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CCD at Work in On Ramps Church
2 Plays6 months ago
Lynette McIntosh-Madrigal is joined by Erik Mast-Foss, the Community Life Pastor at On Ramps Covenant Church in Fresno, CA, to discuss how God is moving in his community.
On Ramps is part of CCDA’s Flourishing Congregations Initiative, a comprehensive four-year program that empowers church leaders to deepen their congregations’ community engagement, enhance their ministries, and contribute to the flourishing of their neighborhoods.
Learn more about CCDA’s Flourishing Congregations Initiative at ccda.org/fci.
Erik Mast-Foss is a community member and pastor at On Ramps Covenant Church in Fresno, CA. He does life with his wife Jessica and their two cats, Macrina and Jean Parmesan. Learn more about On Ramps at onrampschurch.org.
Connect with CCDA on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Follow CCDA on YouTube.
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Transcript
Introduction to CCDA and Flourishing Congregations Initiative
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello friends and welcome to the CCDA podcast.
00:00:12
Speaker
My name is Lynette McIntosh-Madrigal and I'm the Flourishing Congregations Coordinator here at CCDA.
00:00:18
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.
00:00:30
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.
Pastor Eric's Background and Passion for Fresno
00:00:40
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.
00:00:48
Speaker
Eric Mass Foss is a community life pastor at OnRamps Covenant Church and has been serving here faithfully for 10 years.
00:00:56
Speaker
So Pastor Eric, thank you for being here today.
00:00:59
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.
00:01:04
Speaker
Can you start by introducing yourself and sharing a little bit about your role and journey in ministry?
00:01:10
Speaker
Thank you, Lynette.
00:01:11
Speaker
It's great to be on and I'm a supporter of all things CCDA.
00:01:15
Speaker
And so it's nice to be on this side of watching some CCDA content for once.
00:01:19
Speaker
I love that.
00:01:20
Speaker
Like you said, my name is Eric.
00:01:23
Speaker
I'm a lifelong Fresno person.
00:01:24
Speaker
I've lived here my whole life.
00:01:26
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.
00:01:39
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.
00:01:48
Speaker
And so I've basically been here ever since.
Community Life and Challenges in Fresno
00:01:50
Speaker
I got connected with
00:01:52
Speaker
kind of a CCDA aligned ministry community in Fresno.
00:01:56
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.
00:02:06
Speaker
And so, I don't know, I was pretty much cooked after that.
00:02:09
Speaker
I just, uh,
00:02:11
Speaker
Kept going down that.
00:02:12
Speaker
And now I found myself here.
00:02:15
Speaker
My wife, Jessica, is a teacher in our public high school.
00:02:20
Speaker
And we have two cats.
00:02:21
Speaker
And we love to ride bikes and, I don't know, cook and just hang out with people.
00:02:27
Speaker
I feel like we have a very people-centered life.
00:02:29
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.
00:02:35
Speaker
But that's only true if you don't know people.
00:02:39
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.
00:02:51
Speaker
Beautiful.
00:02:52
Speaker
And remind us, you're a Fresno native, right?
00:02:54
Speaker
Fresno, California?
00:02:57
Speaker
Yes, that's right.
00:02:58
Speaker
Although I lived, I grew up on the other side of Fresno from where I live now.
00:03:03
Speaker
And so a huge part of just like
00:03:06
Speaker
My experience and journey was learning about how different Fresno was depending on where you are in the city.
00:03:14
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.
00:03:24
Speaker
Now that we have a sense of your background, let's talk about your community that you serve.
00:03:27
Speaker
Can you paint a picture for us?
00:03:29
Speaker
What is Fresno like?
00:03:30
Speaker
What makes your neighborhood unique?
00:03:32
Speaker
Where OnRamps is located?
00:03:34
Speaker
And what are just some signs of hope and some signs of need that you see?
00:03:37
Speaker
So like I said, Fresno is a very divided place.
00:03:40
Speaker
Depending on your latitude and longitude, you're going to have very, very different experiences of what the city is like.
00:03:47
Speaker
My neighborhood is the Lowell neighborhood, which is kind of like
00:03:51
Speaker
the northernmost residential neighborhood in the downtown here.
00:03:58
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.
00:04:14
Speaker
It's kind of a place where people where I grew up were taught to stay away from.
00:04:19
Speaker
And so...
00:04:21
Speaker
Um,
00:04:22
Speaker
Yeah, Fresno is a very amazing place.
00:04:24
Speaker
I feel like it gets a really bad rep.
00:04:27
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.
00:04:35
Speaker
There's a lot of struggles.
00:04:35
Speaker
I mean, we have a very high poverty rate.
00:04:39
Speaker
We're also like the breadbasket of the entire world.
00:04:43
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...
00:04:51
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
OnRamps Covenant Church's Mission and Evolution
00:05:00
Speaker
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.
00:05:13
Speaker
And so, yeah, Fresno is a tale of contrasts and like, I feel like there's so much going on.
00:05:20
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.
00:05:26
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.
00:05:35
Speaker
There's a spirit of camaraderie, I think, at least in the parts of Fresno that I like to hang out in.
00:05:40
Speaker
And so I'm very thankful for that.
00:05:42
Speaker
And then when it comes to our church community, we are like a parish church of our neighborhood.
00:05:48
Speaker
We were really planted with those kinds of CCDA values.
00:05:52
Speaker
And so we're hyper local and specific.
00:05:55
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.
00:06:00
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,
00:06:10
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.
00:06:23
Speaker
Pastor Eric, you just spent some time talking to us about your community.
00:06:26
Speaker
I'd love to know about your church's story.
00:06:28
Speaker
You talked about your church position in the community, in the Lowell community of Fresno.
00:06:33
Speaker
So tell me, how did your church begin and how has it evolved?
00:06:36
Speaker
Our church is called On Ramps Covenant Church.
00:06:39
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.
00:06:47
Speaker
And we also wanted to say like we want to be an on ramp to people connecting to God's kingdom.
00:06:53
Speaker
So it had a geographical sort of feature and kind of a theological feature.
00:06:58
Speaker
On Ramps started actually at like the park in our neighborhood.
00:07:02
Speaker
When we started, we didn't have a building.
00:07:04
Speaker
We didn't have
00:07:06
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.
00:07:11
Speaker
From the jump, there's always been kind of like, our parish neighborhood is like our church.
00:07:16
Speaker
And so anybody's invited.
00:07:20
Speaker
For a while, we were at the Youth for Christ.
00:07:25
Speaker
And so we were like in a little back storage room behind, or in the back of the Youth for Christ building.
00:07:31
Speaker
And then in 2020, we actually bought a building.
00:07:35
Speaker
It was like this old, basically an old tire factory that then was a world impact building for many years.
00:07:43
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.
00:07:55
Speaker
And so,
00:07:56
Speaker
We're not a large congregation.
00:07:57
Speaker
We're not a wealthy congregation.
00:07:59
Speaker
And so we are like, we're not going to be able to pay for this with like five money.
00:08:05
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.
00:08:10
Speaker
And so right now we, our church needs for our weekly worship gatherings, basically in a basketball gym.
00:08:19
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.
Systemic Challenges and Community Efforts in Fresno
00:08:28
Speaker
They are like trainers.
00:08:29
Speaker
We have, you know, the local school system kind of brings students over there to play basketball.
00:08:35
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.
00:08:44
Speaker
We partnered with some local groups.
00:08:46
Speaker
And then we also have like a wing office that office buildings that are rented out by different nonprofit organizations.
00:08:54
Speaker
Just anybody who aligns with our mission.
00:08:56
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.
00:09:07
Speaker
And so that's been really beautiful.
00:09:09
Speaker
Our building has two hair salons in it.
00:09:12
Speaker
We have a dance studio.
00:09:14
Speaker
We have, oh man, now I'm not even going to be able to think of all the things that we have.
00:09:19
Speaker
Just different groups that kind of come in and out and do different things.
00:09:23
Speaker
We've had some Know Your Rights events over the last few weeks in the building.
00:09:28
Speaker
So it's like a space that people can use.
00:09:31
Speaker
We started like a...
00:09:33
Speaker
parent church partnership for online learning during COVID.
00:09:37
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.
00:09:48
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.
00:10:02
Speaker
but just a tool to facilitate more ministry.
00:10:05
Speaker
And so we're trying to use our space very, very strategically in ways that keep us sustainable and simple.
00:10:12
Speaker
Those are two values of our church.
00:10:14
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.
00:10:24
Speaker
We want everything to be as grassroots as possible, as simple and sustainable as possible.
00:10:29
Speaker
We really just want to be a community.
00:10:32
Speaker
So we're going to do something.
00:10:33
Speaker
We're going to be as a community.
00:10:35
Speaker
I'd love to know a little bit more about your community.
00:10:38
Speaker
What are some of the biggest challenges your community faces?
00:10:41
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.
00:10:46
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.
00:10:58
Speaker
So I don't think it's specific to our neighborhood.
00:11:00
Speaker
We live in one of the multiple neighborhoods in Fresno that has a high level of concentrated poverty.
00:11:07
Speaker
So the statistics are that over 40% of the households live under the federal poverty line.
00:11:13
Speaker
I think it's probably higher than that, but that's just kind of the cutoff of a high poverty neighborhood.
00:11:18
Speaker
And we have slumlord issues.
00:11:23
Speaker
Our housing situation is really weird because it used to be this is a place where
00:11:27
Speaker
you know, you get at least expect to find like affordable housing.
00:11:31
Speaker
And in the last few years, that has become a huge challenge.
00:11:34
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.
00:11:46
Speaker
And then the question is like, what do I do with this huge house that I'm able to move into?
00:11:50
Speaker
Because I'm not
00:11:51
Speaker
trying to live in the suburbs, that has changed a lot.
00:11:54
Speaker
And like the houses are just as expensive.
00:11:57
Speaker
A lot of times they're owned by like out of town or even out of state landlords.
00:12:02
Speaker
And we're just feeling like the downstream effects of like the Bay area vacation of housing in the central Valley.
00:12:10
Speaker
And so that's been putting a lot of pressure on people.
00:12:13
Speaker
And so our homelessness has been really going up and,
00:12:18
Speaker
Just like housing insecurity and a lot of the stuff that is like downstream of that has been pretty rough.
00:12:25
Speaker
People are having just like difficult economic times, let's say, just across the board.
00:12:32
Speaker
And so that's a big struggle.
00:12:34
Speaker
And there's pretty cool things that people are kind of looking into doing work around community land trusts.
00:12:44
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.
00:12:54
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.
00:13:02
Speaker
So yeah, some of the issues we said, environmental too.
00:13:06
Speaker
I mean, because it's such a heavy agriculture place, you would think that we would be really invested in keeping, you know,
00:13:14
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
00:13:42
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
00:13:55
Speaker
kind of like waste stuff.
00:13:57
Speaker
So there's a lot of challenges, but there's a lot of really good people.
00:14:01
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.
00:14:11
Speaker
That like, it's not going to come from some outside force.
00:14:14
Speaker
It's not going to come from
00:14:16
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.
00:14:31
Speaker
And that stuff really gets me excited.
00:14:33
Speaker
Man, it sounds like
00:14:37
Speaker
OnRamps Covenant Church has seen a lot of hardship of its neighbors and chosen to stay.
00:14:45
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
00:14:57
Speaker
in Fresno and across different cities, right?
00:15:00
Speaker
That hurt their neighbors and hurt the people around them.
00:15:02
Speaker
And somehow on-ramps said like, that's where we want to be.
00:15:04
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?
00:15:17
Speaker
Like you see your neighbors hurting, sometimes hurting because of what you hinted towards, right?
00:15:22
Speaker
Like the city and its regulations or the,
00:15:25
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
00:15:50
Speaker
there's kind of a fluidness to that.
00:15:53
Speaker
And because we maintain ties with people inside of just like our
00:15:57
Speaker
we're not very attractional as a church, like trying to get people necessarily in the doors.
00:16:01
Speaker
And so I feel like people move around a lot.
00:16:04
Speaker
And so we're trying to, yeah, not put the focus on getting people to attend our gatherings, which is great.
00:16:11
Speaker
You know, that's an important thing too.
00:16:13
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
00:16:23
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.
00:16:32
Speaker
So like, let's accept their hospitality and come join something that they're doing.
00:16:36
Speaker
One of the things we talk about a lot is like,
00:16:38
Speaker
We're not bringing God with us to wherever we end up going.
00:16:42
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.
00:16:56
Speaker
Of course, you know, the Holy Spirit resides in us.
00:16:59
Speaker
But God is already present.
00:17:01
Speaker
And what we're looking for is like, where is God at work?
00:17:04
Speaker
Even amongst people who might not recognize that or maybe label it like we would.
00:17:09
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?
00:17:18
Speaker
And how can we sort of with it?
00:17:19
Speaker
So I think we get a lot of opportunities to partner sometimes in ways that we would not have expected.
00:17:27
Speaker
Thanks so much for sharing those insights, Eric.
Faith Journey and Holistic Theology Impact
00:17:30
Speaker
I'm interested to know, like, how have you seen God move?
00:17:32
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.
00:17:38
Speaker
How have you seen God move in your church and in your community?
00:17:41
Speaker
So I'll start, I guess, in the community part.
00:17:46
Speaker
One thing I love so much about Fresno is that I think given our challenges,
00:17:52
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.
00:18:08
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
00:18:17
Speaker
you know, individual organizational boxes and like bringing people together kind of relationally.
00:18:23
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.
00:18:41
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
00:19:07
Speaker
I think that there's like a lot to be said for the collaboration.
00:19:12
Speaker
And I think also more on our congregational level, right?
00:19:16
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.
00:19:31
Speaker
And so...
00:19:33
Speaker
Yeah, like that is how I grew up in like a church context.
00:19:37
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.
00:19:48
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,
00:19:56
Speaker
Hmm, I'm going to suss out if this is like legit or not.
00:19:58
Speaker
Because I have been told that there's something wrong with these people.
00:20:02
Speaker
Like maybe their faith is like not legit.
00:20:05
Speaker
And so I walked into a minefield of God's like grace.
00:20:13
Speaker
Blew me up.
00:20:14
Speaker
And now I'm all mingled because of it in a good way.
00:20:17
Speaker
You went in as a spy and came out chained, huh?
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah, for real.
00:20:22
Speaker
For real.
00:20:22
Speaker
And like, I think that is a prevailing culture.
00:20:26
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
00:20:50
Speaker
And we actually don't have to look at that.
00:20:52
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.
00:20:59
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
Flourishing Congregations Initiative and Leadership Transition
00:21:10
Speaker
maybe some unhealthy deconstruction.
00:21:12
Speaker
I think I've had healthy deconstruction because I was in a community of faith that could embrace lots of different things.
00:21:19
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.
00:21:26
Speaker
And now I guess I'm trying to return the favor by helping people develop a more
00:21:32
Speaker
holistic and all encompassing sort of framework for their faith that can hold all the issues of real life.
00:21:40
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.
00:21:50
Speaker
Thanks so much for sharing those pieces.
00:21:52
Speaker
I think, Eric, what you provide is hope, right?
00:21:55
Speaker
Like hope and challenge.
00:21:57
Speaker
I think many of us have found ourselves in that same space, right?
00:22:00
Speaker
We're challenged by maybe something we read or something we saw, something we heard.
00:22:04
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?
00:22:12
Speaker
What does that look like?
00:22:13
Speaker
Especially in this area of town, we get to decide.
00:22:18
Speaker
if we want to push them away or kind of lean in and be curious, right?
00:22:22
Speaker
And I think what you have is you're challenging people to be curious together.
00:22:28
Speaker
I love that.
00:22:29
Speaker
One thing you said was holistic theology.
00:22:32
Speaker
It seems like this holistic theology has kind of carried you into different seasons of life and carried your church through different seasons.
00:22:38
Speaker
And today you're in the Flourishing Congregations Initiative.
00:22:40
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?
00:22:47
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.
00:22:58
Speaker
And so it was actually you.
00:23:00
Speaker
It's me.
00:23:02
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.
00:23:08
Speaker
So that's pretty funny.
00:23:09
Speaker
It was that.
00:23:10
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.
00:23:20
Speaker
So founding pastors who set us out on this DNA of being connected to CCDA and
00:23:28
Speaker
and being very place-focused, having a very contextualized theology, they were transitioning out.
00:23:34
Speaker
And so we just found ourselves, especially after COVID, just ministering to a different, not entirely, but just new people.
00:23:41
Speaker
And so...
00:23:43
Speaker
we thought, man, this is a perfect time to really like root ourselves in those values in a different way.
00:23:50
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.
00:24:03
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.
00:24:11
Speaker
And I think sometimes people can feel like, man, this is cool, but where else is this happening?
00:24:17
Speaker
I don't see it.
00:24:18
Speaker
When I scroll, I don't know what, Christian TikTok or whatever, I don't really see this.
00:24:24
Speaker
Or I don't think that this kind of work gets a lot of publicity or hype, which is probably good.
00:24:32
Speaker
I'd prefer for us to be in the trenches now.
00:24:35
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,
00:24:43
Speaker
And that's one thing I love about going to CCBA conferences.
00:24:46
Speaker
I'm like, I could go to a conference where I see whoever is like the biggest Christian influencer at the moment.
00:24:54
Speaker
But I love seeing people speak and share from their stories who are like heroes in a very small, like local place.
00:25:01
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?
00:25:12
Speaker
And so I've always loved that contextual element of CCBA.
00:25:17
Speaker
And that's something that whether people recognize it or not in our congregation, like that's at the core of our identity.
00:25:23
Speaker
So we really want to keep that connection strong in the time of transition.
00:25:26
Speaker
And so that was why we reached out and applied.
00:25:29
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.
00:25:38
Speaker
And I was like, yes.
00:25:39
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.
00:25:48
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.
00:26:11
Speaker
Beautiful.
00:26:12
Speaker
Thanks so much for sharing that.
00:26:13
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.
00:26:21
Speaker
And that's really deep.
00:26:22
Speaker
I wrote that down for myself to read later.
00:26:24
Speaker
But thanks for sharing about your perspective.
00:26:27
Speaker
For the listeners here who are curious to know more about the Flourishing Congregations Initiative, you can...
00:26:32
Speaker
hear about that and read on our website at CCDA and search flourishing congregations.
00:26:37
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.
00:26:48
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?
00:26:55
Speaker
I'd say the biggest takeaway is the pre-conference back in October.
00:27:01
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.
00:27:11
Speaker
A takeaway is just that we're not doing this alone.
00:27:15
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.
00:27:23
Speaker
So I'd love to ask you a question about the CCD philosophy.
00:27:26
Speaker
Of the components, there's eight components, which of the eight stand out to you the most?
00:27:31
Speaker
And how do you, or how are you applying them to your context?
00:27:34
Speaker
Okay, this is my favorite question and probably the hardest one.
00:27:37
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.
00:27:47
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.
00:27:56
Speaker
So I'll just try to like
00:27:58
Speaker
you know, use one as an entry point.
00:28:00
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.
00:28:16
Speaker
I think there's such a,
00:28:18
Speaker
There's such a impulse and it goes both ways.
00:28:21
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.
00:28:37
Speaker
For example, our congregation just finished what we call our yearly vision retreat.
00:28:43
Speaker
And so we have like a big two-day retreat
00:28:46
Speaker
sort of like communal discernment time.
00:28:47
Speaker
Really, it's very like asset-based community
Community Engagement Practices and Collaboration
00:28:50
Speaker
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
00:28:58
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
00:29:24
Speaker
What are our gifts?
00:29:25
Speaker
What are the different things that we all bring to the table?
00:29:27
Speaker
What are the things that we need to flourish?
00:29:30
Speaker
What are kind of the challenges we're facing right now?
00:29:33
Speaker
And then just praying together about what's going to be our vision, our missional priorities, and stuff for the coming year.
00:29:41
Speaker
And I just came away from that.
00:29:43
Speaker
So that was maybe like two weeks ago.
00:29:44
Speaker
I came away from that so thankful that our pastoral staff or our staff or even like just our
00:29:51
Speaker
small group of leaders or something, didn't have to do that on our own.
00:29:54
Speaker
And that we could just have, we tried to have the broadest input that we could.
00:29:59
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.
00:30:08
Speaker
It's like we all came up with it together.
00:30:11
Speaker
And so the buy-in was there from the beginning.
00:30:14
Speaker
Listening to the community always produces so much more fruit.
00:30:19
Speaker
And so that's like really, really, I'm really trying to lean into that right now.
00:30:24
Speaker
And we've just seen just a huge amount of positive things come from any time we get to do that.
00:30:30
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.
00:30:36
Speaker
No, we're always like asking people, trying to get as much buy-in.
00:30:40
Speaker
And then the same goes for our neighborhood.
00:30:42
Speaker
So there's about 12 blocks of
00:30:45
Speaker
They're not whole blocks, like city blocks, but there's 12 streets in the little neighborhood going east to west.
00:30:51
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.
00:30:57
Speaker
And some of those streets, we have street parishes on, which are our small groups.
00:31:00
Speaker
And so they're first responders on a street in the neighborhood.
00:31:05
Speaker
And they also host little events and just try to be the on-the-ground feelers for what's happening in the neighborhood.
00:31:13
Speaker
As we were doing that,
00:31:15
Speaker
we kind of came across where we kind of stumbled ourselves into like a method for doing it.
00:31:19
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.
00:31:26
Speaker
Do you want to come?
00:31:27
Speaker
It was like, we're thinking about being on a barbecue.
00:31:29
Speaker
Do you want to help plan this?
00:31:31
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.
00:31:38
Speaker
We got chairs, we got tables, we got a barbecue.
00:31:40
Speaker
We can just come out and do it.
00:31:42
Speaker
But, and we did that, I think the first time and we realized like there wasn't as much buy-in.
00:31:48
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?
00:31:55
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.
00:32:03
Speaker
Then it didn't feel like, oh, why is this church trying to put on a barbecue on our block?
00:32:08
Speaker
Like, what are they trying to get out of us?
00:32:10
Speaker
It was like,
00:32:11
Speaker
oh, these people kind of just got the ball rolling on a thing that now we're doing as neighbors.
00:32:16
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,
00:32:24
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.
00:32:43
Speaker
And so...
00:32:44
Speaker
We strengthened a lot of relationships at a lot of really good times.
00:32:47
Speaker
And I think that just moving forward, we want to do everything like that.
00:32:50
Speaker
Like we want to make everything a partnership, anything that could just be ours.
00:32:55
Speaker
Like what if we did it in partnership with somebody?
00:32:57
Speaker
Sometimes we're just like, man, who can we partner with just so that we don't have to do it alone?
00:33:01
Speaker
I want to know more about these barbecues.
00:33:03
Speaker
I want to know, like, what was one of the things people contributed that you didn't assume like they would have?
00:33:09
Speaker
And they're like, or like ways maybe that surprised you that they stepped up and kind of took the lead.
00:33:14
Speaker
And also, like, I'm curious to know, like, what, what did you learn about the on the ground feelers?
00:33:21
Speaker
As you said, they just had ideas that we wouldn't have thought about.
00:33:24
Speaker
Like, oh, look, I know this guy down the street.
00:33:28
Speaker
Him and his friends are like a mariachi band.
00:33:30
Speaker
And so they're going to like play.
00:33:31
Speaker
They could play music or like one time when we had in our neighborhood, there was like a Halloween party.
00:33:39
Speaker
And we got the neighbors involved and they were like, we want to do a salsa competition.
00:33:46
Speaker
Not dancing, but the food.
00:33:47
Speaker
So they were going to judge who made the best salsa.
00:33:50
Speaker
And we're like, that's awesome.
00:33:52
Speaker
That wouldn't have struck me as a thing to plan for a Halloween party.
00:33:56
Speaker
But that's what they wanted to do.
00:33:57
Speaker
And it was amazing.
00:33:59
Speaker
And whatever I would have thought to do would not have been as good as that.
00:34:03
Speaker
And so just making space to value people's gifts...
00:34:08
Speaker
And to really like take seriously what people bring to the table, because a lot of times people just don't get asked.
00:34:14
Speaker
And so they might just feel like they're sitting on this thing.
00:34:17
Speaker
And maybe they feel like they've been sitting on it so long that now they don't even think to offer it.
00:34:24
Speaker
I think about just churches first thoughts when it comes to Halloween, trunk or treats, right?
00:34:29
Speaker
Like we're going to put the best trunk or treat in our neighborhood or let's get all the candy.
00:34:34
Speaker
You would never assume from hearing from the community that somebody would say, let's have a salsa cook-off or salsa competition.
00:34:42
Speaker
So you hear new things, right?
00:34:44
Speaker
Like it kind of even makes you more curious.
00:34:47
Speaker
Like tell me more about like
00:34:49
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.
00:35:01
Speaker
Right.
00:35:02
Speaker
And so maybe there's a bunch of chili stocked up that people make a cook off with.
00:35:08
Speaker
And so,
00:35:10
Speaker
Man, that's a community resource right there.
00:35:12
Speaker
That's awesome.
00:35:13
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:35:15
Speaker
Fresh made salsa, man, that's next level right there.
00:35:19
Speaker
I'd love to know, Eric, how do you practice being a good neighbor?
00:35:23
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?
00:35:32
Speaker
I think you bike to work in coffee shops sometimes.
00:35:35
Speaker
And you bike around.
00:35:36
Speaker
So you're somebody who lives in the community, who ministers to the community.
00:35:40
Speaker
So what makes you a good neighbor?
00:35:42
Speaker
What are your practices?
00:35:43
Speaker
Well, you'd have to ask my neighbors if I'm a good neighbor.
00:35:45
Speaker
I think the things that I do that help me stay connected, I mean, I'm a pretty shy person.
00:35:51
Speaker
And so some people are just like so outgoing and they just like meet every single person they run into.
00:35:57
Speaker
And like, I don't know, that's just not me.
00:35:59
Speaker
And so I feel like I have to work extra hard to be just to like open myself up.
00:36:05
Speaker
And so some of the ways that that works, one is literally like commuting on my bike.
00:36:10
Speaker
So that's one thing I just love to do it.
00:36:13
Speaker
You know, it's Fresno, the climate is attuned to that.
00:36:15
Speaker
Maybe if you live in Chicago, I'd be a little harder.
00:36:18
Speaker
I feel like when you're on your bike, you're way more interruptible.
00:36:21
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,
00:36:32
Speaker
there's a, there's kind of a divide between people and like you in the outside world a little bit.
00:36:37
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.
00:36:43
Speaker
I even smell and hear like the stuff going around.
00:36:47
Speaker
I think that one kind of leads into a larger one, which is like making yourself interruptible in general.
00:36:54
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.
00:37:02
Speaker
But unless you catch me on those times, that's not going to be... That's not where most of life is happening.
00:37:08
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.
00:37:26
Speaker
But then in regular life, being interruptible, allowing yourself to get...
00:37:33
Speaker
thrown off by something coming up in the middle of the day where you're like, oh,
00:37:38
Speaker
This person needs help bringing this couch up into their apartment or something.
00:37:43
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.
00:38:00
Speaker
I'm like, well, I don't see God moving there.
00:38:02
Speaker
So I'm going to take a risk right now.
00:38:05
Speaker
Maybe I might have to take work home with me later, but allowing my patterns interrupted by someone is a huge cool thing.
00:38:13
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.
00:38:23
Speaker
You really can't fabricate or sort of concoct those things yourself.
00:38:27
Speaker
You just have to like make yourself available and then be interruptible when the time comes.
00:38:32
Speaker
Like commit ahead of time to
00:38:34
Speaker
Saying like, I'm definitely like looking for where God is at work in any moment.
00:38:41
Speaker
And then allowing yourself to actually say yes to some of those invitations can be really good.
00:38:46
Speaker
And I actually feel like I'm a lot more productive when I do those things.
00:38:51
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?
00:39:00
Speaker
Hmm, man, I love how you said it, allowing yourself to say yes to those situations.
00:39:07
Speaker
You're right.
00:39:07
Speaker
I think a lot of us do operate in that way.
00:39:10
Speaker
And we miss those valuable opportunities to get to know others deeper.
00:39:15
Speaker
And so when we're willing to be like you said, available and interruptible, we're
00:39:19
Speaker
we see sometimes God work in incredible ways.
00:39:22
Speaker
I love that.
00:39:23
Speaker
I love how you said that.
00:39:24
Speaker
I'd love to close us with a final question that we like to ask every guest.
00:39:28
Speaker
How do you see the CCD
Collective Community Action and Podcast Reflection
00:39:30
Speaker
philosophy at work in your community?
00:39:33
Speaker
That's a great question.
00:39:34
Speaker
Thank you.
00:39:35
Speaker
And I think I see it all over the place.
00:39:38
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?
00:39:46
Speaker
But wherever that's happening,
00:39:49
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.
00:39:57
Speaker
And so I think that the places that I see it,
00:40:01
Speaker
are definitely in the way that we live in a really hyper-individualistic world.
00:40:08
Speaker
And so I think I see it in people reweaving the fabric of community.
00:40:13
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.
00:40:25
Speaker
And so that gives people like a deep longing, but also kind of an unfamiliarity.
00:40:31
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.
00:40:39
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.
00:40:56
Speaker
and to involve themselves in their real life and to lift some kind of burden off of another person.
00:41:02
Speaker
And so you see reconciliation happening there, you see redistribution happening, and you see people making moves in their life.
00:41:10
Speaker
One of the big things that we've been encouraging people
00:41:13
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?
00:41:23
Speaker
That used to just be a thing that people who wanted to like live in communes or do intentional community did.
00:41:29
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.
00:41:42
Speaker
And so,
00:41:43
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.
00:41:49
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
00:42:03
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.
00:42:10
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.
00:42:26
Speaker
And there's so many different instances of that.
00:42:28
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.
00:42:44
Speaker
What happens when we put our stuff together?
00:42:46
Speaker
I feel like we're really fired up by the X2 vision of like believers and
00:42:51
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,
00:43:06
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.
00:43:17
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.
00:43:33
Speaker
I mean...
00:43:34
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.
00:43:42
Speaker
But we're literally like cooking for each other.
00:43:45
Speaker
And if loaves and fishes, like it really does like bless everybody involved.
00:43:50
Speaker
And it sounds like kingdom on earth.
00:43:57
Speaker
As you were sharing, it made me really recognize like the ways of the kingdom are upside down.
00:44:03
Speaker
where empire and the world tells you to take, reserve our own selfish impulses.
00:44:10
Speaker
Kingdom says share, open, community, connect.
00:44:15
Speaker
And so it sounds like the way that you've chosen to do life, Eric, comes with saying yes to the heart.
00:44:21
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
00:44:48
Speaker
Well, Eric, thank you so much for just making space and time to be with us here today.
00:44:53
Speaker
I feel really grateful to just have a friendship with you and be able to call you a friend.
00:44:58
Speaker
And also, I always enjoy seeing you riding your bike throughout the community.
00:45:02
Speaker
And if you're listening, a couple of ways you can find Eric is in the show notes.
00:45:07
Speaker
And you can also find him in Fresno riding his bike around the community.
00:45:11
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the CCDA podcast.
00:45:14
Speaker
And thank you, Eric, for joining us.
00:45:16
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.
00:45:25
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:45:31
Speaker
This episode is produced by Sarah Kellen in association with Christina Fore.
00:45:36
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.
00:45:44
Speaker
We'll see you then.