(e)mergent Voyageurs

Chris’s Release Into A New Community
January 9, 2005 – Winnipeg Sun
by Harry Lehotsky CM

I extended my hand and smirked as Chris entered the church. It’s not my typical pastoral greeting, but this time I couldn’t help it. We had talked several times over the phone, and I had heard about him, but we hadn’t met.

His visit was prefaced by a typically brusque and blunt phone call. “Hey, I’m just gonna come in, meet you, and just check out the joint, see if it’s safe.”

As he entered the church, I considered the oddness of his expressed concern for safety. He looked more like the type of guy who would elevate the concern of others for their own safety. Long hair, wild beard, battle worn leather jacket, and extensive tattoos accompanied a look and manner which indicated a hair-trigger temper and a history of anti-social behaviour.

As I shook his hand and our eyes met, I knew he wasn’t concerned about his physical safety.

So I figured if we’re both thinking something, we should probably talk about it — even if it’s awkward.

His comments clarified that he knew better how to deal with a physical threat than a look of condescension or judgment.

Chris, like so many others, understood that physical wounds heal, but dirty looks and mistrust cut in a way that can’t be sutured.

I told him I couldn’t guarantee that everyone would immediately trust him. Some in the church had been hurt by people who looked like him. They might understandably be a bit nervous. I reminded him that he had gone to great lengths to develop a look that worked to protect him on the street precisely by making other people nervous.

It’s like others I know who don’t take a bath for weeks and then get all indignant about the snobbery of people whose gag reflex hasn’t yet adjusted to the stench.

But I assured him that most of the folk in our church aren’t ruled by first impressions or old prejudices. They would give him the same chance they got — a chance to be who they wanted to be. To be treated like they were prepared to treat others.

He made sure I understood that he had done “hard time.” That he wasn’t impressed with religion. That he was about “as interested in the Bible as in Playboy magazine.”

And I could tell he was surprised when I responded with a smile and commented that I was fine starting there.

Chris was a survivor. He survived the death of his wife and kids via a drunk driver. He survived an internment of over half his life in penitentiaries across Canada. He had survived the enmity of determined foes and the friendship of similarly challenged buddies.

I found it intriguing how Chris and I lived in the same neighbourhood, yet our view of the community — let alone the world — could be so totally different.

It hit me when Chris and I spent a day together. I visited the school, several businesses and some church and community acquaintances. Since Chris was with me, I simply introduced him as my friend.

Had he come alone, folks may not even have answered the door.

Part way through the afternoon, Chris announced, “Harry — this is blowing my mind. I always laughed when people talked about community. Before today that was just a place where I had a room, ate my meals and watched my back. Now I can understand what people mean when they use the word ‘community.’ “

And the concept revolutionized his behaviour in the neighbourhood.

There was the time Virginia was at the checkout line in Safeway when she spied Chris glaring in her direction. Unsure of what was going on she approached him to ask what was happening. He clarified that he wasn’t looking at her but some guy who was getting too close — probably trying to look into her purse. The guy caught Chris’s glare and took off quickly.

Chris was a guy who was labelled a perpetual perpetrator. He was a guy with serious authority issues, a history of criminal behaviour, a trail of violence and incarceration that made him a suspect even when he wasn’t committing crimes.

Now, instead of a perpetrator, Chris began to see himself more in the role of protector of community. He didn’t trust “the system” and he despised “programs,” but he was determined to find ways to help.

A night owl, he put together a medical kit in a small tool box and always kept it ready to help people he found injured in dangerous places. He found ways — some very unorthodox — to try to get people off the streets. He broadened my understanding of community — the people, the behaviours and the concept of friendship.

We became friends — talking together, working together, jogging around the neighbourhood.

He started working on some of our housing renovations. Kids, including my own, were drawn to this wild, intense ex-con always willing to talk about appreciation for life and parents and getting real with doing good. And I was happy for their time with Chris. I had no worries about him corrupting the kids. If anything, he was inspiring them in new ways to carve out a good path. To pursue with vigour the chances he felt he never got.

Chris continually marvelled at the new world opening up in front of him.

And I marveled at what can happen when you start treating someone like they want to be treated instead of how they’ve felt they deserve to be treated.

Missional

“What suburbia cries for are the means for people to gather easily, inexpensively, regularly, and pleasurably — a ‘place on the corner,’ real life alternatives to television, easy escapes from the cabin fever of marriage and family life that do not necessitate getting into an automobile.”

- Ray Oldenburg

This past Saturday, I was honoured to accept an invitation by my friend Brother Maynard to share at his house church gathering. He invited me to share my journey, focusing specifically on our vision and plans to develop a missional “third place”- a used bookstore currently being called “The Dusty Cover”- in our West End neighbourhood. In addition to some great conversation with some excellent people, it afforded me the opportunity to process even further the ideas and values that are shaping this vision.

One of the questions that I was asked was “What are the core things you hope to accomplish with this third place?”. While I would probably develop this further given more time, but in that moment I responded”

1. To create a safe, neutral space for genuine relationships to be built with our neighhours.

2. To assess and serve some felt needs of the community out of specific giftings/abilities.

3. To model and “proclaim” the Gospel in a mutual pursuit of salvation.

Over the next week, I want to explore each of these points. First, however, I went on to explain that, though the Gospel was listed third it does not reflect a reduced importance or value placed on it. Rather, it reflects an intentional pattern in our approach. I hope this will become more clear with each successive post.

For those who are unfamiliar with the term “third places”, urban sociologist Ray Oldenburg described those social environments, in contrast to the first and second places of home and work, where we interact with our neighbours and form community. Missiologists recognize that, with the diminishment of Christendom, the local church is no longer a safe “third place” for those who are not actively identified with Christianity. Add to this that Western Evangelicalism has created something of a “Christian ghetto” and we find that the remaining third places in our culture have been largely abandon by Christians.

To further complicate matters, most of the third places in our culture are significantly market driven- that is to say it costs people to participate in them. Starbucks, a business whose success has been built largely on creating a third place, offers customers not only a product, but also a culture and experience. However, it comes with a steep price tag, as anyone who has paid for a coffee there can attest to.

Facing this, Christians need to be intentional about engaging in existing third places. As these are become few and far between, and those that are there are becoming highly commodified, it also means that we will need to aid in the creation of new third places. However, the biggest challenge in respect to creating such spaces is that, as Christians, we need to recognize that they are by necessity somewhat neutral.

By this I mean that if a space is to truly be a safe and natural place for all people in the community to gather and participate, it must allow for a diversity of ethnic, racial, socio-economic, religious, etc. representation. While we do not hide or deny our Christian identity and beliefs, we must intentionally limit the degree to which we create the space out of that foundation. Third places cannot be created as attractional lures to draw non-Christians into a context where we can evangelize them. In fact, if we do this, it is not truly a third place.

The third place is not created to primarily be a place of evangelism, but rather be a place where genuine relationships and understanding with our neighbours can be developed. If we seek to know the people of our community primarily out of a desire simply to know them, only then will true relationships of mutual trust develop. Only then will we be able to live our lives in front of each other, out of which missional opportunities are born.

As the group quickly and wisely pointed Saturday evening, the biggest sacrafice this approach requires of us as Christians is control. We need to let go of the urgent sense of needing to guide and direct every relationship, conversation, program, etc. towards a “spiritual sales pitch”, and rather begin to enter relationships with a mutual interest and humility.

What do you think? Is that neutrality a compromise to our evangelistic calling as Christians? How neutral is neutral enough? Share your thoughts.

In the next post I will explore the second point, that of assessing and serving a felt need(s) out of the context of our own calling, giftings and abilities.

Emerging Church Missional Third Place