The message below went out on Saturday, January 21, 2012 to Standing on the Side of Love supporters. You can sign-up for these emails here.
On January 10, this was one of the things on my “to-do” list: “Write Susan Leslie — community organizing resources.” As you probably know, Susan’s the Director of Congregational Advocacy at the UUA. The congregation I serve in Oak Ridge, Tennessee is part of a conversation getting started in our community for how things could be better for more people. I wanted Susan’s advice. I needed some help. Incredibly, on that very same day, I received a Standing on the Side of Love email from Susan, with a whole host of resources of the kind I’d been wanting. One of these was called, “The Story of Us, the Story of Now.”
To see why it so excited me, and to consider using this resource yourself, please click on this link.
Oak Ridge is a small city of 29,000 just outside of Knoxville. In recent years, what was once an enclave of mostly-white, middle-class employees of the federal facilities located here — an oasis of comfort — Oak Ridge has changed. While growing richer in diversity of class and race, Oak Ridge has steadily become a city with arising level of poverty-based suffering, without the resources or the strategies yet to meet it. For many, a sprawling, empty mall in the center of Oak Ridge, owned by an out-of-town developer, has become a symbol of decline. For congregations in town, the closing of Trinity United Methodist a few years ago, seemed to agree.
But within Oak Ridge, just like in your own community, there is also great resilience. And so, a couple of years ago, Oak Ridgers, led by another Methodist church here in town, organized a free medical clinic in the building where Trinity had once been. Soon, the clinic was serving the enormous, unmet medical needs in our community. Over at our Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church, a few members organized the “Stone Soup” ministry, which offers free meals and a pantry to the hungry among us.
The habit in my city, as it may be in yours, is for different congregations to do their own ministry. But there is also a tradition of pulling together. For years, congregations have worked together to uphold the “Ecumenical Storehouse,” a ministry that provides furniture and housewares to those who need it. And for years, congregations have upheld “Tabitha’s Table,” over at Robertsville Baptist Church. The Unitarian Universalists have been in the thick of both. Still, for the most part, as in most communities, each congregation tends to do its own thing.
But, in recent months, something new seems to be stirring. Those inspired by, and involved in, the Free Medical Clinic are wondering how else that sprawling old building that used to house Trinity could serve the community. Two small congregations–a progressive Baptist congregation of mostly white people and an Apostolic congregation of mostly Latinos–have moved into the space. Now, ORUUC’s “Stone Soup” ministry looks likely to relocate, so we serve folks up there, where they’re already showing up for free medical care; a craft-fair fundraiser in December will help prepare the Trinity kitchen for community ministry. There was an uplifting, interfaith Thanksgiving service at Trinity that brought together five congregations. And then, on New Year’s Day, more celebration and fellowship with a city-wide choir-fest at ORUUC.
As we, of different congregations, have begun to wonder together, our conversations have often widened out from the question of how we could develop ministries of service together based in the old Trinity building. Some of us have begun to wonder whether congregations could coordinate in broader ways. Could even, perhaps, challenge the norms of the city that leave so many without access to basic services like enough food. And besides working in isolation, one of the norms, of course, is for congregations to “do-for” in ministry instead of the harder work of “doing-with.”
To do things differently is never easy. But these new conversations inspire me with a sense of possibility. What’s more, the Standing on the Side of Love resource, “The Story of Us, the Story of Now”— which you can click on here — fills me with actual hope.
It fills me with hope because I serve a faith that says that what will save us — the power of love — lies waiting already within us, between us, and all around us. And I have seen how sharing stories can bring forth that love, can bring forth creative, sustainable cooperation that might not have otherwise been possible. This can happen by gathering people in the same room. But the collective visioning process I found in “The Story of Us, the Story of Now” invites people to share stories with more intention, to likely far greater effect. That’s why, in the coming weeks, leaders of congregations in Oak Ridge will gather to deepen the conversation that we have started.
On behalf of the Standing on the Side of Love campaign, I invite you to embark on a similar conversation in your community. Click here to download the Story of Us, Story of Now guide so you can schedule a time to put it to use in your congregation and community.
In the coming months, I look forward to telling a new story about things in Oak Ridge. And I look forward to hearing the new stories already welling up where you live.
Faithfully,
Jake Bohstedt Morrill
Rev. Jake Bohstedt Morrill
Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church
