White-Out
Thanks to Shannon Stevens for introducing me to Heather Jamison's blog, and thanks to Heather for telling this story about becoming absorbed into their surrounding culture so that the locals presume they just belong. How does a family of white Americans dissolve themselves on a backdrop of black Kenyans for a ministry of love and learning? Let's learn and do it too, white Baptists worshiping in a black neighborhood (as I wrote before).
Surely we at Springs of Grace will also need to take a clue from SOG Tulsa, where their largely white church sweats (literally) long hours (but they like that) to establish real relationships with their neighbors. Hopefully, Lin won't mind my posting this photo of her and Chrissy, a Tulsa girl who joined us for a sports camp at her apartment complex two summers ago. It's precious ministry, walking so near the sun (my oh my, it's HOT there) just to love some kids. Let's carry more strangers on our backs.
5 comments:
Hear, hear! It is a worthy cause, and worth supporting!
Preach it!
Me again - the church honey worked at faced a very similar situation; we found an excellent way to bridge into the community was by volunteering at local elementary schools (there was one a half block from the church). Honey volunteered with a classroom of kids from (literally) all over the world. It's just not true that prayer isn't welcome in schools - honey was able to pray with many teachers during his time there. The school even asked for our church to send any licensed counselors we had their way.
I've been carrying Stranges on my back for years. I'm sick of it!
Oh...strangeRs. Nevermind.
Duh, I love this post.
Keep carrying the Stranges. And strangers. Both are needed.
As for honey's volunteerism . . . that reminds me of the tutoring ministry we had at the CLC for a while, but it was hard going, partly because we really needed someone with the gift of administration to run the sucker, but we also needed more tutors. Not an easy thing to do, it's worth noting--I mean, the tutoring.
So, not much fruit there, and it's kind of dissolved, though Teresa keeps her ears open for kids who need tutoring help. We would need a corps of committed folks to make it really work, I think.
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