June 2013

Friends, I’d like to turn my space in “Totally Byassee’d” over to my friend and colleague Lindsey Long, our pastor at Blackburn’s Chapel. Lindsey is a Duke Divinity grad and also a longtime friend of my family–she babysat my kids when they were infants and she was a kid herself! She has served in Todd for a year, and has also led our effort in the Blackburn House, an intentional Christian community for those trying to discern a call to ministry. Our community in Todd has been a laboratory, an experiment in rural ministry, in multi-site church life, in following Jesus in a place many of our grandparents moved away from but some are now moving back to.

What have we learned in our laboratory this year?

May 2013

One of the great longings at our church is how we can help the poor in our area. We live in a place of greater than average wealth and greater than average poverty. Many of us here at Boone Methodist are closer to the wealth end of the bell curve than the other. We know Jesus’ warning that “to whom much is given, much will be required” (Lk 12:48).

But how do we help the poor without simply lending to bad habits, like substance abuse? How can our generosity become part of someone else’s empowerment rather than increasing dependence?

Circles is one answer to this question. It works to help eliminate poverty by empowering the poor with what we middle class folks already have: social capital. If we don’t know how to do something (our taxes, say, or changing the oil, or getting a job after graduation), we pick up the phone. The poor don’t have the social capital to pick up the phone that the rest of us do. So Circles puts them in, well, circles: relationships with one another and with middle class folks who can help them negotiate the maze out of poverty. How do I make a budget? Save for basic necessities? Negotiate with a creditor? Circles works by placing folks in disciplined small groups who learn together how to get control of their lives and to take their own steps out of dependence and into a sustainable economic life. It’s beautiful.

And it’s coming to Watauga County. If we can make it happen.

Susan Jones and Nancy Reigel, one longtime leader of our congregation and one relatively new-coming leader of our congregation, are deeply committed to Circles’ philosophy and determined to see it here. They have received a grant to help bring it. They need further funding–not a ton, but some, several thousand dollars worth to start. I want to see it happen too–we need more relationships with poorer folks to leaven the loaf of our congregation’s life. We cannot rightly be friends with the poor if we know no poor people. We are all hungry for all people to find a home at Boone UMC. This is a way for us to open our doors wider to people less like us. It is also a way to balance our wonderful commitment to international missions with local mission that helps poor people in our own zip code.

But where do we get the money?

JJ and Jennifer Brown and their marvelous boys Cooper and Tucker joined our church a year or so ago. JJ is dean of students at App, Jennifer a teacher at Bethel. And JJ has trained marathoners before. We have plenty of runners at our church and JJ was willing to train them and some newbies. But toward what end? Amidst simultaneous conversation with Nancy and Susan we realized the end: Circles. Some of us will run, others will sponsor, and we will give the proceeds to launch Circles. JJ amidst a frenetic schedule has coached us to prepare to run the New River Half Marathon this Saturday, May 4. He has sent notes, coached distances, met us with Gu and gels and water and encouragement, and made our lives better (or at least more athletic) but pushing us farther than we thought we could go. This initiative is in line with some others devoted to physical fitness at our church: yoga, Monday night basketball, fitness boot camp, Western Youth Network. One recent meeting of a local community fitness initiative realized that every single board member attending was a recent joiner of Boone UMC! What is God calling us to in this area?

So Saturday a gaggle of us will be out running at Todd. You can support us and Circles with a check to Boone UMC, memo: “Marathon.” The money will go to help poor people help themselves and to pushing our church further toward a health both physical and mental. We’d love your presence in Todd Saturday as well. More thanks than I can count to Susan, Nancy, JJ, and to all of you. Our church is only as strong as your prayers, for these initiatives and in all things.