What Is Your Ten Acres?
As part of an activity for our first Visionary Leader workshop, Molly Baskette asked working groups to bring in one sacred object and one “sacred cow”—in her words, “something that is an actual obstacle to growth”—from our sites. The St. John’s working group discerned that our “sacred cow” would be the sanctuary’s communion rail gate, which is a vestige of the church’s historical architecture, but which (with some awkward difficulty for the ushers each week) shuts to effectively separate the altar and the people. One of our members was assigned to take a picture of it, but Fr. Thom actually ended up sliding one of the doors off its hinges to bring in the physical object! When that member stepped away from that week’s Tuesday night craft group to take the photo, she explained to the other ladies present about the workshop and the activity. Understandably, this raised some questions about what exactly Reimagining Church was, and whether we had designs to make changes in the church, because if so, we really should get to know the church and its history better.
On hearing from that group member that we may have inadvertently ruffled some feathers, I decided to attend the next Tuesday night craft group—which met weekly to prepare holiday-themed wares leading up to the parish’s annual Christmas tag sale—in order to meet some of the ladies and hopefully foster some good will regarding Reimagining Church and our working group’s intentions. I was immediately put to work. As I hot-glued noses onto Christmas gnomes, I overheard the ladies talking, and I set about listening and learning. I learned how there were a handful of very large families who had been in the church for generations and how there were some families who had left the parish over some past hurt, but were starting to come back. Over and over, I heard the word “history.” Toward the end of the night, two of the younger women took me on a tour of the Christian education building, once home to a thriving day school, but now used primarily as storage for the tag sale. They regaled me with stories of what St. John’s had been in their youth, and shared hopes for what it might be restored to in the future. I left with more questions than answers, and unsure if I had done much to boost Reimagining Church’s reputation. At a working group meeting, we devised a plan to host a coffee hour in order to better introduce the congregation to our mission and offer folks a chance to give us their input.
As planning for that was underway, we had another Visionary Leader workshop, this time with Michael Martin, whose discovery of 10 acres of neglected land owned by his church led to a collaborative partnership with organizations like the USDA to develop Stillmeadow PeacePark, a stewarded public access urban forest in Baltimore, used for everything from wilderness education to baptisms. Martin asked us, metaphorically, “What are your 10 acres?” What overlooked asset that our sites already had could be of use to our project? Fr. Thom had missed that workshop due to the completion of St. John’s steeple restoration, but I made ask if he had any insights.
The next week, we held our coffee hour. Church that Sunday was better attended than average, and most people stayed after, perhaps because we’d been talking up our use of Yale’s budget to cater the event in previous announcements. We even needed to get out extra tables and seating! I led attendees through a “spiritual timeline” activity, familiar to most YDS students who have taken a supervised ministry practicum, but adapted with attention to elicit St. John’s precious history. Provided with post-it notes, parishioners wrote down the important events in their spiritual lives and relationships with St. John’s. Then, we challenged the group to name the clergy who had led the parish, as far back as they could remember, in order to give the timeline more context. As folks were reflecting and writing, the working group members made the rounds. At one table, with some of the ladies from craft group, I was asked about our most recent Visionary Leader workshop. “So, we’re trying to find out what our 10 acres might be,” I explained. “Well, I don’t know about 10 acres, but we have at least one right out back,” one of the ladies replied. No kidding!
At my monthly meeting with Fr. Thom later that week, I asked him about the acre out back. “You won’t believe this,” he told me, “But I just learned about it when I was looking out from the top of the steeple the other week after the renovation was finished, when you were in that workshop.”
“The Holy Spirit is so funny like that,” I replied.