What I’ve Been Doing for the Past Year…

• March
• 18
• 2009

8:13 am by: Jason Posted in: Church Outdoors, City Life, Ethos, Subversive Thought, Updates

Man I am really bad at this at times…sorry again.

I wanted to let my friends and family who read my blog…if there are any left…what I’ve been doing.  It isn’t what I expected to say the least when we left for Seattle in 2007, but I wouldn’t trade what I do for anything.  I’m also going to be kind of refocusing this blog to reflect what I feel God pushing, pulling, and leading me towards.  Since this space is to reflect what is going on in my life…it’s cool.

So, two years ago last month we relocated out here to plant a Church in West Seattle.

That journey has been….odd to say the least.  I love what we are doing here in West Seattle.  The people I’ve met are amazing and I simply adore living and serving here.  In one respect, nothing has changed, but in another everything has.  We are officially off funding for church planting…it ended on 12/31/08.  I’m back to working in IT to support us financially…and that’s cool…no really it is.

I am eternally grateful to the SBC, NAMB and the Puget Sound Baptist Association for their help, support and funding over the past two years.  That being said though…I am also quite relieved to be off of funding.  Ethos is moving, but very slowly.  I’m cool with that, but I always felt bad that I didn’t have tangible things to show…numbers wise that is.  The pressure was kind of…understated…but always present.  I always felt like I was not doing enough, even though I spent a lot time becoming part of the community in West Seattle.  Without the pressures of a funding end date, we can let Ethos grow naturally and at her own pace.

Which by the way…I am amazed and encouraged by.  Beyond our community in West Seattle, I have an amazing opportunity ahead of me.

At the end of September 2008, I got an Email from a friend of mine, Dustin Cross.  He’s someone I met through Jeff Greer, and he worked with New Vintage Church before they folded.  It was a plea for help from all the pastor type people he knew to come down to something called Nickelsville, a community of homeless men, women, and children that came together to basically…well…squat on city land in fuchsia tents.  It was started as a protest against the policy changes that the Mayor of Seattle, Greg Nickels, enacted that for all intents and purposes made being homeless illegal.  They also started the encampment to give the homeless population of Seattle another resource for shelter, safety, and survival.  Tent Cities have been a part of Seattle culture since the late 1990’s, and they continue to meet needs that the shelter system, and city can not…or in the case of the city…will not.

Anyway, I went to Nickelsville’s original site a few miles from our house, on the first day they were setting up (September 25, 2008).  It was an amazing experience to say the least.  I help to construct “buildings” out of discarded wood with people form all over the city…including at least one who worked in the major’s office.  Needless to say, the city wasn’t happy about having a homeless community named after the mayor living in pink tents on city land…so they kicked them out and arrested 24 of the residents…and Dustin.  They moved to an adjacent parking lot after that, and Dustin called me again and asked if I wanted to come down for a Bible Study…Worship…Spiritual Discussion…like thing.

I showed up that first night, and looked on as Jeff rocked out on acoustic guitar and Dustin did a little sermon, message, open discussion time type thing.  I also met a dude living in Nickelsville named Aaron “Beau” Beaucage, who claimed to be a Buddhist, but filmed the whole deal.  I hung back and talked to Beau and some others who were floating around on the edges.  It was amazing to see a professional grade musician and an experienced impassioned pastor type sitting around with the homeless sharing and helping to restore their place At The Table…coming together as equals to worship, love and explore God.  They had to move on from that spot, and a Native American Tribe offered them land at Daybreak Star.  Jeff and Dustin followed them, continuing to do their Monday night deal, but more importantly getting to know the community and sharing life together (I didn’t realize that it wasn’t just a one time deal, so I kind of faded out of the picture during this phase).

They relocated again to a church parking lot in the U District, and I reconnected with Jeff and Dustin about the now highly regular Monday night gatherings.  I showed up again, and was drawn in by what was going on, plus the relationships that Jeff and Dustin had with the Nickelodeons.  At this point, Dustin had become the “Pastor to Nickelsville” while Jeff had deepened his connection with some of the Nickelodeons and especially Beau…the resident poet of the community.  Jeff even took some of Beau’s poems and turned them into songs.  I dove in, and became part of the small group, along with Brandon Couch, that are regular’s at Nickelsville, and in the non-housed community of Seattle.

Jeff and Dustin even put on a benefit concert at Q Cafe with some Nickelodeons.  Jeff brought in a band along with others, and Beau read some of his work including his “signature” poem “Nothing is Meaningless”.  We raised a few thousand for the camp and got really cool pink rubber bracelets with “Support Nickelsville” stamped in them…I still ware mine and it generates a lot of questions from people.

The camp moved to another church parking lot in the U and once again our growing band of people went with them.  We continued to do the Monday night deal, and Jeff and Dustin even spent some nights there hanging with some of our outdoor friends.  Jeff and Beau ended up staying up all hours watching Flight of the Concords on a laptop given to Beau to help him get is poetry published.

In the greater community, we started to sense a growing need for something beyond Monday nights at Nickelsville.  We heard repeatedly of our friends being turned away at the doors of churches on Sunday morning…as despicable and evil as that sounds.  They started to ask us…mostly Dustin as he was starting to be seen as a Pastor not only to Nickelsville, but to the wider street population…if there was a way of doing “Church” on Sundays with them.  They had a desire to expand their place at The Table, and include more of their friends.  We were more then happy to explore this with them.

From there, it expanded and exploded well beyond our limited ideas and vision.  We had people from Dioceses, Social Service organizations, churches of all sizes, and individuals all coming to us wanting to help with an outdoor expression and gathering of the church.  So we are going for it, and doing our best to stay out of God’s way in what He’s doing.  We are continuing our presence in the homeless community, and expanding what we are doing with them.

That is really the key to everything.

We don’t want to show up a couple of times a week and “do church for” our outdoor friends.  We want to live life with them, and treat each other as equals…because of course, we are.  We are all brothers and sisters in humanity and Christ.  Whatever we do, plan, or try it will be together in unity, diversity, dignity, and equality…not as a hand reaching down to homeless, but one reaching across with each other in worship and service.  From these ideas, we are starting something with our outdoor friends.  We are going to start another Monday night like thing at Tent City 3, as well as a gathering at a central location on Sunday afternoons. Beyond those…and possibly the most important…we’ll be intentionally spending time one on one with our non-housed brothers and sisters and inviting other housed people to do the same.  We’ve gotten a domain: www.churchoutside.com (what you have to do now a days) and are in the process of doing the non-profit paperwork.  Jeff’s community, Vineyard Community Church is helping us with the legal stuff for the non-profit as well as mentoring us through the whole deal (that’s Jeff on the home page picture with the hat and long goatee, and the redhead next to him is Vicky his wife).  They’re offer of help is amazingly generous and we are grateful beyond words for their investment into us.

That’s in a nutshell what I’ve been doing lately.

It’s been a brilliant journey thus far, full of ups and downs to say the least.  I’ve had the opportunity to lead discussions at Nickelsville, and that will increase as we move into TC3.  It was a privilege and honor to be able to share with them and discuss aspects of faith form different points of view.  Dustin had the privilege of performing the marriage ceremony for two of our friends, Bruce and Donna, on 1/15/09.  Jeff did the music, and as usual, I showed up to support and hang.  We’ve all said it, but I’m amazed at how much I’ve grown in these past 7 months, and how exited I am about the future of what we are doing.

Unfortunately it hasn’t all been…I’ll say…uplifting, encouraging and easy.

We’ve gotten to see the darker side of the streets as well.  We…Dustin mostly, given the amount of time he spends on the streets building community with our friends…have dealt with rape, violence, drugs, alcohol addiction and the sins that plague all communities of non-housed.  Perhaps one of the hardest things for all of us though, was the news we got in late February.

Our good friend, inspiration, and one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met, Beau, had died.  He moved to California after New Years for some potential work, and Jeff hand only heard from him a couple of times since.  We heard, and later confirmed, the news of his death, and I have to say it devastated us all…and so many more that Beau touched in the short time people knew him.  We had a memorial service with a large turnout of housed, non-housed, activists, and just people who loved the guy.  Jeff played the music he created out of Beau’s poems, and Dustin performed the service.  I showed up mourned, wept, and grieved with my friends.

In Beau, we lost an incredible poet, activist, and caring human who happened to be between homes…way before his time.  More profoundly…we all lost a good friend.  If you want to know more about Beau you can check out Jeff, Eugene Cho and Dustin’s blog posts on him as well as the comments and memories people shared.  Beau left behind two daughters, please remember them as you pray.

Despite Beau’s death and the difficulties we experience, I am excited and encouraged for the future of what I’m doing with Jeff, Dustin and for a wile longer Brandon (he’s going off to Africa with Mennonites).  The future of our strange little group seeking to challenge the divisions in churches and live life with our outdoor fiends is exciting, scary and adventurous.  I’ll keep you posted and be sharing more of my experiences as we move forward.

“How can we worship a homeless man on Sunday and ignore one on Monday?” – Shane Claiborne