Making Your Church a Community Asset – a Center for Community Life – Transcript
Jim Latimer
Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministers, best practices and quick help, from interims for interims – wisdom from the field. I’m your host Reverend Jim Latimer. Today we have the great fun and great privilege of having with us again, Reverend Quentin Chin. Quentin is UCC and a real veteran of the interim space here in Western Massachusetts. And he wanted to speak to us about churches that say they want to be a community asset and a center for community life. But how do you actually make that happen? That’s a whole different issue. Quentin, you’ve got some thoughts for us here. We’re all ears!
Quentin Chin
Thanks, Jim. It’s great to see you, too. So, this all came up in the church I just finished serving in South Hampton, Massachusetts. And back in July of 2021, the congregation in its discernment process, felt that they would like to become a center for community life. And so, I’ve been basically using that and saying, So what does that mean? I mean, that’s all good. That’s really good! Because it does imply an aspect of connection to the community and wanting to be something more than just this church, in many cases, a physical building just sitting there in town without real connection to the community.
Quentin Chin
So, I’ve been trying to urge them to go from a 30,000-foot level down to like a 10,000-foot level – choose something. What might that be? And so, we started kicking around some ideas, and then some other things happen too. And, part of it is that as things have relaxed from COVID, people are beginning to think about using our building. One way to think about it is church as a community asset. And I think what helps is when we see the church as community asset, it changes implicitly how the congregation begins to understand itself in relation to the community.
Quentin Chin
I was thinking, Well, here we are in New England – Congregationalists. What is our name? Our name is the First Congregational Church of – name your town. If we’re a community asset, we might think about our name as the First Congregational Church for – name your town.
Quentin Chin
The thing is, we have assets in the church. I’m thinking of Luther Snow’s work in asset mapping. We have space that for the most part is underutilized most of the week. So, some of the things that have happened in Southampton – A woman approached us several months ago to put together a program to address Parkinson’s disease. She has an exercise program called Punch Out Parkinson’s. And so, there are people coming, who, for the most part, are not connected to the congregation at all. All we’re doing is giving her space. The feeling I get from the people I’ve talked to who are participating in the program or their spouses are, is that they’re so thankful that this program is taking place, because they don’t have to travel far. And certainly, they’re feeling better, and all the other attendant issues with Parkinson’s. It’s holding back some of the inevitability of Parkinson’s. So that’s good.
Quentin Chin
The other thing is that many of our churches have pretty decent kitchens. And when do we use them? We typically use them for the church supper that doesn’t happen very often anymore because, frankly, we’re getting too old to cook for 100 people. So, we actually had someone who – and this goes even back further from Punch Out Parkinson’s – we had someone who wanted to start a business, and she needed cooking space. And so, it’s like, Sure, use our kitchen! Again, we’re trying to use the assets of the church. So, when we think about the assets of the church, it’s not just financial, it’s what do we have that we can offer? And even to think more creatively about things that we’ve done traditionally.
Quentin Chin
One of the other things in Southampton that they have done forever and a day was a tag sale in the spring. And people are a bit tired. In addition, Southampton has a huge parking lot. And so, this year as just a test, instead of the tag sale, they did a trunk sale. They invited people in town to just rent space in the parking lot, and then throw out a table and put stuff on it. Sell whatever you want. All you’re going to do is pay the church for the parking spot. And so, people in town who had stuff whether they were doing the multitier marketing stuff – whether it’s soap, candles or whatever, right? Or just they had stuff that they cleaned out of their house and don’t really want to do a full blown tag sale, but would like to sell. And again, this is a way for us to be an asset to the community.
Quentin Chin
A third one that we were kicking around for 2023 was putting in electric charging stations. So, we know that for instance, General Motors has already decided that by 2035 they will no longer produce gas engines, or gas-powered vehicles, and that the sales of electric vehicles have now crossed 5% in the country. We are on target as a nation to increase the number of electric vehicles on the road. Why not have churches have an electric charging station? And as I’ve said to the people in the church, it’s like, So if someone is going to charge up their vehicle on Sunday morning, they might as well just come into worship, because they have to wait for their vehicle to be charged!
Jim Latimer
Or we could go out there and pray over them, or serve them Communion maybe while they’re charging….
Quentin Chin
And we can do holy water…
Jim Latimer
These are great ideas. So, a couple of things that come to mind when I hear these ideas about using your church space. Did the congregation go out and find the people, like this person to use the kitchen? Or this the Parkinson’s program? Or did they come to you? How did that go? Is it a passive wait and see – they’ll come to us? Does that work?
Quentin Chin
We were fortunate in that in those two instances they came to us. I think though for your point, Jim, is that – this is also what I’ve been urging the congregation – is that they really need to get out, get out of the building and see what’s necessary. See what the community needs. What is the niche that your congregation can fill? So, I started some conversations with our local senior center. I have a new member who is very interested in doing some work with seniors. What can we offer? One of the things that we can do – and I’ve done it in other churches I’ve served, but I didn’t get a chance to do it in Southampton – I’ve actually created End of Life series. It might be six or eight different sessions. We’ll talk about, for example, the necessary documents you need. And it’s not that I would do it, but I would bring a lawyer in to talk about estate planning. I’d bring in someone from hospice to talk about hospice. And of course, we would talk about death. This is sort of one of our, you know, when we think about community organizations, there are the faith communities, whether it’s Christian, Jewish, Muslim or whatever, right. One of the things about religion is that we have to deal with death. The other one is the funeral home. We all face it. And the thing is, this is what we can offer for our community.
Quentin Chin
Again, it comes down to what is it that the church can do? And not necessarily even thinking in terms of the congregation doing it themselves. Are there organizations already in existence that might need space? One of the things I’ve been suggesting in Southampton, but couldn’t really get it off the ground, but I still think it would be worth it, is to work with a local hospice to create a bereavement support group that would basically address widows, or people whose spouse died and the spouse was the one who cooked so the survivor doesn’t know how to cook. Teach them how to cook – basic cooking. And then whatever they cook, they eat as a community meal. So, it becomes a bereavement support group over food.
Jim Latimer
Nice. And I particularly like what you’re saying there Quentin that it’s not that you have to do it yourselves. But you can find someone – bring someone in from hospice, bring someone in from the Parkinson’s, bring someone in from wherever that knows something about it. And what we’re offering then, is we’re offering space, right? We’re offering blessing upon what they’re doing. So, what they are doing has to be somehow in line with the values of the congregation right?
Quentin Chin
Precisely. Yes.
Jim Latimer
And so, just go out and talk to some people. Talk to people in organizations that are already in the community like the Retirement Community home to find out what the needs are and then what your niche might be. And just pick one thing. Pick one thing and get started. Is that what I’m hearing you say too?
Quentin Chin
Yes! Actually, one of the things we did towards the end of my tenure, I had them read Mark Elsdon’s book. Mark Elsdon is a Presbyterian pastor who serves a ministry on the University of Wisconsin at Madison campus. It’s called Pres House. And so, Elsdon wrote this book, We’re Not Broke, which I highly recommend for people to read. Because he sees ministry and mission, they need to be basically the same. The classic understanding of mission has been a two-pocket model. We earn, we get revenue, however we do it, we put it in one pocket, and then we transfer that revenue to the other pocket out of which we pay a portion to some sort of mission. He sees the ministry as supporting the mission. It’s basically one pocket. So, Pres House is affordable housing. And it’s not just for low income, but it’s also people who are struggling with various life issues. There are programs to help them through that, but that mission also funds the whole program for Pres House.
Quentin Chin
He opens his book with the story of about Mike Mathur, who I actually met several years ago. Mike Mather is a Methodist pastor in Indianapolis, Indiana. He met a bunch of us clergy in Pittsfield. And he said to us, We don’t do missions. And we’re like, What? And he said, What we do is we have a person who just walks around town, meets people, listens to them and hears what they need. He brings it back to us. And we look to see how we can fill these needs. He told the story of a woman that this guy met, who is Mexican and who loves to cook. And so, they invited her into the church to use their kitchen to prepare a meal for the church staff. So, I guess it’s a fairly good-sized church. And everyone loves the meal. And so, they set up an arrangement with her to basically be their in-house caterer. And so, I guess a community group came and wanted to use their facility – the church – and wanted lunch. And they said, Well, you have to use our caterer. And so, she prepared lunch for this group. They all loved it. And they produced business cards for her. The church produced them. So, they handed out the business cards. About two or three years later, she was on her own, with her own catering company and moving outside of the church. But that’s the whole thing: you’ve got this kitchen, use it, do something with it, build a business, whatever.
Jim Latimer
That’s great. I think that’s probably a good place to wrap up here. Because that’s a great example of a church making itself a center for community life – seeing itself as the life of the broader community. And those are some really good examples of how to do that. You don’t have to be the ones that do everything, but just identify people that do know how to do some of these things and make space available. And whatever it is, make sure that it aligns with your values. And there’s no shortage of those things.
Quentin Chin
That’s right.
Jim Latimer
There’s no shortage of needs in your community, things that will bring joy to you and to those you serve, that are in alignment with basic Christian values. Fabulous. Fabulous Quentin! This has been great. Thank you very much for that.
Quentin Chin
You’re welcome, Jim. It’s good to see you too!
Jim Latimer
Good to see you, too. And I look forward to another one of these episodes. At some point, I’ll get a call from you with another interesting idea that we can explore!
Quentin Chin
That’d be great. All right.
Jim Latimer
Thanks so much, Quentin.
Quentin Chin
All right, Jim. You take care. Bye now.
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