Transcript
Speaker: Hello friends and welcome to the CCDA podcast.
Speaker: My name is Lynette McIntosh-Madrigal and I'm the Flourishing Congregations Coordinator here at CCDA.
Speaker: I am your host for this episode and today we'll explore the Flourishing Congregations Initiative, a key way CCDA is living out its passions for seeing people and communities experience God's shalom.
Speaker: This comprehensive four-year program empowers church leaders to deepen their congregation's community engagement, enhance their ministries, and contribute to the flourishing of their neighborhoods.
Speaker: Today, we have a representative from OnRamps Covenant Church joining us to share about what they are doing in their church and community and how they are seeing God move.
Speaker: Eric Mass Foss is a community life pastor at OnRamps Covenant Church and has been serving here faithfully for 10 years.
Speaker: So Pastor Eric, thank you for being here today.
Speaker: Before we dive into your work here at OnRamps, I'd love for our listeners to get to know you a little bit more.
Speaker: Can you start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about your role and journey in ministry?
Speaker: Thank you, Lynette.
Speaker: It's great to be on and I'm a supporter of all things CCDA.
Speaker: And so it's nice to be on this side of watching some CCDA content for once.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Like you said, my name is Eric.
Speaker: I'm a lifelong Fresno person.
Speaker: I've lived here my whole life.
Speaker: And I became a follower of Jesus around the end of high school when all my friends were talking about wanting to move out of town to go find, I guess, a more exciting life and more opportunities.
Speaker: But as I became a follower of Jesus, I really felt God's call to stay in Fresno and to invest in the life of our city.
Speaker: And so I've basically been here ever since.
Speaker: I got connected with
Speaker: kind of a CCDA aligned ministry community in Fresno.
Speaker: I was a part of some of the ministry houses that we have, which are like year long, a ministry training, urban ministry kind of internships.
Speaker: And so, I don't know, I was pretty much cooked after that.
Speaker: I just, uh,
Speaker: Kept going down that.
Speaker: And now I found myself here.
Speaker: My wife, Jessica, is a teacher in our public high school.
Speaker: And we have two cats.
Speaker: And we love to ride bikes and, I don't know, cook and just hang out with people.
Speaker: I feel like we have a very people-centered life.
Speaker: And so one of the reasons why people are like, let me get out of Fresno is because they say there's not a lot to do.
Speaker: But that's only true if you don't know people.
Speaker: We've been very well taken care of and just love the richness of community that we found here and love to just like, I don't know, be living into the call that God has given us to care for our neighborhood.
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: And remind us, you're a Fresno native, right?
Speaker: Fresno, California?
Speaker: Yes, that's right.
Speaker: Although I lived, I grew up on the other side of Fresno from where I live now.
Speaker: And so a huge part of just like
Speaker: My experience and journey was learning about how different Fresno was depending on where you are in the city.
Speaker: And so that was like a very big shocking kind of like revelation to me that changed, I don't know, my understanding of things in a pretty big way when I was a young adult.
Speaker: Now that we have a sense of your background, let's talk about your community that you serve.
Speaker: Can you paint a picture for us?
Speaker: What is Fresno like?
Speaker: What makes your neighborhood unique?
Speaker: Where OnRamps is located?
Speaker: And what are just some signs of hope and some signs of need that you see?
Speaker: So like I said, Fresno is a very divided place.
Speaker: Depending on your latitude and longitude, you're going to have very, very different experiences of what the city is like.
Speaker: My neighborhood is the Lowell neighborhood, which is kind of like
Speaker: the northernmost residential neighborhood in the downtown here.
Speaker: And so it is a place that I've driven past many times on the freeways because it's bounded by some freeways, but I never thought that I would be on the ground locally there.
Speaker: It's kind of a place where people where I grew up were taught to stay away from.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: Yeah, Fresno is a very amazing place.
Speaker: I feel like it gets a really bad rep.
Speaker: And so I think also people who love Fresno kind of overcompensate a little bit sometimes and just try to hype Fresno up so much.
Speaker: There's a lot of struggles.
Speaker: I mean, we have a very high poverty rate.
Speaker: We're also like the breadbasket of the entire world.
Speaker: And so while there's like a lot of agricultural production, there's a lot of intense inequality between the people who are owning...
Speaker: these big agribusiness companies and then the people who actually do the, you know, planting and harvesting of the food that we eat a lot of times have just inadequate access to food themselves or to kind of the infrastructure that would make life sustainable and enjoyable for just living, I guess.
Speaker: And so, yeah, Fresno is a tale of contrasts and like, I feel like there's so much going on.
Speaker: I think because of the fact that we have a lot of struggles, people really come together and we find a lot of joy in community.
Speaker: And so on my block, I feel like there's barbecues all the time and there's just people celebrating and people looking out for each other.
Speaker: There's a spirit of camaraderie, I think, at least in the parts of Fresno that I like to hang out in.
Speaker: And so I'm very thankful for that.
Speaker: And then when it comes to our church community, we are like a parish church of our neighborhood.
Speaker: We were really planted with those kinds of CCDA values.
Speaker: And so we're hyper local and specific.
Speaker: And we always say that because we're not trying to reach old city, we can go really deep in the place that we are.
Speaker: And so we really do try to practice holistic ministry and kind of all the other principles, which I'm sure we'll be getting into, but yeah,
Speaker: Yeah, we're just a little community that is trying to be connected to our neighbors and trying to be as much church outside of the walls as we are when we're gathering, you know, for Bible study or for our worship gatherings.
Speaker: Pastor Eric, you just spent some time talking to us about your community.
Speaker: I'd love to know about your church's story.
Speaker: You talked about your church position in the community, in the Lowell community of Fresno.
Speaker: So tell me, how did your church begin and how has it evolved?
Speaker: Our church is called On Ramps Covenant Church.
Speaker: On Ramps is because the little neighborhood is actually like kind of within a triangle that's bounded by on two sides by freeways.
Speaker: And we also wanted to say like we want to be an on ramp to people connecting to God's kingdom.
Speaker: So it had a geographical sort of feature and kind of a theological feature.
Speaker: On Ramps started actually at like the park in our neighborhood.
Speaker: When we started, we didn't have a building.
Speaker: We didn't have
Speaker: really like membership or anything like that, but we'd meet out in the park and then we'd meet in people's homes.
Speaker: From the jump, there's always been kind of like, our parish neighborhood is like our church.
Speaker: And so anybody's invited.
Speaker: For a while, we were at the Youth for Christ.
Speaker: And so we were like in a little back storage room behind, or in the back of the Youth for Christ building.
Speaker: And then in 2020, we actually bought a building.
Speaker: It was like this old, basically an old tire factory that then was a world impact building for many years.
Speaker: And we, our goal, and we're still working on this, and we are this to some degree, was to turn this into like a very multi-use community center.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: We're not a large congregation.
Speaker: We're not a wealthy congregation.
Speaker: And so we are like, we're not going to be able to pay for this with like five money.
Speaker: And so we've always known from the beginning that partnerships are how we're going to like touch above our weight as a church.
Speaker: And so right now we, our church needs for our weekly worship gatherings, basically in a basketball gym.
Speaker: We, we pull everything out and we tear everything down every single week so that it can be used throughout the week with our partners called Impact Athletics.
Speaker: They are like trainers.
Speaker: We have, you know, the local school system kind of brings students over there to play basketball.
Speaker: And we have lots of extra space in one of the children's rooms right now that we have like, yeah, after school programs.
Speaker: We partnered with some local groups.
Speaker: And then we also have like a wing office that office buildings that are rented out by different nonprofit organizations.
Speaker: Just anybody who aligns with our mission.
Speaker: We're able to use the building to generate income for our mission and also just to cultivate close partners that we get to work with.
Speaker: And so that's been really beautiful.
Speaker: Our building has two hair salons in it.
Speaker: We have a dance studio.
Speaker: We have, oh man, now I'm not even going to be able to think of all the things that we have.
Speaker: Just different groups that kind of come in and out and do different things.
Speaker: We've had some Know Your Rights events over the last few weeks in the building.
Speaker: So it's like a space that people can use.
Speaker: We started like a...
Speaker: parent church partnership for online learning during COVID.
Speaker: So kids could, parents could take their children if they still were working through the pandemic, which a lot of people in our neighborhood were, they could bring their kids to do online school, which would be from home.
Speaker: But here, we're really trying to get the most out of our building because, you know, we have, we're strongly like mission oriented and we recognize that the building is like a tool and we don't want it to become like the end in itself.
Speaker: but just a tool to facilitate more ministry.
Speaker: And so we're trying to use our space very, very strategically in ways that keep us sustainable and simple.
Speaker: Those are two values of our church.
Speaker: It's like doing things we really want to be, no matter when we're in lean times or we've got, you know, resources are flowing to us.
Speaker: We want everything to be as grassroots as possible, as simple and sustainable as possible.
Speaker: We really just want to be a community.
Speaker: So we're going to do something.
Speaker: We're going to be as a community.
Speaker: I'd love to know a little bit more about your community.
Speaker: What are some of the biggest challenges your community faces?
Speaker: People say, and I don't remember this, but people say, wow, you know, it used to be a lot worse, like in the 90s.
Speaker: I mean, we've had on and off gang problems in our neighborhood, which I think has just been sort of in a general downward trend, kind of with a lot of other places, too.
Speaker: So I don't think it's specific to our neighborhood.
Speaker: We live in one of the multiple neighborhoods in Fresno that has a high level of concentrated poverty.
Speaker: So the statistics are that over 40% of the households live under the federal poverty line.
Speaker: I think it's probably higher than that, but that's just kind of the cutoff of a high poverty neighborhood.
Speaker: And we have slumlord issues.
Speaker: Our housing situation is really weird because it used to be this is a place where
Speaker: you know, you get at least expect to find like affordable housing.
Speaker: And in the last few years, that has become a huge challenge.
Speaker: And so coming in on sort of, I guess, like Gen 1 CCDA mentality about like, if I'm a relatively like privileged middle class person, I should be able to just like move in wherever.
Speaker: And then the question is like, what do I do with this huge house that I'm able to move into?
Speaker: Because I'm not
Speaker: trying to live in the suburbs, that has changed a lot.
Speaker: And like the houses are just as expensive.
Speaker: A lot of times they're owned by like out of town or even out of state landlords.
Speaker: And we're just feeling like the downstream effects of like the Bay area vacation of housing in the central Valley.
Speaker: And so that's been putting a lot of pressure on people.
Speaker: And so our homelessness has been really going up and,
Speaker: Just like housing insecurity and a lot of the stuff that is like downstream of that has been pretty rough.
Speaker: People are having just like difficult economic times, let's say, just across the board.
Speaker: And so that's a big struggle.
Speaker: And there's pretty cool things that people are kind of looking into doing work around community land trusts.
Speaker: and sort of like community ownership of like land and also stuff about putting some sort of like checks on some of these landlords.
Speaker: And there's a lot of money to be made at Fresno, I feel like, on exploiting already very vulnerable people, which is really sad to see.
Speaker: So yeah, some of the issues we said, environmental too.
Speaker: I mean, because it's such a heavy agriculture place, you would think that we would be really invested in keeping, you know,
Speaker: the whole ecosystem here like very healthy but i think that there's kind of like a short-term profit and a mindset and so there's a lot of like dumping we there's people who are doing projects to show even like the sort of environmental inequities in different parts of town and so like you know the life expectancy can change by up to maybe like 20 years depending on uh what part of town you spend your life in and that has to do with like
Speaker: agricultural waste dumping and what they call like the brown fields where they will develop previously used plots of land that they use to do some kinds of dumping and
Speaker: kind of like waste stuff.
Speaker: So there's a lot of challenges, but there's a lot of really good people.
Speaker: And I think that as we continue to build community, we're trying to let the Lord show us how we're the answers to the prayers that we have for changing of our neighborhood.
Speaker: That like, it's not going to come from some outside force.
Speaker: It's not going to come from
Speaker: our local government or from some kind of really benevolent NGOs or something, but it's going to come from us organizing together and like supporting one another and then discovering our collective power to do something like larger scale about it.
Speaker: And that stuff really gets me excited.
Speaker: Man, it sounds like
Speaker: OnRamps Covenant Church has seen a lot of hardship of its neighbors and chosen to stay.
Speaker: I think you even talked and hinted towards the life expectancy of the space because of the environmental factors and the way that big businesses and corporations choose specific spaces and
Speaker: in Fresno and across different cities, right?
Speaker: That hurt their neighbors and hurt the people around them.
Speaker: And somehow on-ramps said like, that's where we want to be.
Speaker: And so I'd love to hear with your 10 years of service and on-ramps, how have you seen the church change with its neighborhood and also like kind of fight for justice in some of those areas, right?
Speaker: Like you see your neighbors hurting, sometimes hurting because of what you hinted towards, right?
Speaker: Like the city and its regulations or the,
Speaker: corporations and how they're hurting the health of our neighbors um have you seen your church learn to like be involved in those spaces right maybe even speaking to like churches that are like i don't know how to get started on um wanting to be like a force in that space can i be a force in that space what's my role basically is what i'm saying i mean i would say we're constantly changing just because that's the nature of our community like
Speaker: there's kind of a fluidness to that.
Speaker: And because we maintain ties with people inside of just like our
Speaker: we're not very attractional as a church, like trying to get people necessarily in the doors.
Speaker: And so I feel like people move around a lot.
Speaker: And so we're trying to, yeah, not put the focus on getting people to attend our gatherings, which is great.
Speaker: You know, that's an important thing too.
Speaker: But I think that like a lot of the life happens outside the doors, in the neighborhood, in our partnerships, in coming alongside other groups of people who aren't even like necessarily aligned with
Speaker: a church or like a faith-based nonprofit or something, but like anybody who's seeking the shalom of our neighborhood, we're like, this is a person of peace, like Jesus said.
Speaker: So like, let's accept their hospitality and come join something that they're doing.
Speaker: One of the things we talk about a lot is like,
Speaker: We're not bringing God with us to wherever we end up going.
Speaker: If we're walking the streets in a prayer walk or if we are joining a protest or like going to city hall to, you know, give comment on some kind of legislation or something like we don't want to think like, oh, we're bringing God with us.
Speaker: Of course, you know, the Holy Spirit resides in us.
Speaker: But God is already present.
Speaker: And what we're looking for is like, where is God at work?
Speaker: Even amongst people who might not recognize that or maybe label it like we would.
Speaker: But we'll say, where do we perceive God as present and at work, bringing about life out of death, the shalom, bringing about flourishing?
Speaker: And how can we sort of with it?
Speaker: So I think we get a lot of opportunities to partner sometimes in ways that we would not have expected.
Speaker: Thanks so much for sharing those insights, Eric.
Speaker: I'm interested to know, like, how have you seen God move?
Speaker: We talked a little bit about your community and what your community is facing, but I'd love to hear some of those highlights.
Speaker: How have you seen God move in your church and in your community?
Speaker: So I'll start, I guess, in the community part.
Speaker: One thing I love so much about Fresno is that I think given our challenges,
Speaker: amongst the people who really taught that vision for God's kingdom, there is such like a camaraderie and like a, and a collective spirit and a recognition that we can't get bogged down, like trying to compete with each other, that we have to collaborate with each other.
Speaker: And so I definitely see God at work, like kind of breaking us out of our boxes, like our individual church congregation boxes for our like
Speaker: you know, individual organizational boxes and like bringing people together kind of relationally.
Speaker: And that was the community that I was discipled up in was not really like one church particularly, but kind of all the churches that honestly that were kind of aligned with the CCD values, whether they called it that or not, was like people who really had a heart for holistic community.
Speaker: transformation of ourselves and of like our dynamics as a community and so i think everything is like relation so when we talk about systems of injustice when we talk about flourishing like these all are just ways of conceptualizing kind of mass scale relationships like what do we what do we allow in our relationships other people like what kind of level of treatment are we going to allow and so
Speaker: I think that there's like a lot to be said for the collaboration.
Speaker: And I think also more on our congregational level, right?
Speaker: I think God is breaking us out of those boxes, their mental and emotional and spiritual boxes that are our tendency to compartmentalize, our tendency to compartmentalize our faith.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: Yeah, like that is how I grew up in like a church context.
Speaker: And so when I was like raised, people who cared about justice issues and also talked about their faith were kind of seen as like suspect.
Speaker: And so when I went to, when I applied for the Pink House, which is our 10 month urban ministry training, I really went in going like,
Speaker: Hmm, I'm going to suss out if this is like legit or not.
Speaker: Because I have been told that there's something wrong with these people.
Speaker: Like maybe their faith is like not legit.
Speaker: And so I walked into a minefield of God's like grace.
Speaker: Blew me up.
Speaker: And now I'm all mingled because of it in a good way.
Speaker: You went in as a spy and came out chained, huh?
Speaker: Yeah, for real.
Speaker: For real.
Speaker: And like, I think that is a prevailing culture.
Speaker: in like the church culture in the valley i mean the central valley is like the bible belt california i don't think people don't realize that um but the church culture tends to be very conservative and very compartment very dualistic right and so it's like let's not talk about the people that that pick our food let's not talk about sort of like uh what life they're living that's over there you know that's on the other side of the freeway
Speaker: And we actually don't have to look at that.
Speaker: Let's think about where we're going to go when we die and how we can be nicer people or how we can defend Bible or something.
Speaker: And so when I encountered a community of faith that was not like that and held a lot of things together in a holistic theology, I think it really just saved me from
Speaker: maybe some unhealthy deconstruction.
Speaker: I think I've had healthy deconstruction because I was in a community of faith that could embrace lots of different things.
Speaker: And so for my own faith, I think being pulled out of those boxes was just a grace that I was really thankful for.
Speaker: And now I guess I'm trying to return the favor by helping people develop a more
Speaker: holistic and all encompassing sort of framework for their faith that can hold all the issues of real life.
Speaker: And it's not, I guess, like magical thinking or some kind of like prosperity gospel or something like that, or just like straight up dualism, like kind of like what I grew up around.
Speaker: Thanks so much for sharing those pieces.
Speaker: I think, Eric, what you provide is hope, right?
Speaker: Like hope and challenge.
Speaker: I think many of us have found ourselves in that same space, right?
Speaker: We're challenged by maybe something we read or something we saw, something we heard.
Speaker: And we become those spies, kind of like you said, with that internship house, where you're like, who are those people living together in community, serving the community?
Speaker: What does that look like?
Speaker: Especially in this area of town, we get to decide.
Speaker: if we want to push them away or kind of lean in and be curious, right?
Speaker: And I think what you have is you're challenging people to be curious together.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: One thing you said was holistic theology.
Speaker: It seems like this holistic theology has kind of carried you into different seasons of life and carried your church through different seasons.
Speaker: And today you're in the Flourishing Congregations Initiative.
Speaker: So I'd love for you to share with our listeners here is what drew you this initiative and what do you hope to achieve?
Speaker: Well, I first heard about the initiative from a sister in the city of Fresno that works for CCDA, and her name is Lynette.
Speaker: And so it was actually you.
Speaker: It's me.
Speaker: It's great because even we're doing this, like we're probably like less than a mile away from each other right now.
Speaker: So that's pretty funny.
Speaker: It was that.
Speaker: So I think the timing for us was perfect because Flourishing Congregations came out as we as a church are in the middle of a textual transition.
Speaker: So founding pastors who set us out on this DNA of being connected to CCDA and
Speaker: and being very place-focused, having a very contextualized theology, they were transitioning out.
Speaker: And so we just found ourselves, especially after COVID, just ministering to a different, not entirely, but just new people.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: we thought, man, this is a perfect time to really like root ourselves in those values in a different way.
Speaker: That's kind of like the big reason we wanted to be just like really connected with the national organization and like letting people know that there are people outside our congregation and the congregations we kind of vibe with in Fresno.
Speaker: That there's like, this is a big international and like nationwide movement, you know, and that we're not like making this up.
Speaker: And I think sometimes people can feel like, man, this is cool, but where else is this happening?
Speaker: I don't see it.
Speaker: When I scroll, I don't know what, Christian TikTok or whatever, I don't really see this.
Speaker: Or I don't think that this kind of work gets a lot of publicity or hype, which is probably good.
Speaker: I'd prefer for us to be in the trenches now.
Speaker: doing good work that doesn't get noticed on an international scene or gets like tick-tocked about too much, but that like is good for the people who,
Speaker: And that's one thing I love about going to CCBA conferences.
Speaker: I'm like, I could go to a conference where I see whoever is like the biggest Christian influencer at the moment.
Speaker: But I love seeing people speak and share from their stories who are like heroes in a very small, like local place.
Speaker: Like if you're a big deal, like in your neighborhood, but I've never heard of you, I would much rather glean your wisdom than someone who's just like hitting the like speaking circuit at Christian conferences, you know?
Speaker: And so I've always loved that contextual element of CCBA.
Speaker: And that's something that whether people recognize it or not in our congregation, like that's at the core of our identity.
Speaker: So we really want to keep that connection strong in the time of transition.
Speaker: And so that was why we reached out and applied.
Speaker: And I'll say, you know, one of my colleague pastors at our church, Jessica Jackson, she saw it first, I think, from you and was like, let's do this.
Speaker: And I was like, yes.
Speaker: And so it's been great to meet our coach and just like see like-minded congregations that are even like new and are learning this for the first time.
Speaker: I think there's something really powerful about seeing people make that transition to like a new paradigm is actually, I don't know, sometimes it can be even more cool than seeing like a, you know, a ministry that's been founded on CCD principles is like seeing how they're kind of rethinking things according to like a new way of thought and education.
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: Thanks so much for sharing that.
Speaker: I'm still, it's still ringing in my ear, you saying, I'd rather hear from heroes in a small and local place.
Speaker: And that's really deep.
Speaker: I wrote that down for myself to read later.
Speaker: But thanks for sharing about your perspective.
Speaker: For the listeners here who are curious to know more about the Flourishing Congregations Initiative, you can...
Speaker: hear about that and read on our website at CCDA and search flourishing congregations.
Speaker: Basically, the hope for the FCI is to assess, adapt, and address the complex needs of members and neighbors alike, moving from community isolation to community partnerships.
Speaker: So Eric, as you're talking about the Flourishing Congregations and coming onto the program, what's been one big takeaway from the program so far?
Speaker: I'd say the biggest takeaway is the pre-conference back in October.
Speaker: And so just being in a room with all these different congregations, getting to play games with them and learn about where they're coming from, what their particular journey is, that's been really, really fun.
Speaker: A takeaway is just that we're not doing this alone.
Speaker: I'm interested to know, like, it seems like you're really excited about getting together with people, like-minded people at the conference, at CCDA.
Speaker: So I'd love to ask you a question about the CCD philosophy.
Speaker: Of the components, there's eight components, which of the eight stand out to you the most?
Speaker: And how do you, or how are you applying them to your context?
Speaker: Okay, this is my favorite question and probably the hardest one.
Speaker: At least for me, I really, it's so hard to separate these into discrete like boxes because they just all flow into each other so easily.
Speaker: And so as I was thinking about this question, I was like, man, I don't even know like which one to pick because I feel like I can't even explain one without bringing in like two or three more.
Speaker: So I'll just try to like
Speaker: you know, use one as an entry point.
Speaker: But I think the biggest ones that we've been leaning on right now is listening to the community and then listening to the community has been an amazing this kind of, especially as people in like congregational ministry.
Speaker: I think there's such a,
Speaker: There's such a impulse and it goes both ways.
Speaker: Like people expect it from leaders and also leaders kind of like expected of themselves where they think it's what their congregation expects, which is to come up with all the vision, which is to like create all the programming and just kind of drop this package on the laps of the congregation and say, okay, here's what we're doing.
Speaker: For example, our congregation just finished what we call our yearly vision retreat.
Speaker: And so we have like a big two-day retreat
Speaker: sort of like communal discernment time.
Speaker: Really, it's very like asset-based community development kind of thing where we just say, okay, like we're going to spend this time reflecting on where we've been the last few years and like just kind of
Speaker: gathering information so that we all have a little piece of the puzzle of like what we've gone through as a church but no one person holds that in their mind because we all have different experiences and so we're able to like actually put all that together and see it on the wall you know we're doing you know it's on the walls on big big sheets of paper uh and so we we like reflected on our path kind of inventoried our present like what is what do we have going on right now what are our
Speaker: What are our gifts?
Speaker: What are the different things that we all bring to the table?
Speaker: What are the things that we need to flourish?
Speaker: What are kind of the challenges we're facing right now?
Speaker: And then just praying together about what's going to be our vision, our missional priorities, and stuff for the coming year.
Speaker: And I just came away from that.
Speaker: So that was maybe like two weeks ago.
Speaker: I came away from that so thankful that our pastoral staff or our staff or even like just our
Speaker: small group of leaders or something, didn't have to do that on our own.
Speaker: And that we could just have, we tried to have the broadest input that we could.
Speaker: And what we came away from it was just so much more beautiful than if we had just been, oh, I'm racking my brain to try to get from God this perfect plan that then we can try to get buy-in.
Speaker: It's like we all came up with it together.
Speaker: And so the buy-in was there from the beginning.
Speaker: Listening to the community always produces so much more fruit.
Speaker: And so that's like really, really, I'm really trying to lean into that right now.
Speaker: And we've just seen just a huge amount of positive things come from any time we get to do that.
Speaker: When it comes to things that we're going to do at the church, we're never just like, oh, one person had an idea or let's do this.
Speaker: No, we're always like asking people, trying to get as much buy-in.
Speaker: And then the same goes for our neighborhood.
Speaker: So there's about 12 blocks of
Speaker: They're not whole blocks, like city blocks, but there's 12 streets in the little neighborhood going east to west.
Speaker: We were like, it'd be so cool to put on a barbecue on each one of these streets to get to know neighbors.
Speaker: And some of those streets, we have street parishes on, which are our small groups.
Speaker: And so they're first responders on a street in the neighborhood.
Speaker: And they also host little events and just try to be the on-the-ground feelers for what's happening in the neighborhood.
Speaker: As we were doing that,
Speaker: we kind of came across where we kind of stumbled ourselves into like a method for doing it.
Speaker: That was really cool because our initial round of like canvassing about this thing wasn't to say, hey, we're about to have a barbecue.
Speaker: Do you want to come?
Speaker: It was like, we're thinking about being on a barbecue.
Speaker: Do you want to help plan this?
Speaker: And so our first round, and it took like twice as long to organize these barbecues as it would have if we had just said, okay, we're a church.
Speaker: We got chairs, we got tables, we got a barbecue.
Speaker: We can just come out and do it.
Speaker: But, and we did that, I think the first time and we realized like there wasn't as much buy-in.
Speaker: And so what we started doing was asking people to say like, what do you want to bring or what do you want to do?
Speaker: And so when we did that, like every single time it was different, people just showed out and like, it was amazing to see.
Speaker: Then it didn't feel like, oh, why is this church trying to put on a barbecue on our block?
Speaker: Like, what are they trying to get out of us?
Speaker: It was like,
Speaker: oh, these people kind of just got the ball rolling on a thing that now we're doing as neighbors.
Speaker: And I think that we built so many cool connections there and strengthened our relationships with so many neighbors that we knew, you know, like,
Speaker: Maybe they don't... Sometimes people don't want to come to a church building, but we don't want to close off the possibility that God is doing something huge in their lives and that they could... And that they might have something to give and to contribute to the flourishing of our community just because they don't want to attend a weekly gathering, per se.
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: We strengthened a lot of relationships at a lot of really good times.
Speaker: And I think that just moving forward, we want to do everything like that.
Speaker: Like we want to make everything a partnership, anything that could just be ours.
Speaker: Like what if we did it in partnership with somebody?
Speaker: Sometimes we're just like, man, who can we partner with just so that we don't have to do it alone?
Speaker: I want to know more about these barbecues.
Speaker: I want to know, like, what was one of the things people contributed that you didn't assume like they would have?
Speaker: And they're like, or like ways maybe that surprised you that they stepped up and kind of took the lead.
Speaker: And also, like, I'm curious to know, like, what, what did you learn about the on the ground feelers?
Speaker: As you said, they just had ideas that we wouldn't have thought about.
Speaker: Like, oh, look, I know this guy down the street.
Speaker: Him and his friends are like a mariachi band.
Speaker: And so they're going to like play.
Speaker: They could play music or like one time when we had in our neighborhood, there was like a Halloween party.
Speaker: And we got the neighbors involved and they were like, we want to do a salsa competition.
Speaker: Not dancing, but the food.
Speaker: So they were going to judge who made the best salsa.
Speaker: And we're like, that's awesome.
Speaker: That wouldn't have struck me as a thing to plan for a Halloween party.
Speaker: But that's what they wanted to do.
Speaker: And it was amazing.
Speaker: And whatever I would have thought to do would not have been as good as that.
Speaker: And so just making space to value people's gifts...
Speaker: And to really like take seriously what people bring to the table, because a lot of times people just don't get asked.
Speaker: And so they might just feel like they're sitting on this thing.
Speaker: And maybe they feel like they've been sitting on it so long that now they don't even think to offer it.
Speaker: I think about just churches first thoughts when it comes to Halloween, trunk or treats, right?
Speaker: Like we're going to put the best trunk or treat in our neighborhood or let's get all the candy.
Speaker: You would never assume from hearing from the community that somebody would say, let's have a salsa cook-off or salsa competition.
Speaker: So you hear new things, right?
Speaker: Like it kind of even makes you more curious.
Speaker: Like tell me more about like
Speaker: your background, like who would, who, who would know, like they probably have a garden of chilies in their backyard that they're like been meaning to like make some, cause there is a, um, if I'm right, like a community garden in your community as well.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And so maybe there's a bunch of chili stocked up that people make a cook off with.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: Man, that's a community resource right there.
Speaker: That's awesome.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: Fresh made salsa, man, that's next level right there.
Speaker: I'd love to know, Eric, how do you practice being a good neighbor?
Speaker: As somebody who's not only committed to this community, but if I'm not wrong, you've lived in this community yourself, right?
Speaker: I think you bike to work in coffee shops sometimes.
Speaker: And you bike around.
Speaker: So you're somebody who lives in the community, who ministers to the community.
Speaker: So what makes you a good neighbor?
Speaker: What are your practices?
Speaker: Well, you'd have to ask my neighbors if I'm a good neighbor.
Speaker: I think the things that I do that help me stay connected, I mean, I'm a pretty shy person.
Speaker: And so some people are just like so outgoing and they just like meet every single person they run into.
Speaker: And like, I don't know, that's just not me.
Speaker: And so I feel like I have to work extra hard to be just to like open myself up.
Speaker: And so some of the ways that that works, one is literally like commuting on my bike.
Speaker: So that's one thing I just love to do it.
Speaker: You know, it's Fresno, the climate is attuned to that.
Speaker: Maybe if you live in Chicago, I'd be a little harder.
Speaker: I feel like when you're on your bike, you're way more interruptible.
Speaker: So a lot of times when I have like, just like off the cuff experiences with neighbors, it's because I was riding my bike and I saw something and I was able to, you know, in your car that's like,
Speaker: there's a, there's kind of a divide between people and like you in the outside world a little bit.
Speaker: And maybe some people are better at that than me, but being on my bike is really nice because I just feel like I'm very connected.
Speaker: I even smell and hear like the stuff going around.
Speaker: I think that one kind of leads into a larger one, which is like making yourself interruptible in general.
Speaker: A lot of times the, you know, I can say, well, I have office hours as a pastor or like I'm going to choose to like walk the neighborhood these days.
Speaker: But unless you catch me on those times, that's not going to be... That's not where most of life is happening.
Speaker: And so I think that just being around and actually taking part in the life of the neighborhood, so going to community events, taking part in them just as a dictator, not in my official capacity, is really fun because I get to run into people that I probably wouldn't.
Speaker: But then in regular life, being interruptible, allowing yourself to get...
Speaker: thrown off by something coming up in the middle of the day where you're like, oh,
Speaker: This person needs help bringing this couch up into their apartment or something.
Speaker: Those are magical times when God can really do some cool stuff because we're so task-oriented sometimes that I think that we don't see what God is up to in a moment that we would just say, well, I could be on my computer 15 minutes earlier and answering emails.
Speaker: I'm like, well, I don't see God moving there.
Speaker: So I'm going to take a risk right now.
Speaker: Maybe I might have to take work home with me later, but allowing my patterns interrupted by someone is a huge cool thing.
Speaker: And it's not easy and I don't really even like to do it, but I now try to make it a practice because of just like the experiences I've had.
Speaker: You really can't fabricate or sort of concoct those things yourself.
Speaker: You just have to like make yourself available and then be interruptible when the time comes.
Speaker: Like commit ahead of time to
Speaker: Saying like, I'm definitely like looking for where God is at work in any moment.
Speaker: And then allowing yourself to actually say yes to some of those invitations can be really good.
Speaker: And I actually feel like I'm a lot more productive when I do those things.
Speaker: Instead of focusing so much on productivity that I miss someone walking by me who might have a story to tell me or something like that, you know?
Speaker: Hmm, man, I love how you said it, allowing yourself to say yes to those situations.
Speaker: You're right.
Speaker: I think a lot of us do operate in that way.
Speaker: And we miss those valuable opportunities to get to know others deeper.
Speaker: And so when we're willing to be like you said, available and interruptible, we're
Speaker: we see sometimes God work in incredible ways.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I love how you said that.
Speaker: I'd love to close us with a final question that we like to ask every guest.
Speaker: How do you see the CCD philosophy at work in your community?
Speaker: That's a great question.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: And I think I see it all over the place.
Speaker: I definitely know that wherever people are loving God and loving their neighbor, and maybe even they're not conceptualizing it that way, right?
Speaker: But wherever that's happening,
Speaker: I think I see little hints of God's kingdom breaking out, but also I'd say all that people like to see Christian community development.
Speaker: And so I think that the places that I see it,
Speaker: are definitely in the way that we live in a really hyper-individualistic world.
Speaker: And so I think I see it in people reweaving the fabric of community.
Speaker: Unless you're an elder or someone who's an older folk, I think a lot of us that are my age and younger, I don't think we've experienced a lot of just natural community.
Speaker: And so that gives people like a deep longing, but also kind of an unfamiliarity.
Speaker: And so there's sort of like extra hoops we have to jump over because we're not really like acculturated to a more communal lifestyle.
Speaker: But I think I see a lot of people really trying to do things to like know and really like practice mutual aid with each other in like little tiny things, just going out of each other's way to like make connections with people.
Speaker: and to involve themselves in their real life and to lift some kind of burden off of another person.
Speaker: And so you see reconciliation happening there, you see redistribution happening, and you see people making moves in their life.
Speaker: One of the big things that we've been encouraging people
Speaker: with our housing issues is like, what would it look like to encourage people to like become housemates with each other and like share rent by moving into like a place together?
Speaker: That used to just be a thing that people who wanted to like live in communes or do intentional community did.
Speaker: But I think now because of like the needs, it's becoming more of like, it's not like a hobby for people who are interested in a certain kind of lifestyle, but it's more like a necessity that actually like lifts an economic burden off of people.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: man, you need skills to live with people who aren't your... Well, it takes skills to live even with your family sometimes too.
Speaker: But those relational skills actually have really big quality of life outcomes that change how we are able to... Whether or not we have to have
Speaker: you know, one or two jobs or, you know, whether or not we're going to be able to afford some other things because we pay so much for rent.
Speaker: And so looking at the way that people can learn how to live together in different ways that maybe they weren't taught how to, it's been really cool because you can see how we can lift some of those burdens by our collaborations.
Speaker: And there's so many different instances of that.
Speaker: It's not just with housing, but just like people learning how to share things with each other, people learning how to cooperate and to kind of forge like a new possibility when sort of scarcity and exploitation would be sort of like the norm.
Speaker: What happens when we put our stuff together?
Speaker: I feel like we're really fired up by the X2 vision of like believers and
Speaker: not just having like this sense of spiritual connection, having a real material reliance on one another and the way that that not only like shapes our witness as a church and as like, you know, people of God between different churches, but just like,
Speaker: how it actually empowers us to take back some agency in our life, say, like, we can do more when we're doing things together and we can actually kind of solve our problems.
Speaker: Maybe not entirely, but we can like take some of the weight of life off of one another by how we share with each other, by how we practice generosity within our community and how we pray for and lift each other up and share meals with each other.
Speaker: I mean...
Speaker: I've gone through times where if we didn't have all the potlucks and community events, I'm like, man, I'm thankful for this because my grocery bill would be a lot higher.
Speaker: But we're literally like cooking for each other.
Speaker: And if loaves and fishes, like it really does like bless everybody involved.
Speaker: And it sounds like kingdom on earth.
Speaker: As you were sharing, it made me really recognize like the ways of the kingdom are upside down.
Speaker: where empire and the world tells you to take, reserve our own selfish impulses.
Speaker: Kingdom says share, open, community, connect.
Speaker: And so it sounds like the way that you've chosen to do life, Eric, comes with saying yes to the heart.
Speaker: saying yes to the interruptions and saying yes to wanting to wrestle with what it looks like to build community together because community isn't perfect being in community is hard and saying yes to being in community means saying yes to having to have hard conversations and it sounds like you're somebody who's like i want to be part of that wrestling together because i care and i believe god's called me to love other people in a kingdom-centered way and i think that's beautiful
Speaker: Well, Eric, thank you so much for just making space and time to be with us here today.
Speaker: I feel really grateful to just have a friendship with you and be able to call you a friend.
Speaker: And also, I always enjoy seeing you riding your bike throughout the community.
Speaker: And if you're listening, a couple of ways you can find Eric is in the show notes.
Speaker: And you can also find him in Fresno riding his bike around the community.
Speaker: Thank you for listening to the CCDA podcast.
Speaker: And thank you, Eric, for joining us.
Speaker: If you'd love to learn more about CCDA's Flourishing Congregations Initiative, I want to encourage you to visit our website, ccda.org backslash FCI.
Speaker: Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker: This episode is produced by Sarah Kellen in association with Christina Fore.
Speaker: And we'll be back soon with another episode featuring CCD practitioners who are committed to seeing people and communities experience B'at Shalom.
Speaker: We'll see you then.
