On Intentional Community and Displacement

Fresno's Fulton Mall, at the heart of its downtown core's revitalization efforts

This upcoming year I'll be stepping into a new role in ministry I've been preparing for for several months. I'll be the Assistant Director of FIFUL's Pink House, an intentional  community that prepares young men and women to empower their communities in urban ministry, engaging the inner city through the lens of leadership development. My only experience in inner city ministry thus far has been through the Fresno Urban Internship, better known in shorthand as FUI, a six-week intensive inner city immersion where community, service, and leadership development combine in a unique and powerful way. As I write this, I reflect on the last six weeks, which I spent as a staff for the project in the heart of Fresno, a city of half a million with some of the nation's highest concentrations of poverty.

There are some distinctions between the two programs. FUI is six weeks during the summer, Fresno's sweltering heat providing the backdrop for up to thirty hours a week of volunteer service at different agency sites: partner organizations that use the interns as temporary workers. We meet twice a week to take a class called Intro to Urban Ministry, featuring different guest speakers whose expertise lends itself to issues affecting our context in the city. Such topics include the cycle of poverty, redistribution, racial reconciliation, revitalization through business, immigration, and food justice, to name a few. FUI places strict controls on the students' access to technology and phones; only two hours per week are given for "tech time" where they are free to call home. In the meantime, pen and paper, envelopes and stamps provide the best means of communication with the outside world. It is a rich experience where community becomes the focal point of your experience. The participants learn the true meaning of fellowship, which, according to a posting in our kitchen, is simply experiencing life together. In many ways they must take each other into account for everyday decisions, especially because money is restricted to a weekly stipend of thirty-five dollars. Overall, the experience is one of displacement, because the regular attachments of technology and social networks are suspended, and the students must learn what it means to share life together and with their neighbors. The Pink House program, on the other hand, lasts a full ten months, and most interns have full time or part time jobs, or are studying to finish undergraduate or graduate degrees. During the ten months, they volunteer at least five hours a week at a partner agency, and are trained in urban ministry concepts through a rigorous curriculum featuring different topics that affect the lives of the urban poor. There are no restrictions on technology or phone usage, although the participants are encouraged to budget and live simply. Both projects take students into the Pink House itself, a nearly 100 year old mansion split into four apartments, two upstairs and two downstairs. Currently my life is split between the upstairs apartment, where I lived for the past six weeks, and the director's department downstairs, where I'll live for at least the next three years.

I experienced FUI first as a student back in 2009, where I had just completed my second year in college and faced some critical decisions about vocation and how I wanted my life to matter during the rest of my tenure in school and beyond. My experience alongside nearly forty other interns and staff was a life-altering one, where my paradigm for community and ministry was altered dramatically. For the first time I understood what it meant to live incarnationally, intentionally stepping into the pain of my immediate context and working to learn from it, humbly assenting to the community's power to shape my understanding of poverty and justice, and not asserting my own colonizing ideas of improvement. The neighborhood became a collection of neighbors, and I was learning to love them. This had dramatic implications for my life back in San Luis Obispo where I lived as a student. It meant that I began searching for career paths that focused on community service and education, because those tools had become such an integral part of my experience during FUI and I wanted them to translate to my regular life. Because of FUI, I sought an internship with the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes Center, where I served a community of urban kids by leading classes on environmental and science education. If the Lord hadn't called me into ministry after college, I would likely have used that experience to launch me into a teaching credential program, since I knew education is such a powerful tool for the transformation of our communities.

Still, my recent experience with the FUI program was much different than my own experience as a student in the project, and I'm still recovering from my time with the students. For one, I was in close proximity with three other housemates and had little time to myself, even during my morning and evening prayer times. This was a significant displacement for me because I usually enjoy solitude during my daily rhythms of prayer, contemplation, and reflection. As I write this, I recognize this is the first time the house has been empty for over six weeks. Because the Pink House interns don't move in for another few days, I consider this time a sort of deep breath in between the intense experience of the summer and the more attenuated program that these next ten months will provide. Thus I am appreciating the concept of rest, allowing these few days to be a retreat from the usual pulls of ministry, since I continue to serve as a full-time campus minister at Fresno City College. I'm grateful for the last two days, which the staff spent away at a retreat center to enjoy some much-needed rest and relaxation. I got to go to confession for the first time since before FUI and attended mass in the retreat center's beautiful chapel overlooking the ramparts of the climbing Sierra Nevada. As I received the Eucharist gratefully for the first time in a few weeks, I said a silent prayer of thanksgiving. What intimacy with the Lord that was denied me during the project was finally available in the humble species of bread and wine. Besides the displacement I experienced around my regular prayer rhythms, I also have a different vision for applying my time here than I did as a student. Now I focus more on relationships gained during my time here, especially with those who are working for the sake of the city's well-being. The key scripture at play here is Jeremiah 29:7, where the Lord speaks powerfully to a nation in exile among the conquering Babylonians:

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. 

 I recognize that we are indeed exiles living in a land of conquering power. There are many allegories between the nation of Babylon and the capitalistic, exploitative society we find ourselves in, and yet the Lord has a firm challenge for each of us: we are to seek the city's welfare. Some have rendered the Hebrew welfare as peace. I prefer the original language's ability to capture the meaning here: shalom. To seek the shalom of the city means to seek its well being, its reconciliation, its prosperity, its spiritual and material security. I feel much more equipped now than as a student to do this, because of the relationships I've developed with others. I think of people like Bryson, who is working to organize voters in faith communities to release the unjust amount of young people of color in prison for nonviolent offenses. I think of Craig, who brings decades of experience serving in local government to a new business venture on the vulnerable downtown pedestrian mall at Fulton Street. I think of other missionaries who have intentionally relocated themselves to the poorest neighborhoods in the city to serve and witness to the transformational work of the gospel. These voices, like Pastor Phil, Brother Daniel, and Kim, are a beacon of hope to the church in the city. These are people of shalom, whom God has called out of the entrapment of the American ideals, wealth, and materialism, and placed into the upside down kingdom of His reign.

Some of our students had a problem with this. One student that I had a particularly close relationship with this summer felt that he was not called to give up his love for the finer things, and struggled with the values of simple living. Unfortunately, in God's Kingdom, his wealth comes up short when it comes to the real value of our lives. My prayer is that the Lord will break down the snares that entangle us in the web of false idols, which compete for our affection and so easily derail our efforts to serve those who call these poor neighborhoods home.

Still, this network of committed, shalom-seeking individuals forms a community of support that I am grateful for. This is a meaningful counterpoint to my previous experience in community, which had fragmented since I left college two and a half years ago. As a student coming out of FUI, I was eager to apply my experience in community towards a tangible reality of living among others. We eventually rented out several units in the same apartment complex, sharing our lives with our Latino neighbors and even eating together several times per week. That vision of community was an ephemeral one, since we undoubtedly moved on from this experience to greater things. Still, those times were some of the most authentic I ever had in community during school, and were still valuable lessons in the landscape of Christ's incarnation among his people.

As I stand on the cusp of this new season of ministry I have great hopes for the incoming class of Pink House interns, as well as great expectations of our group of outgoing FUI interns. I pray that the Lord may use them to shape their contexts powerfully, witnessing to the Lord's power of resurrection over the snares of death that plague our communities and universities. Lord, move in our midst. May your kingdom come in small ways and big ways. Shape the hearts of your servants to reflect your love, which humbled itself and took flesh in our neck of the woods. I pray this through the author and perfecter of our communities of faith, the same Christ Jesus. Amen.