We’ve been thinking for a while how to connect with and love our neighbors. Our community had gone through some community organizing trainings like the Discovery Team and the Parish Collective. We’ve interviewed our neighbors, listened to our community, mapped our assets, and learned how to write business plans. We’ve tried all sorts of different things, serving at the Oregon Food Bank, Bethlehem House of Bread, and NightStrike. We launched Steele Street School to support families with a low cost summer day camp. We’ve welcomed building users like BeaconPDX and classes like the History of White Supremacy in Oregon.
And before the pandemic we were on a path, we had a plan and it was working. And now, with LAST, Jeff Lowery’s service learning program for youth closing, we’ve lost the main work force for Steele Street School. The state is pumping millions of dollars in to summer programing and we’ve passed universal preschool as a county. It is time to reevaluate what our community needs and what we as a parish are called to do. Maybe it will still be Steele Street School, in a new configuration, or maybe it will be something else.
What I know is that when we pay attention, when we are open to it, God is unfolding something amazing for us. We said goodbye to BeaconPDX this month as they found a new permanent home, where they can expand their offerings to our houseless neighbors. The same week they left Lucia came to morning worship at the Trinity Building and offered us the chance to participate with her ministry, Manna Table, in feeding some of the folks at an encampment in the area. One opportunity to partner in serving houseless folks ended, and another one appeared.
I have been praying about what’s next for us and worrying how we figure that out, and then a clergy colleague got appointed to a Lutheran community organizing program here in Portland and reached out to invite us to join the cohort they are launching in the fall. Moreland Presbyterian who we have a relationship with already through our youth group collective, a preaching swap, and their support of our water stations, is already committed to the cohort. And once again where I wasn’t sure what to do, something beautiful appeared.
The story is never as neat or as orderly as I would like, but God always has a new chapter for us, another way forward when things change. I’m not sure what’s next in our story here at the Parish, but I know that God is the coauthor of this work, and that what is next will be good.
-Eilidh
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