe)? 
5.  Is there anything God is calling us, the South Tacoma Ministers, to do next?

Our next breakfast is set for Wednesday, April 11th at 8:30 at Celebration Christian Fellowship where a recently tanned Jeff will likely be fixing some  mean biscuits and gravy.  Yum. 

Peace, Ken

Church With?

Here's an article from Christianity Today that sounds a bit like South Tacoma

http://www.christianitytoday.com/thisisourcity/portland/neighborhoodrenewal.html?paging=off

The Rosewood neighborhood isn't really a neighborhood at all," says Mike Vander Veen, "but some of us are working to change that."

Mike, a community development advocate in Portland, is absolutely right. You won't find Rosewood on the city's map. It is a metropolitan marginalia bereft of the conventional signs of place: no edge, no center, nothing much to walk to. The area is seared as the jagged welding line between Portland's eastern edge and its suburb Gresham's western flank. A glance at the area's planning map reveals a disjointed jigsaw of zones, jurisdictions, and municipalities.

Boring as those words may be to most Christians, their consequences spring into 3D in Rosewood. Planners and developers are unable to build desirable destinations, neighbor kids go to different high schools, and a cop's jurisdiction depends on which part of which side of the street she is driving on. "We're in a borderland," reflects Mike.

This borderland has recently moved to the center of attention for an unusual coalition of police officers, AmeriCorp, and several small nearby churches. Each had been taking their own steps toward enlivening Rosewood. Now they're working together with residents to take responsibility for Rosewood's legacy and future.

A Confluence of Ministry Streams

Mike met Chief Deputy Jason Gates, unknown to one another but both active members at Parklane Reformed Church, a long-established church in Rosewood, as the coalition was gearing up.

Mike, a deacon at Parklane, had been facilitating many of the 140-person church's experiments in collaborative neighborhood engagement. "Our denomination was encouraging us to become a 'church-with,' " Mike recalls. "Which is to say, be a church that participates in our neighborhood, not only do kind things to it."

Meanwhile, Deputy Gates's drug response team and Rosewood's two precincts were at their wit's end over how to turn the tide against Rosewood's reputation as a hotspot of drugs, sex trafficking, and gun violence. They were ready to try something new.

Parklane staff invited Gates to teach the church and interested neighbors about meth's challenges, tragedies, and telltale signs. "I've done dozens of these presentations, but that's the only time it has ever been to a church," says Gates. It gave members a clearer sense of how to take a healing responsibility for Rosewood's future.

Parklane Pastor Vance Hays has lived in the parsonage for 23 years, and was initially unsure of what Mike and the deputy were up to. "I always knew that gospel proclamation and gospel works go together. But, you know, I'm conservative enough that I didn't want to be labeled with the social gospel moniker," Hays said over a cup of decaf. Hays felt clearer about where the church was heading after reading The Externally-Focused Church, Rich Rusaw and Eric Swanson's evangelical summons to collaborative neighborhood service. "That book … gave me permission," says Hays. "It made it theologically safe."

Momentum slowly gathered after Deputy Gates's Meth Day, a defining moment for Parklane. The deputy's stories illumined Rosewood's darker ambiguities vividly. He exposed them to challenges that Mike had been equipping them to see uniquely through the lens of a holistic gospel and an asset-based ministry.

"We're trying to be an island of sanity and care and community," says Hays, "in a neighborhood that doesn't have any sense of community." As it turns out, the island of Parklane was part of a wider ecclesial archipelago waking up to their responsibility among Rosewood's stakeholders.

A Serendipitous Convergence

Discovering the brutalized body of 37-year-old Amatha Mendive behind neighboring Freedom Foursquare Church in November 2008 was a wakeup call to local pastors. They began meeting regularly to support each other and to strategize about responding to the neighborhood's tumult. They knew something needed to be done—but what? And how? How could they begin to address the neighborhood's needs when so few of their members were actual parishioners—actual residents of Rosewood? And when most pastors are trained more in preaching, study, and counseling instead of community development, local economics, and gang violence, how could area churches wisely respond to Rosewood's challenges?

The way forward opened up when Rosewood's Gresham and Portland precincts reached out to apartment managers and a half-dozen area churches. The concerned cops knew they could only do so much as law enforcement, particularly among residents harboring distrust toward them. The police knew they needed Rosewood's stakeholders to help break the cycles of fear, addiction, and violence that smother it.

Resulting from this outreach has been the Rosewood Initiative, an ad-hoc nonprofit meant to catalyze neighborhood renewal. It functions as something like a neighborhood association for this borderland, a voice for those without one. And it has brought police, apartment managers, churches, and interested residents together to take hold of Rosewood's future.

Revitalization began with listening to neighbors and understanding what life on the ground is really like. "True, meaningful, and lasting social change will come from the people closest to the situation," says Jenny Glass, the AmeriCorp volunteer behind much of the Rosewood Initiative.

She and others discovered that the collapse of social capital in Rosewood is tied to the apartment complex's individualistic culture and architecture. "When you have an area full of strangers, then no one cares what happens," says Lt. John Scruggs. "If you have an area full of connected folks who know one another, people care, and then they call or take action."

In a neighborhood whose architecture resists redemption, stakeholders found that healing begins with relationship and community.

Can a Café Turn Around a Neighborhood?

Listening to the neighborhood revealed a strong hunch that relationship and community might be possible if there were somewhere for it to happen. They yearn for a so-called "third-place" to gather that is neither home nor work. Presently Rosewood's only options are strip clubs, dive bars, and a greasy-spoon diner.

To get community going, Jenny has helped the Rosewood Initiative spearhead opening the Rosewood Café. "The café is an important piece of what we are doing, a great strategy to get people working together," she says. "It'll be a neighborhood hub of positive activity that will start a ripple effect throughout the community—we hope!"

Hope, indeed. Money is scarce out here. Launching the Rosewood Café isn't like a multisite church opening a coffee-shop campus. Nor is it comparable to well-connected artisans curating a MacBook-lit, gourmet espresso mecca. This café will be done by Rosewood, for Rosewood. Neighbors and members of nearby churches are all pitching in: carpenters and plumbers volunteering the heavy lifting and others donating the furniture and computers for the space. Hays's congregants have been among those getting this cafe going, dabbling in Vander Veen's hope for becoming "church-with."

To be sure, church-operated cafes are en vogue among American church planters and international missional movements, but this is a different situation altogether. Even the most progressive and out-of-the-box cafe-churches have some ownership of the space. That Rosewood Café will be operated by volunteers and owned by the nonprofit strongly breaks script for most crema-keen churches, where church control of the café can always carry the hint of colonialism to neighborhood stakeholders. Here, the café's future will be beyond the terms of any one church, because it isn't here strictly for any one of the churches.

In this way the future may be uncertain - how long will tightly budgeted small churches be able to sustain enthusiasm for such a partnership? Neighborhood renewal is a long journey, much longer and slower than the short shelf-life of banner-and-campaign ministry drives. "It's a lot to ask of an established [religious] organization to participate in secular community-based action, even though it is very much in line with what many of them believe," says Jenny.

In so many ways, Rosewood's future is open, unsettled. Her renewal will not come from any single one of these efforts—mercy ministries, addiction education, the cafe, or more vigorous apartment management. It's hard to feel certain about seeing God's hand in it by focusing on one of them. But as one observes the steady confluence of these focused efforts, a wider subsidiary field of God's serendipitous sovereignty begins to emerge. It doesn't take a semiotician to read the signs: Rosewood's abrupt constellation of do-gooders and stakeholders reveals the slow workings of the city-healing Spirit of Christ.

More hopeful still, for those with eyes to see, I have a hunch there are Rosewood stories everywhere waiting to be told.

Brandon Rhodes is the husband of Candice and a doctoral student at George Fox Evangelical Seminary, where he is studying the impacts of automobility on North American churches. Brandon is applying this research as a Grassroots Storyteller and Field Guide with the Parish Collective. He has written for This Is Our City about the Springwater community.

February Breakfast

Thanks to Rich and Evangelical Reformed for hosting us this morning.  I was able to resist eating a cruller for about 5 minutes before I gave in and began dunking it.  One thing we don't promise as ministers in South Tacoma is to help one another lose weight.  We'll save that for other groups.

Our conversation ranged in a  few directions this morning as John, Rich and I updated one another on how things are going with our families and lives.  Each of us have families that are maturing as both John and Rich have daughters preparing to head off to college while I my youngest is turning 3 today.  Hearing about college preparations helps me appreciate 3 year birthday party preparations.  We also talked at various points about sabbath keeping, blogs in the church and loving our congregations.  All good stuff.

A few opportunities emerged from the gathering and I'll just list them here:
1.  Rich and his church are hosting The Art of Marriage class on March 9 and 10.  The cost will be just $35 and includes a booklet and food.  IF you are interested then go to www.solideogloria.org.  It looks like a really good class for married or even soon to be married folks.

2. Manitou Mentors.  James Neil, assistant principal at Manitou Elementary is setting up an evening for the young men in the school to come for an evening and get some positive influence from adult males.  This is an easy way to get involved helping at the school.  If you are interested, shoot me an e-mail and I'll connect you with James.  The first event is on Friday, February 24th from 5-7.

3.  YFC fostercare.  Life Center is hosting a luncheon on Wednesday, February 23rd at 12:00 to share ways the church can support foster care through Youth For Christ.  E-mail Bobby Arkils if you're interested in attending.  barkills@yfc.org

Our next breakfast will be on Wednesday, March 14th at 8:30 at Manitou Park Presbyterian.  Rich will be bring the question, but not the book to raffle off as he already gave John and I a copy of "Mother Kirk"  Thanks.

Peace, Ken

January 2012 Breakfast

Thanks to Ken Schmidtke for hosting us at the Youth For Christ office.  The coffee was strong and the donuts were sweet and that is a good combination. 

Jeff, Rich, Ken and myself spent the time to catch one another up on how things are going in our various ministries.  We've been at this thing for several years now and it is good to see that the 'developing trust' part of our mission statement is proving to be true.  Though we have several differences between us, there is an underlying sense of trust between one another that allows us to share both our success and struggles without fear. 

Along those lines, one of the themes that i felt emerge from our sharing was the theme of 'hard realities.'  While I won't go into the details of each story, a couple of us shared about facing things in our lives and ministries or helping others face things in their life and ministry that are not fun to hear.  How do we best do this?  What do we do with these things that are not good news?  We can ignore it, but that doesn't seem good.  On the flip side, we can listen, sift what isn't truth but then deal honestly with the reality.  Sometimes, facing the hard reality will lead to greater depth and faith in Christ.  It can also lead to greater depth and connection with one another.  These are certainly good things, right? 

Before closing with prayer, we spent some time talking about the size of the group and discerning if we'd like to have more people at the table.  Though we know it would change things, we were unanimous that more ministers in South Tacoma could benefit from this place and South Tacoma could benefit from more ministers being at the table.  And so, we'll pray and call and invite towards that endeavor.

Our next breakfast is at Evangelical Reformed Church which is just of 74th Street between South Tacoma Way and Tyler (7435 S. Madison) at 8:30am on Wednesday, February 8th.  The agenda is as follows:

8:30 Gather
8:40 5 minute check in on our last month of ministry and life
9:15 Question of the day, (Rich will bring this)
9:30 Opportunities in South Tacoma
9:35 Prayer
9:45  Depart

Grace and Peace,
Ken

December Breakfast

Thanks to John and Green Pastures for hosting our breakfast this morning.  He, Rich and myself had a great discussion on church culture.  It all began with John asking Rich how often our people meet together and if we thought this was enough to 'feed the flock.'  This led to a really good discussion on the differences in Korean and Anglo church culture (one of which is the size of the coffee cups), the relationship between church culture and world culture, the difference in the culture of the greatest generation and generation X and the difference in 1st generation and 2nd generation immigrant culture.  Who says pastors aren't cultured people?

Perhaps the place this culture conversation crystallized the most is in Jesus words from the sermon on the mount when he says, "You are the salt of the earth.  But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again..."  Salt is really salty in the salt shaker, but has no influence on the taste of food if it remains in the shaker.  Conversely, salt that is pored in a 5 gallon bucket of water will be diluted by the water.  Are church cultures like salt?  Do some err on the side of remaining in the shaker while others err on the side of dilution in the culture?   This was the nature of our discussion.

I left this morning asking the question, "What does a Christ salted person look like, think like and act like?  Perhaps we can pick up in January with this question, or we can return to the questions that were raised in November.   Either way, we look forward to picking it up again in the new year.  Though YFC Ken doesn't know it yet, we've tapped him to lead the next breakfast which will be on Wednesday, January 11th at 8:30am at the Youth For Christ office at 1216 Center Street. 

Merry Christmas,
Ken Sikes (Manitou Park Presbyterian)

November Breakfast

Big thanks to Westernco Donuts for the maple bars and apple fritters; tasty all the way to belt-line. I consider it preparation for Thanksgiving. We really need to start stretching out these stomachs.

John, YFC Ken, Jeff and Mantiou Ken met this morning at Manitou and we had a good lively discussion about youth in South Tacoma as well as the work of Dr. Abraham Park who wrote the Genesis Genealogies. If you are interested in learning more about the second, then mark your calenders for a weekend conference on January 6-8 as Green Pastures and Celebration Christian Fellowship are partnering to host some lectures on the book. Contact John Kim (jhkjhkjhk3@hotmail.com) if you have more questions.

Our discussion focused around youth in South Tacoma and we ended up approaching the discussion from several angles. The discussion began when Rich arrived early to let us know that he couldn't stay because he needed to be at court with one of the youth from his church. Rich was living out Jesus' question, "I was imprisoned, did you visit me?" Our prayers are with he, his church and the young lady.

YFC Ken brought good news from Gray as 8 kids gave their lives to Jesus during yesterday's club. What great news. Ken's prayers were not only of praise, but also a request that these youth might find churches where they can grow in their faith.

Jeff shared a bit about his unfolding adventures with how the school districts approach sharing faith in the schools. Some of his kids had questions about how much they can share in school and as a good pastor, Jeff is trying to get that answer. So far, he's had a good response from the schools and we look forward to hearing what he finds out.

John not only shared about his passion for the work of Dr. Park but also modeled a t-shirt that captures the essence of the book. We had a good discussion about how this book and the theology can be good news not only for adults but for youth as well. How do we pass on the God's legacy to the next generation? How do we do this especially for young people who may feel as if they have no legacy?

For me, the conversation seemed to lead to the place where John made the claim that the best way we can reach out to youth in the community is through the schools. This led us to ask how this might be done. We all agreed that we have parishioners of varying abilities and availability. How can involvement be made accessible to them? On the other side, does the school really want a lot of volunteers? If so, what might we be able to do? John crystalized the questions when he said, "It seems like what we need is a group to coordinate the work between the schools and the churches. If there were a group that could help to specifically name the ways we could help then more folks might get involved." And so...

What if we asked the question, "How can we bless the schools?' More specifically, "How can we bless Gray Middle School?" Then responded as were were able and willing. To that end, YFC Ken is going to ask the principal, Mr. Ikeda, this question. So, don't miss the next breakfast as we'll throw these things on the table and see if there's enough energy to do some blessing.

Speaking of the next breakfast. Here are the details: Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 at Green Pastures Presbyterian at the corner of 66th and Junett. See you there.

Ken