Non-revolutionary #church

So, my church started a farmer’s market, and its changed us…its changed our entire practice of “Sharing our building” Its changed how we see the community and how we do community.

Confession: I went to hatch-a-thon at Princeton and I did not feel awesome. Which might have been augmented by the fact I was on meds for Bronchitus…but also I just knew my idea wasn’t that revolutionary

In fact I sat on my application for a long time, because the whole idea of what we are doing does not communicate well

It feels lame

and looks less like discipleship than other programs

Its a problem.

(plus I would love to be a cool minister doing arts, feeding massive amounts of poor or providing much need relationships to kids…so I’m jealous there)

My church is normal, except we see ourselves as being guided to the local community by God

But I think the problem is in the language, the translation of the idea rather than the idea itself.

The query I go during my presentation at hatch-a-thon was “How is this different from just being a nice landlord” I didn’t have an answer then and I don’t have one now.

But as I look at a bazillion grant applications I need to work on (ok more like 3 or 4). I know that this is my next step.

There is something about being a community IN community with other Communities that is super missional. And I know we don’t have formal “Bible Study” but we do have playgroup where we talk about faith practices with parents. We don’t have a prayer time at the Farmer’s Market, but we do have a table with chairs where people can sit and get to know the church and what it is we do within the community.

Our most recent new members said they had a game plan for their first foray into the farmer’s market:

get in, get out, avoid the sales pitch about attending church, don’t be surprised when it happens–but try to miss it

They said, the sales pitch never came, they began to get to know us and what we do…and we had info about our service, but we never pushed it on them.

Irony: they never would have come to church if we had been too aggressive.

I’m still discerning how Christ is working through a seemingly secular Farmer’s Market, but I see God already at work in the community…we are just hooking into the kingdom that is already being built.

Now to work on translating this to discipleship language…..

Author: katyandtheword

Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ. She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible. "Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal. Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times. View all posts by katyandtheword