Here's a Monday Music Appreciation Moodling with an update about what's been going on for Inner City Pastoral Ministry lately. I'll start with the music part, and if you're interested in the rest, well, you can wade through that below the video.
Yesterday at the Community of Emmanuel, I came inside from welcoming folks into our much-reduced space, and the Ever-Amazing Evan was playing House of the Rising Sun. He's played it many times before, and I was in the mood for singing, so I jumped in with the lyrics of Amazing Grace, as I've often heard Evan do in the past. Our folks love it.
This morning I received an email from a friend and board member whose church donated yesterday's lunches, commenting on how much she enjoyed the service and our Blind Boys of Alabama version of Amazing Grace. I had no idea that it originated with them, so I went looking and found today's music appreciation video.
Ohhh yeaaahhhh. If you haven't heard it, here it is! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0EN_Hmq534
And here's the update on what has happened for Inner City Pastoral Ministry these past two weeks or so. I am writing this mostly to keep the details together for myself, so don't feel you have to read it.
Wednesday, July 16th, Pastor Quinn had a phone meeting with a manager at the Bissell Centre, with whom we've had a 47-year collaboration in caring for inner-city community members. The manager told him that we had until August 1st to vacate our spaces (worship and storage) as the Bissell had to lease it to a third party. That's the day I asked moodlings readers to pray for us. (Thank you for your prayers -- you'll see they've helped.)
Thursday, July 17th, we had our Men's and Women's Groups hotdog roast and picnic at an inner-city park, and broke the news about our move to some of our community. "But why?" was the common question we heard over the next two weeks.
Friday, July 18th, a group of us went medicine picking in ditches east of Elk Island Park. It's hard not to pray when I'm picking sage, a good hotline to Creator, and I burned it up.
Saturday, July 19th was a memorial picnic for one of our long time community members. Barb's daughter, Annie, has remembered her mom with the Community of Emmanuel in this way for the last four years.
Sunday, July 20th we arrived at our worship space to discover that our usual chairs and tables were missing, pushed into back rooms. Extra set up and take down effort makes for a good Sunday morning workout! We explained to the Community of Emmanuel that July 27th would be our last service in the present space, that the next worship space would be much smaller, and that if they wanted to come and pray with us on Sundays, it would be, first come, first served. Or, as Quinn put it, "You snooze, you lose. Come early." Our ability to be hospitable has taken a big hit.
Monday, July 21st was supposed to be the start of Pastor Quinn's vacation, but with a rainy day and so much up in the air, he spent his time trying to nail down details about our move -- in vain. Our board chair also tried to contact the CEOs of Bissell to see if we could discuss our situation -- also to no avail. He did, however, receive a letter back letting us know that it is the Alberta Government's Provincial Navigation Centre (for shuffling homeless folks into shelters and detox beds, ready or not) who will move into what was our space, dashing our hopes that it would be someone willing to collaborate with us.
Tuesday, July 22nd to the morning of Friday, July 25th was Quinn and his son's camping trip to Drumheller, where phone/text connection isn't great, but I managed determine a time that Quinn could come to a meeting, got hold of the Bissell facility manager and set one up for Friday afternoon. He, Annie, our coffee coordinator, and I met with the manager, looked at the spaces we had to work with in Bissell East, and started formulating plans for how to use the space and for the big move.
Sunday, July 27th was our final service in Bissell Centre West. It was a good one, but I couldn't help feeling sad, knowing that we can't care for folks as easily as we did with more space, good coffee machines, and a much easier set up. I guess we'll just have to keep building muscles moving furniture and lugging around coffee urns.
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| Our old space |
Monday, July 28th was the move. Three board members, Quinn, and I managed to clear out our storage spaces and pile things into bins and boxes to move to a room across the street in Bissell Centre East. The toughest thing to move was our altar, a cupboard on wheels with very low clearance. Sorting through and moving everything took us about five hours, and we left considerable chaos behind, but we kept our end of the bargain that Bissell insisted upon.
And really, we are grateful that they didn't kick us out entirely... but they could have given us a lot more time. Not too many landlords get away with a two-week eviction notice. Or they often do and I'm just naive...
Thursday, July 31st Bible Study morning began with a big question -- where did our TV go? Lucky for us, ever-helpful Bob the facility maintenance guy had it! He also saw to it that our coffee cabinet and meal accessories locker got moved to the new space. Pretty well everything else left behind in the West building was destined for either the Bissell's Store or the dumpster.
Friday, August 1st was handover day to the Navigation Centre folks, who were taking a tour of our old space when we arrived to pick up Evan's electronic piano. Quinn and I spent another 5 hours putting things away and debating how to set up for Sunday morning. Much to our delight, we managed to fit 50 folding chairs into the Wolf Room that we are now using every Sunday.
Saturday, August 2nd we had a ministry team meeting in the new space to talk about how worship, coffee service and the handing out of lunches after the service would work. Evan set up his piano and did a sound check, and we prayed that the new space would serve us well.
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| Our new space |
Sunday, August 3rd began with Quinn smudging the area with sweetgrass, and it was a gorgeous sunny morning for people to come and find us -- I posted signs on Bissell West and East explaining where to come for worship and that lunches would be served on the opposite side of the street. And people came. As is often the case early in the month (after folks get their social assistance cheques), it wasn't a big crowd, but we felt that the people who really wanted to be with us came to pray and sing and hear Quinn's beautiful words about our community being a place of prayer, peace, safety, and sanctuary.
After all was said and done, we all felt that this change, while not ideal, has been mostly positive. As Jesse, one of our regulars, put it, "I was anxious about how this was gonna work out, but you guys did just great, and I think it's gonna be fine."
It's fine right now with good weather, but we'll need to move into a different room in colder weather because our doors open directly to the great outdoors so we won't be able to keep the room warm in the winter with people coming and going. The larger room we are hoping to use will hopefully be vacated when a new facility opens for the social services agency in there now. It was actually ICPM's meeting place before Bissell West was built. So please, pray that all goes well with Boyle Street Community Services' move to the King Thunderbird Centre so that we can move to their larger room, and please continue to keep us in your prayers, that our community of prayer, peace, safety, and sanctuary can exist going forward.
Amazing Grace has been at work for us, no question. Amen, Hiy hiy!
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