DanSheffield

Unique partnership for affordable housing

In 2017-2018 I found myself available to consider new ministry opportunities, and so when "a friend of a friend" invited me into a project in Kitchener, I joined in. St. Paul's Lutheran Church/Bridgeport was looking at alternatives to closing their doors. Together with the minister (at the time) and the church council we began imagining "outside the box" possibilities. The church wanted to find a way to maintain their almost 150 year presence in this community along the Grand River. Out of their core values of faith, service and fellowship we identified what that might look like in the present moment. Through some "dream sessions" and a call for partners, a partnership emerged with MennoHomes and Parents for Community Living.

St Paul's Lutheran/Bridgeport has merged their 2.5 acres of high-value/high visibility property into the project, with MennoHomes now taking the lead in developing the building and property. As you can imagine a partnership like this takes a substantial commitment of time, trust, relationship building, and mind-boggling budgeting exercises.  The St Paul's congregation just recently moved out of their building which will be demolished in March as construction gets underway. A recent article in The Record (K/W paper) tells some of the story.

The link here takes you to MennoHomes site with some background on the need for affordable housing in the region and more info about the financial model required to bring it to pass, including substantial grant funding (millions $) from levels of government.

 

grace-radiating life at Smokey Mountain

In January 1998 I spent a week in Manila, The Philippines. This was in the midst of the time that Kathy and I were living in South Africa planting a church and developing community-based missional responses. For us that included developing an affordable housing company (managing 50 units) and an emergency shelter for domestic violence victims. The visit to Manila was to participate in a round table learning encounter with other urban ministry practitioners from around the world (Africa, Asia, Caribbean, England, USA) sponsored by Food for the Hungry, World Vision and the Fieldstead Institute. One of the products of that work was a book published by MARC, entitled Serving with the Urban Poor, edited by Ted Yamamori, Bryant Myers and Ken Luscombe. Kathy and I contributed a chapter on the work we were connected with in South Africa.

Among the many other learnings from that rich time was the opportunity to learn from Fr Ben Beltran, a Divine Word missionary working at Smokey Mountain, at the time the largest garbage dump in The Philippines. In the sessions, Father Ben shared his own experience of living and ministering on/in Smokey Mountain as an incarnational activity. He described the life of the church community (in a building built from scavenged garbage) as grace-radiating substance. That is, a faith community celebrating the Eucharist and reading & applying Scripture, in that setting, was both a physical and spiritual manifestation of the presence of God. That was a new thought for me at the time. That just to live, minister and "be" the presence of Christ in that space was witness. That God would give the resources to live that kind of life was, in fact, "good news." Interestingly, Ben also helped us reflect on a theology of holistic ministry by employing a motif from Philipino worldview -- the notion of human being as defined by relationship to others; "to be" is "to be in relation." Rejecting a dualistic western understanding of sacred and profane. Relationship with God, with others and the created earth is, "of a kind," not separate things. 

[recent writings on the idea of "place" in Christian ministry: Where Mortals Dwell, No Home Like Place, The Space Between, The New Parish. Good thoughts here from the late Richard Twiss, on an indigenous theology of place.]

As I returned to our ministry in South Africa, this led me to work toward deepening our practice regarding our location as a city centre, multicultural faith community that was expressing itself in the provision of affordable safe housing and care for those impacted by domestic oppression and violence. Those were issues "of" our place. This amplified insights from my study with Alan Roxburgh a few years earlier, who asked us, "what are the themes that emerge from your social context? what does the gospel/good news look like in relation to those themes?"

In the midst of our affordable housing development we received a major grant from the South African government's Dept of Housing. We decided to have a "thanksgiving service" (a very African thing to do) right on the building site, on a major traffic route through the city. So amidst the building rubble of demolished older buildings with new sections going up, we had an open-air worship service with full band and sound system, we had some traditional dancing and choirs, obligatory speeches and we celebrated the Lord's Supper as servers tried not to stumble over bricks and puddles of water. Grace seemed very tangible that day.

Today, in Canada, I am convinced more than ever that issues of place and context need to impact our practice and our communication. The incarnation of Jesus (local communities of the Body of Christ) in place and time must reflect good news to those who see and hear us.

On Being My Neighbour's Keeper

A number of years ago I wrote an article for The Natal Witness, our local newspaper in Pietermariztburg, South Africa where I lived with my family for several years. Here is an intro to the article which centres on the death, and aftermath, of our neighbour Sibongile (Gladness) Nsele, mother of 3 boys who were very close to our family.

It was a task no one if prepared for; to tell three boys that their mother has just died. It was early on a Sunday morning when Moira came knocking on our back door. "Mfundisi, Sibongile passed away last night, you must come with me and tell the boys, I can't do it alone. Those boys, they only lost their father three weeks ago."

We went to their door in the room house where they lived next door to our home in central Pietermaritzburg. All three boys, aged 10, 12 and 19, stumbled out into the hallway, just waking up from their shared blankets on the floor. I had know these boys as neighbours, as best friends of my son, and as faithful participants in church activities. As the tears crept to my eyes, I said, "Boys, there is no easy way I can say this; last night your mother died." Overwhelmed by the unfathomable future of these boys, there was nothing more I could say at that moment.

Siblongile (or Gladness, as she was also known) had worked long, hard hours as a cook in a city hotel for a number of years. Her absentee husband worked and lived in Johannesburg with a new family, and had been estranged from his wife and boys for many years. She led a life of struggle and survival that is typical of the city's underclass of working poor.

the rest of the article can be read here...

Transitioning to a multicultural congregation

Thanks to Missio Dei, the online journal of Tyndale Seminary in Toronto for publishing an article I wrote on the process of transitioning to a multicultural congregation.

In the 1980s a new church was ini­ti­ated in the north-​​west Greater Toronto Area. It was devel­oped as an essen­tially white, Anglo-​​European back­ground con­gre­ga­tion. Early on, how­ever, peo­ple from other cul­tural back­grounds began to attend largely because of a per­ceived com­mon denom­i­na­tional her­itage. In the mid-​​90s the con­gre­ga­tion went through a lead­er­ship hem­or­rhage that left the group with a largely Caribbean-​​background mem­ber­ship. For almost a decade they have been led by an Anglo-​​European back­ground pas­tor with a degree of inter­cul­tural sen­si­tiv­ity. Now their con­gre­ga­tion is at a cross­roads and the pas­tor is won­der­ing how to engage his lead­er­ship team in a dia­logue about becom­ing an inten­tion­ally mul­ti­cul­tural com­mu­nity. One leader spelled it out: “we are multi-​​ethnic in com­po­si­tion, but it’s really only one cul­ture group that influ­ences the decision-​​making.”

look here for the rest of the article

Index of well-being says things aren't that great

This week, the Canadian Index of Well-being was released. This is a measure with a depth of research that looks at 8 broad domains of Canadian life: living standards, community vitality, democratic engagement, education, healthy populations, environment, time use (the impact, say, of 24/7 commercial operations and the workplace leash of new technology), leisure and culture.

These areas are then stacked up against the GDP, which is the typical measure of how well an economy is functioning. The GDP notion is that as productivity increases so standard of living increases -- or at least that's what economists, capitalists and conservative politicians want us to believe. In fact, the report says that while the GDP increased by 31 per cent from 1994 to 2008, the Canadian Index of Wellbeing rose just 11 per cent.

The report says quality of life actually decreased over the period measured — in the environment, leisure and culture, and time use. In health, there have been only modest gains.

Roy Romanow, the chair of the CIW project board, says most Canadians are “running so fast, and basically standing still, that we do not have the opportunity to enjoy things that really matter in life.

“As individuals, we're switching more of our time away from family life, away from community involvement, arts, political activity. We're being affected in our health.”

He called the report a “major wake-up call” to governments at all levels that “we've got to rebalance our social and economic programs in order to give more meaning to individual lives.”

[read the Star report on this research here]

A 'major wake-up call' to governments?! I think this should also be a major wake-up call to Christians and Christian congregations...

In what ways are we re-orienting our lives to live more abundantly, and less frantically? When a government tells us to spend more to 'bolster' the economy, as a means of boosting a lagging GDP, when we already live under a burden of consumer debt, do we speak out prophetically against such policies? Should we not be urging our people to spend less, slow down, care for the distressed, and live more fully? This is the 'counter-cultural' life we see urged on us by the whole of Christian scripture, not least by Jesus himself.

the future of Hamilton will not look more and more like me

read an article by yours truly on p.4 in this Hamilton monthly journal. hard copies available around the city.

http://issuu.com/urbanicityhamilton/docs/oct_2011

course at Tyndale summer school

 Over the past several months I have been working with Tyndale Seminary in Toronto, Ontario [one of the world's great multicultural labs] to design a course focused on developing leadership capacity for facilitating multicultural communities.

Their website has just posted info about the course for next summer: Becoming an Interculturally Competent Leader [July 18-22, 2011].

Here is the course description:

This course is designed for students who currently function, or who anticipate functioning, in inter-cultural environments. The course will enable participants to develop a biblical theology of diversity and to understand and apply the theory and dynamics of intercultural relations. The course will also examine leadership practices suited for facilitating intercultural dialogue and empowering diverse congregations – as a missional response to the demographics of our changing neighbourhoods and workplaces. Through lectures, discussions, exercises and assignments, participants will develop leadership skills for engaging with cultural and religious differences in both community and congregation.

 

the strength of weak ties

reading Richard Florida's book, Who's your city? has pointed me to a few interesting ideas for further research. One such thot is the theory of "the strength of weak ties."

In research done by Mark Granovetter, he found that people actually find jobs through their numerous weak ties, rather than our fewer strong ones. Proximity to total strangers is more important than connections to lifelong friends, when it comes to new ideas, information and opportunities. With our close friends we mostly travel in the same circles, know the same people, frequent the same places and hear about the same opportunities. Weak ties are more numerous and take less effort to maintain. They introduce a bit of chaos into the equation, which more often than not is the key to identifying new opportunities and ideas.

One premise of the theory is that while my 30 friends may not know who you are from a hole in the ground, that fact that I know you and trust you, means that they are willing and interested to listen to something that you might have to say, when they connect with you on some random occasion. or if they connect with someone who knows you, who they realize knows me... well you get the idea...

we do this all the time in varieties of ways, of course. but we still hear the suggestion that the stronger the personal relationship, the better. except, we can only do that well with a limited number of people. maybe, as leadership-types, we need to be more intentional in connecting our weak ties (acquaintances) with one another, rather than hoping that we could ever maintain all those relationships, meaningfully. And maybe we will learn something new, too.

Is Jane's Walk on your screen?

If you haven't heard of Jane's Walks, it's time you did...

This coming weekend (May 1&2) is the focal point of this emerging movement. This is the fourth annual  Jane’s Walk, a series of free neighbourhood walking tours that explore the collective history, architecture, planning and personalities of particular locales. A Canadian innovation that's going global, last year’s walk saw more than 10,000 walkers explore 315 tours across Canada, the United States and India; this year’s adds walks in Ireland, Uruguay and Spain.

Celebrating the legacy of Jane Jacobs, the foremost urban thinker of recent times, Jane’s Walks inspire citizens to get to know their city and each other by getting out and walking. Jacobs famously declared that walkable, diverse and mixed used neighborhoods are the hallmark of a healthy city and its people.

“For Jane Jacobs, the best way to get to know the city and the neighbours was on foot,” says Jane Farrow, executive director of Jane’s Walk. “Jacobs encouraged everyone to just get out and look around, to walk the sidewalks and talk about what they thought needed to happen to make their neighbourhood better.”

“When it comes to improving their own neighbourhoods, people are often isolated or unaware of others who may share their interests,” Farrow adds. “Jane’s Walk helps bridge these gaps and encourages people to gain new perspectives on the sidewalks they use for the basic tasks of daily life – tasks like shopping, getting to school and work.”

Volunteer tour guides, ranging from aspiring municipal candidates to urban planners to recent immigrants and high school students, customize their tours with personal stories, local perspectives and insider hideaways to help bridge social and geographic gaps and create a space for cities to discover themselves.

For us missional church-types this is a brilliant opportunity to investigate our neighbourhoods with other people who are concerned about similar issues. Find your city & neighbourhood on their website. If there is no walk for your area, maybe you should think about organizing one yourself next year.

changing face of Canada

New research from Stats Canada...

About one-third of Canada's population — up to 14.4 million people — will be a visible minority by 2031, Statistics Canada projects.

The country's foreign-born population is also expected to rise to as much as 28 per cent, about four times faster than the rest of the population, the Statistics Canada study projects.

A growing percentage of new Canadians, like these seen reaffirming their vows of citizenship before a Toronto Blue Jays game in 2003, will be visible minorities, according to a new report by Statistics Canada. (Aaron Harris/Canadian Press)

The projections suggest that whites will become the minority in Toronto and Vancouver over the course of the next three decades.

South Asians, including Indians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans, are expected to make up the largest visible minority group, at 28 per cent, thanks in part to high fertility rates, the study projected.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/03/09/statscan-minority.html#ixzz0hstATXO7