September 22, 2009 by Pam Hogeweide
Comments (1)
"Hey guys," I said with my arms full of stuff as I walked up the sidewalk towards the small group of young people in front of my church. "How's it going?"
"Pam!" crooned Jessie, a lovable hippie of a twenty-something year old who grew up on Mount Hood. "How are you my friend?" he asked as he warmly embraced me. With my arms unavailable to hug back I improvised and bumped my shoulder up against his shoulder.
"Long time no see!" shouted the next person, Rachael. She and I both have had busy summers and yes, it's easily been a month or two since we last saw one another. "Rachael!" I shouted back, "so great to see you. It's been too long!"
This was the come-early crowd. The Sunday service for The Bridge starts late, 11:30. With a community full of young people (average age at The Bridge is 27) and many of them creative types, like artists and musicians, a late start is is the wisest way to go.
"Wow, look at all the produce," I said as I entered the basement of the church. Boxes of bananas, tomatoes, and watermelons were scattered around the room. Heaps of bread lied like rubble upon tables in the middle. Pastries and cookies were thoughtfully arranged on the table by the coffee near the door. All of this was donated food. We've had faithful volunteers who pick-up the food donations from a couple of grocery stores every Sunday.
Every week dozens of people come for free groceries, brown bags that are packed with whatever the stores have given. That day was a big meat day. The fridge in the kitchen was stuffed full of small steaks, hamburger patties, seasoned chicken packages and tons of all kinds of cheese. I only know this because I ended up helping load the bags up to be passed out. Rachael was meant to be point person, but she wasn't feeling well.
We kicked her out of the kitchen to go rest. Kevin, an impish sort of fellow with a colorful mohawk and a great sense of humor - as well as being walking juke box and often breaking out spontaneously into song, such as this day in the kitchen, he suddenly burst into a chorus of "Take Me Home, Country Roads" - he stepped up and made sure everything was ready for Food Church.
Food Church. I don't know who started calling it that. Maybe it was Angie, one of the co-pastors at The Bridge.
Through word of mouth news spread of us being a church that gave away food. No strings attached. No forms to fill out. No service to sit through. No expectations. Just a bag or two of groceries if you need them.
By 1pm every Sunday our little corner becomes crowded with an alternative looking crowd with a definite anarchistic vibe. Altered clothing, tribal tattoos, and tattered backpacks give these beautiful young men and women a post-apocalyptic aura of grit and rugged survivalist suave. If the end of civilization ever comes upon us, these are the people I know will make it.
I love seeing the line-up of these fiercely anti-establishment group. Many of them are regulars. Some of them let us know a few months ago that they would be at an anarchist zine fest not far from our church. Would we like to come? Could we help provide some refreshments for the fest? Some of us did show up, including me and my friend Vivian. We cruised around the room, crowded with tables piled with zines, pamphlets, brochures, booklets and books and stickers and patches...all about anarchy. I felt just a little bit old and middle-class. But I didn't let it bother me. I have been intent on learning that people are people are people are people, wherever you go, wherever you are. People are people.
And most people, I know, like to share their knowledge with others.
So I walked around that anarchist zine fest and asked people at some of the tables, "What should I read to learn about anarchy? I have no idea what that is?"
One guy I said this too became so animated. He immediately began to deluge me with all kinds of reading material. "Definitely read this first. If nothing else, read this," he insisted with all the fervor of an evangelist. He was pointing to the small newspaper he had thrust in my arms called, "Fighting for our Lives : An Anarchist Primer."
I did read some of it. I was surprised to find myself wondering if Jesus was an anarchist. From the literature I was reading, sounds like he could be!
Food Church is a perfect example of the ethos of The Bridge. We are sometimes criticized for not preaching the bible enough or talking about Jesus more. People come and leave our fellowship all the time, disenchanted with our lack of religious outpouring. What is lost on them is that the gospel was never meant to be preached only in words. It is actually a message that is preached with our lives. Food Church, I believe, is one great, big gospel fest of grocery bags each and every week.
"Hi there. I don't think I've met you before," I said to an older man I noticed hanging around the pastries and coffee. He had a bag with him and had selected several pastries and scooped them into his bag. He seemed thoughtful, not taking too many. An older man, I did not recognize him.
"No, I haven't been here before," drawled the man betraying some kind of southern heritage in his laid back tone. "But I heard about this and I think it's wonderful what you're doing here. Just wonderful. It's a blessing," he added.
"Well I'm glad you found us. You're welcome to have some coffee if you like. We have church upstairs. You're welcome to join us, but you don't have to," I said. "We have groceries every week, but you don't need to come to a service to get any."
"I appreciate that," he said and at once I wondered what his story was. Gratitude came off him like a designer fragrance.
Food Church was born accidentally. Someone knew someone or something like that who could get donated groceries from a Trader Joe's. That was more than two years ago. Every Sunday ever since. It slowly became structured to what it is today through good old-fashioned trial and error. (The food used to be piled up on tables before church and people would come and take what they wanted and leave. But then a few characters started showing up with wagons and they would wipe out the tables before others had a chance. We then heard rumors that some of them were trading or selling food for drugs. Ok. Had to change that up. And so, Food Church was slowly born out of that muddy mess. Like a lotus flower.)
The Bridge is controversial in some aspects. We are not a traditional church and do not look or sound like a traditional church. We're much louder, somewhat vulgar at times, and can be as irreverent as some two-bit comedian on late-night television.
But we are fiercely honest, true to who we are and recklessly committed to showing the loving side of God with as few words as necessary. To one another, and to those around us in the community we find ourselves in. Like these community of dumpster-diving anarchists. They may not realize it, but church life is happening as much in the basement as it is upstairs.
"While we look for a new space to meet in, it has to have a kitchen so we can keep up the groceries for Food Church," reminds Angie whenever she reviews the features a meeting space for our church is discussed or announced. "And we'd really like to keep it within a mile or two from here so our friends who walk and ride their bikes to Food Church can still get to us," she reminds us.
They say there are no accidents. At least when it comes to whimsical coincidences and the birth of children. Every child is born with purpose by the very intrinsic nature that they were born at all. I think the same can be said of Food Church. It was an accidental birth, yet not without purpose. That purpose, I imagine, is not simply to feed a few hungry anarchists, but to also feed the need to accept one another in the spirit of love and kindness. That, to me, is the fulfillment of the greatest commandment, which Jesus said was to Love One Another. That is the gospel. And it it does not need words. A bag of groceries will do just fine.
(if you live in or nearby northeast Portland and need groceries, be at The Bridge around 1pm each Sunday at the corner of NE 7th and NE Stanton. You'll see the line. Basement doors open up between 1:15-1:30. Bring an extra bag for the bread table. Be prompt. It goes kinda fast.)
September 18, 2009 by Pam Hogeweide
Comments (0)
"Don't just stand around," scolded the British woman, "spread yourselves out. Find someone to pray for!"
I could barely pray with another person in the safety zone of my church let alone out here in the open under a freeway flyover. What would I pray? How could I initiate prayer with someone I don't even know? And then there's the language problem.
I didn't speak Cantonese.
Our small missions team of young Americans, Europeans and a few Hong Kong youth, had joined up with the notorious Jackie Pullinger. Notorious for her book, Chasing the Dragon, which told the story of her boldness as an English woman who got on a boat to follow God and then landed in Hong Kong. She ended up in the infamous Walled City, a dank territory of lawlessness, rampant drug addiction and all kinds of other vices and gang strongholds where she, of all people, managed to actually connect to young male Triad members.
Now, two decades later, she had a community of people from around the world and Hong Kong itself who came along side her to help shower God's love on the broken, poor and addicted in some of the poorest neighborhoods of the then British colony.
"Find a street sleeper and pray for him," she coaxed as our team's collective insecurity kept us huddled together. We had joined Jackie and a small group from her ministry which was called St. Stephan's Society. They regularly came to different flyover squats to meet with those who slept outside, or street sleepers as Hong Kong's homeless were known.
Most of the street sleepers we saw were old, feeble men. Many of them sickly. They did not like to venture far from their flyovers where they had their cot set up and their belongings. So Jackie and others would come to them, bringing steaming rice boxes with freshly cooked Chinese vegetables and savory meats. Besides ministering to the body, Jackie and her crew would also minister to the spirit. It was church outside.
I finally willed courage to my feet and broke away from the hold herd. I saw a younger street sleeper eating alone from the group. I walked tentatively towards him, wondering how on earth I was going to communicate to him? I had been in Hong Kong less than three months. I barely knew how to say Good Morning let alone, "May I pray for you, brother?"
The man was sitting down on a curb next to a fence. Red taxis, double-decker buses and lorries roared by just inches from where he lunched. Hong Kong is a noisy crowded city.
"Hello," he said in between bites, holding his chopsticks over the Styrofoam container, his elbow crooked upon his knee. "Where do you come from?"
I literally felt the anxiety evaporate like the steam coming off the rice. He spoke English!
" Hello! I am fine. I am from America."
I knelt down on the asphalt next to him. I took my cue from Jackie who I had noticed would not talk to any of the street sleepers by standing over them. She would drop down to talk with them eye to eye.
Some of my team members begin dispersing about the flyover area. There were about a dozen street sleepers and many of them were sitting alone, eating or smoking a cigarette. One of the Dutch guys came over and joined me. I was grateful for this. I was very clumsy at this outreach business. I could usually manage to get into a conversation with a person, but to turn that conversation to their need for God was always a trick for me that I did not like to play. It felt disingenuinous. Probably because it was. At least for me. I preferred the slow, take it easy approach. Friendship evangelism was what it was called, and that suited me fine. Of course I could share the gospel in the context of an established friendship, but to blitz a city corner just because a crowd is there? Yek. Yes, I said it. Yek.
"America, huh," he garbled with a mouthful of rice. "Are you from California?"
"No, I'm not. I'm from Las Vegas."
"Whoa! Very lucky city! So much gambling!"
This was a very typical reaction when I told people where I was from. Chinese people love to gamble, and of course, Las Vegas is the most famous gambling city in the world. Eventually I would learn how to say it in Cantonese, which is the Chinese dialect of Hong Kong. (Lai-see-wah-gah-see = Las Vegas)
We learned his English name was John. My Dutch teammate quickly brought the conversation to spiritual matters and asked him what could we pray for him. This offer triggered an avalanche of angst as John began to tell us about his family situation. He was overcome with despair of how to help his deceased family members through the rituals of ancestor worship. It is believed that different rituals and offerings in the physical world made by relatives assist those family members who have passed on to the next world. For reasons he did not tell us, John was destitute. It weighed heavily on him to fulfill his family obligation to honor his deceased relatives through traditional gestures.
We offered to pray for him to have God's wisdom about these burden, but he refused. He felt he could not allow an appeal to a deity when he had unfinished family business. My Dutch friend explained to John about freedom from such bondage through faith in Jesus. "You cannot affect your family in the afterlife when they are gone. They are with God. Let it go and let Christ bring you the peace you need."
My Dutch teammate was very zealous and passionate for evangelism. He spoke firmly yet respectfully and kindly. John shook his head. "No, I cannot...I cannot," he emphasized.
The Dutchman finally gave up and wandered off to find, I presume, another soul to engage with. But I stayed with John. He spoke good English and seemed lonely for conversation. I let go of the pressure of trying to save his soul and settled instead to just enjoy the pleasure of his company.
The atmosphere around us relaxed immediately. Suddenly, without an agenda, we became two people whose lives had intersected in just this moment. It was for me a grand realization that sharing Christ's presence is sometimes accomplished through simple rice boxes and mere listening. I did not have to be an important missionary from Las Vegas who had come to fix a broken Chinese man living under a flyover and fretting over how to take care of ancestor worship problems. I was free to be with him in that place. To just be with him. No conversion pressure; no sales pitch; no gimmicks. Just the kind company of a lucky woman and a lucky man who were having church without all the usual fuss.
I noticed Jackie beside the cot of one of the oldest and most frail "brothers" (as she liked to call them). She was motherly in her presence, and though I could not hear her above the din of the traffic, I could make out the tenderness of her smile and compassion of her eyes. "I want to be like Jackie," I thought.
In Vegas, I had sometimes connected to the homeless. I always thought that Christians ought to get homeless people saved and off the streets. Saved Christians do not live outside. People who pray to receive Jesus into their hearts do not keep sleeping on cots under freeways. The Church is an indoor affair.
Being around Jackie that day, and in other days that would come, is where I first learned that the church is meant to be without walls. I discovered under that flyover and other street sleeper squats, that Jesus is without walls, too. The kingdom of God is a borderless nation.
I learned from Jackie that Love has no borders. Love lives outside.
This, to me, is the best kind of church. Wild. Untamed. Like the feral cats that hide in city parks.
***The Walled City was demolished in 1993. All those walls, tightly erected together, shoulder to shoulder in such density that one could not see the sky once inside the labyrinth of buildings. It was a dark, suffocating place.
In it's place now stands a picturesque park aptly named Kowloon Walled City Park. Hong Kong's biggest slum has been replaced, a garden of beauty and splendor erected upon the ashes and ruins of a place in bondage to it's past.
September 6, 2009 by Pam Hogeweide
Comments (0)
A man of piety complained to the Baal Shem Tov, saying, "I have labored hard and long in the service of the Lord, and yet I have recieved no improvement. I am still an ordinary and ignorant person."
The Besht answered, "You have gained the realization that you are ordinary and ignorant, and this in itself is a worthy accomplishement."(as quoted in The Spirituality of Imperfection, by Kurtz and Ketcham)
I am currently reading a book that is rocking my perfectionistic-driven world. The Spirituality of Imperfection, written back in 1992, has become a timely, prophetic-like read for me. I am underlining many passages in this book, a sure sign that it is engaging me and that I want to be able to retrace my steps once I'm finished with it. So no, you can't borrow my copy. This one's a keeper.