Bread for the World Sunday Sermon: The Power of Liberating Love

Hi everyone,

What follows is the draft of a sermon I'll be preaching tomorrow at Saint Michael's Lutheran Church in Germantown on the Gospel according to Saint Luke 18: 1 - 8. The sermon is a part of an ongoing advocacy effort to celebrate Bread for the World Sunday. I'd love to hear what you think!

God's peace,
Dustin

Ya know, today’s message from the Gospel of Saint Luke is one of my absolutely favorite parables. There’s a bunch of good messages here for sure about prayer, persistence, and even gender equality, but the reason I particularly love this parable is because of what it says about justice. A widow, a person frequently near the bottom of the social ladder during the time the gospels were being written, keeps coming back to a cruel judge, begging him for justice over her opponent. And lets just stress here... this is not a Judge Judy sort of situation... the widow does not have any ordinary opponent... the word we translate as “opponent” in the original Greek means someone who keeps coming back to accuse you, to persecute you, again and again. In other words, this widow was in a state of constant oppression, but through her own persistence in prayer and action, she eventually convinces a judge to rule in her favor simply because she wears him down... he doesn’t want to be embarrassed by her any longer. My brothers and sisters, this parable proclaims to us across the millennia that despite human sin, that despite the very real evil that persists in ourselves and our society no matter how we try to change or deny it, that at least some of the time, justice can prevail. Yes, at least in some situations, with God’s help, justice can prevail... problems can be solved.

This parable teaches us something deeper about justice too, especially as it relates to our topic of advocating against hunger, if we take a closer look at the character of the judge. Although our hearts initially go out to the widow (with good reason), the judge is actually in just as bad of shape. He actually says to himself, “I do not care about God and I have no respect for people.” I do not care about God and I have no respect for people... wow. Can you even imagine being in that bad of a situation, where you openly admit to yourself that you don’t care about God AND the folks around you? That’s got to be a deep, dark, lonely place... the sort of place that’s pretty hard to get out of. Perhaps some of us here today can in fact recall such a situation, where either crushed under the weight of addiction, or broken relationships, or disease or loneliness or any other sort of evil that might oppress us, we had to recognize that we had become so entirely disconnected from our God and our fellow human beings that we simply didn’t care.

I myself haven’t been in quite that difficult of a spot, but I’ve been close, and that was especially the case while living in Washington, DC. I moved there right after high school to study political science at the George Washington University because I wanted to change things. I was a pretty progressive teenager, and I wanted to change things... I wanted to make the world a better place, and I thought Washington was just where I could do it! I eventually realized though that change wasn’t so easy. By no means do I think this happens to everyone, there’s still a lot of great folks there, but I eventually realized that I was stuck in a pattern that’s fairly common in Washington. Much like me, a lot of folks move there thinking they want to change the world. Soon though they see that in order to change the world, they have to attain a certain level of power. Whether by climbing social ladders or compromising their values or greatly overworking or building their resume in a cut-throat sort of way, folks in Washington can often lose sight of their original goals. Life for them, as it was for me, no longer is about changing the world... it simply becomes about attaining more power. And on that brutal quest for power, relationships with other people are inevitably lost and one’s connection with God feels broken. In other words, life in Washington easily begins to lack the liberating power of love. I believe God worked pretty darn hard to free me from that sort of life... I recognized I needed to leave Washington, at least for a while, and I’m much happier today for it, but unfortunately, many of our leaders there are still stuck in lives that seem to lack the liberating power of love.

And that my sisters and brothers is what we’ve seen recently in Washington, and what we see in the character of the unjust judge. We see the work of lives lacking love. We see the work of folks whose lives lack the liberating power of love, who have become so disconnected that they can’t see the suffering and injustice all around them. They can’t see the true problems in our nation and our world, nor can they ever dream how it can be better. As we discussed a couple weeks ago, we know that one in six Americans currently face hunger in some form, and that in the city of Philadelphia, the number goes up to one in four. One in six Americans face some form of hunger and one in four folks in this city of brotherly love face some form of hunger. Yet we also know that it doesn’t need to be this way, and that it hasn’t always been this way. Under Richard Nixon, not someone exactly known for being a liberal softy, hunger as an systematic problem was pretty much eliminated for a time in America through the increased use of food stamps, now referred to as the SNAP program. Just listen to what President Nixon said to Congress back in 1969:

More is at stake here than the health and well-being of 16 million American citizens who will be aided by these programs and the current Child Food Assistance programs. Something very like the honor of American democracy is at issue. It was half a century ago that the "fruitful plains" of this bounteous land were first called on to a great work of humanity, that of feeding a Europe exhausted and bleeding from the First World War. Since then on one occasion after another, in a succession of acts of true generosity--let those who doubt that find their counterpart in history--America has come to the aid of one starving people after another. But the moment is at hand to put an end to hunger in America itself. For all time. I ask this of a Congress that has already splendidly demonstrated its own disposition to act. It is a moment to act with vigor; it is a moment to be recalled with pride.

According to President Nixon, the very honor of American democracy was at issue... there could no longer be excuses for allowing hunger to exist in our great nation, and thus, for a time, the systematic problem of chronic hunger was eliminated. Unfortunately, under presidents of both major political parties, under President Reagan and President Clinton, food stamps and other programs were scaled back. And thus we’ve ended up in the dire situation we find ourselves in today.

My sisters and brothers, hunger does not exist in America because of one political party or the other... both parties have worked to eliminate hunger, and both parties have set us back at times. The case is similar on the international level. The Millennium Development Goals were originally signed onto by the Clinton administration, and due to increased foreign aid under the Bush administration, we’ve nearly cut to global hunger rate in half over the last two decades to what is now around 14 percent. Hunger does not exist because of one political party or the other and hunger does not exist because we lack the resources to alleviate it. The main reason the scourge of hunger still exists in our time is because, much like the situation of the judge in today’s parable, the lives of many of our political leaders lack the liberating power of love. Thus, today’s parable teaches us that in order to move towards justice, in order to solve problems that are indeed solvable, much like the widow, we should persistently pray, preach and proclaim the power of liberating love that we know through Christ to those leaders who most desperately need to hear it. So following the close of today’s worship service, I invite you to do just that. As we celebrate Bread for the World Sunday, we got all the materials you need to tell President Obama and the folks in Congress that we can and need to end hunger and to remind them about the liberating power of love that we know through Christ. You can either write a letter, record a short YouTube video, or sign a petition.

Amidst the hardest days of the civil rights movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once preached,

To our most bitter opponents we say: ...One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory. Love is the most durable power in the world. This creative force, so beautifully exemplified in the life of our Christ, is the most potent instrument available in [human]kind’s quest for peace...

Love, my sisters and brothers, is the most potent instrument available in our quest for peace, love is the most potent instrument available in our quest for justice, love is the most potent instrument available in our collective quest for freedom. When our Christ rose from that most gruesome of deaths two millennia ago, He proclaimed to the whole world, including us in this time, in this place, in this city that even the worst of human evil, the actual killing of God, is absolutely nothing next to the power of love. God’s act of love in our Christ empowers us. God’s act of love in our Christ frees us. God’s act of love in our Christ liberates us from whatever or whoever may oppress us. And when we are wrapped up in the arms of God’s liberating love in Christ, we can’t help but share the good news of that love with others. Amen.

Dustin is currently in his final year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, having recently completed a year as Vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in New York City. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.

Bread for the World Sunday at Saint Michael's Lutheran Church

Friends,

So tomorrow I'm blessed with the opportunity to do a temple talk concerning hunger and faith-based advocacy at Saint Michael's Lutheran Church in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. As I don't have a yearlong church assignment for Sundays during my last year at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, I decided to visit Saint Michael's a few Sundays ago for the first time and heard folks there were interested in getting involved with advocacy. Thus, Pastor Ingram and other members of the congregation got to talking and we decided to hold a series of temple talks and sermons about combating hunger leading up to Bread for the World Sunday, which this year falls on October 20th. On that day (or perhaps the following Sunday), we'll be contacting our elected officials (via either letter writing or perhaps recorded video) urging them to protect government programs like SNAP, WIC and to reform US foreign assistance.

I thought it would be a good idea to post a rough manuscript of what I'll be talking about tomorrow, both as a way to share information and in order to encourage other people of faith throughout America to participate in Bread for the World Sunday. Thanks so much for reading, and if you have any questions or comments, please let me know!

God's peace,
Dustin

Temple Talk: Faith-based Advocacy and Hunger

Hi folks, my name is Dustin Wright and I'm currently a senior at the Lutheran seminary up the street, studying to be a pastor. A few weeks ago I visiting Saint Michael's Church for the first time, and I believe the Holy Spirit really took ahold of me. It was the Sunday you all had your Rally Sunday, and one thing I heard folks wanted to work on was doing some faith-based advocacy. Given that I spent the past year at the Lutheran advocacy office at the United Nations, and that I've also worked with Lutheran Advocacy Ministry in Pennsylvania, I approached Pastor Ingram and told her I'd be happy to help out. After talking it over with Susan Cole and others, we decided it might be a good idea to advocate for ending hunger in the US and around the world by participating in a program called Bread for the World Sunday, which this year takes place on October 20th.

But before I blab on much longer, I got a few questions for you related to the topic:

- What is advocacy?

- Have you ever taken part in any faith-based advocacy before?

- Why do think its important to engage in advocacy as Christians?

So we can't make the world perfect folks, we can't fix every problem out there... only God will take care of that at some point. Yet, there are many problems we can alleviate in our world, and hunger is definitely one of em. Did you know 1 in 7 Americans, including 1 in 4 children, currently live below the poverty line? And that 1 in 6 Americans currently face food insecurity? And on a global level, wow, there's over 1 billion folks, over 1/7th of our global population going hungry. That's not the happiest news, but I don't mean to bum you out.

Cause there's even better news actually, profoundly good news! While there's a lot of hungry folks out there, it doesn't need to be this way... we have the tools right now to end hunger both in America and around the world, if only we had the political will. In fact, not only is hunger solvable, but in certain times and places, it has been solved. For instance, under the Nixon administration actually, did you know chronic hunger was for a time nearly eliminated in the US? Unfortunately, some of our subsequent presidents and congressional leaders didn't live up to their moral responsibility to ensure folks don't go hungry in this most prosperous of countries by changing the programs that made such an achievement possible. But here's some more good news... on the global level, while there's still a lot of work to do, we've cut the hunger rate in half over the last two decades, lowering the percentage of hungry folks from around 23 percent in 1990 to around 14 percent today. That's amazing progress, and with the political will, it can continue!

Now, as people of faith, we know God doesn't want any of Her children to go hungry, and thus we already do a lot of work to feed folks. Right here at Saint Michael's for instance I hear you have a community meal every week, and that's awesome! But there's another couple steps we can take too. First, let's pray for those who are hungry, and for our political leaders who should at least, be helping them. We also though need to contact our elected officials, telling them to protect and perhaps even expand government programs that feed both hungry Americans and our neighbors around the world. Between now on October 20th, we'll be talking about just how to do that, and then on either the 20th or the Sunday after, we'll be writing letters to our elected officials urging them to live up to their responsibilities.

For you see, us church folks can't feed the hungry on our own. Did you know that if you measured all the food that's either directly given to hungry people or paid for, food given out by churches would only be 1/42nd of all that food, with government programs the source for most of the rest? There's no way us church folks could make up for all that, no matter how hard we tried. That's why its so important that we urge our elected leaders to protect programs like the Supplement Nutrition Assistance Program, the Women, Infants and Children program, and to reform foreign aid.

Thanks so much for having me everyone, and I greatly look forward to working with you all in the coming weeks.

Dustin is currently in his final year of a Masters of Divinity program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, having recently completed a year as Vicar at the Lutheran Office for World Community and Saint Peter's Church in New York City. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.

Public Theologians Advocate on Behalf of PA General Assistance

Wow, I'm live-blogging from the start of Lutheran Day at the Capitol and it's really exciting to see so many Lutherans from throughout Pennsylvania living out their baptismal call to do justice!  In addition to working on issues combating a pay-day lending bill, protecting Pennsylvanians from a proposed food-stamp asset test and strengthening the Homeowners Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program, another major issue we're working on today protection PA's General Assistance Program.

The General Assistance program supports the most vulnerable Pennsylvanians who have no other income. It is truly a program of last resort that is in danger of being cut from this year's PA state budget. The only people who can receive GA funds are:

- Disabled or sick adults without children,
- Domestic violence survivors, many of whom have just fled their abusers,
- Adults caring for someone who is sick or disabled, or for an unrelated child,
- Adults participating in alcohol and other drug treatment programs, and
- Children living with an unrelated adult.

We're trying something new with this particularly advocacy issue by recording advocacy videos, putting them up on YouTube,  and tweeting them to @GovernorCorbett and other legislators... please see some of our best ones below.  If you're interested in helping out, check out www.pacaresforall.org for more information, record a video, posted it to YouTube (LAMPa can help with that if needed) and tweet it to @GovernorCorbett.  Be sure to use the #KeepPAGA hashtag and let LAMPa know about your video by tweeting us @LAMPaADVOCACY.  Thanks so much friends!













If you're here today at Lutheran Day at the Capitol, please see Dustin to record a video before you go home!

God's peace,
Dustin

Dustin is a Masters of Divinity candidate in his second year of study at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice building in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin really likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.

A Reformation of Christian Education, Pt. 3: The Networked Church

As I wrote about in my previous post, sometime between the mid-1990s and mid-2000s, we reached the peak of the “broadcasting age” of communication, an era marked by top-down, one-to-many, and creator-to-consumer processes of information sharing and meaning making. On December 25th, 2006 however an event took place that heralded in the rising of a new era of communication. While the Internet had been around as early as 1982, and social networking sites like Facebook, YouTube and Myspace had already been in use for a couple of years, it wasn’t until roughly 2006 that the idea of technology-assisted social networking hit mainstream culture. The idea of social networking became a “meme” or a culture wide narrative that year, a fact reflected on December 25th when Time’s 2006 Person of the Year was announced as not a famous politician, celebrity or athlete, but as simply… you!  Here are two of the most compelling things the traditional meaning-makers of culture at Time wrote in that article about what they were calling "Web 2.0":

… look at 2006 through a different lens and you'll see another story, one that isn't about conflict or great men... It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes. 

This is an opportunity to build a new kind of international understanding, not politician to politician, great man to great man, but citizen to citizen, person to person. It's a chance for people to look at a computer screen and really, genuinely wonder who's out there looking back at them.

Wow… now six years later, it’s fair to say the folks at Time were right in recognizing the rising of a new system of meaning-making over the old broadcasting model… the era of networked communication is indeed upon us, and it has huge ramifications for the future of the Church.

In the networked communication model, it’s not all about reaching the most numbers of folks or creating the largest community, but rather attending deeply to the connections one holds in community.It’s important to underscore here that at its best, the networked church is incarnational, meaning it enhances rather than entirely replaces in-person ministry. And it’s also not just the broadcasting church on steroids… it’s not simply sending out a Tweet each day or posting a sermon on your blog and hoping for responses, but rather listening, attending and connecting with folks wherever they might be. In some instances, that might mean spending more time in a coffee shop rather than your church office. In other instances, that might mean leading worship in a public park rather than your sanctuary. Basically, the networked church is about finding folks in their “third places,” wherever they are, and going out to meet them there. “Third place” is a term coined by Ray Oldenburg to mean a place where folks spend their time when they’re not either at home or at work… in The Great Place, the Good Place Oldenburg argues that third places serve as anchors of community life and therefore places of meaning making. At it’s best, the networked church recognizes that more and more individuals identify social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or YouTube as some (although not all) of their third places. Following the Great Commission then it simply makes sense to go out where folks are, including online… wish folks happy birthday on Facebook, watch their YouTube videos, read and comment on their blogs. Only once we know what folks are talking about does it make sense to engage them in conversation with relevant additional information.  And as my own pastor, Pastor Scott Cady reminded me in response to the first post in this series, make that conversation as wide as possible. While online ministry may seem entirely new and scary, part of it is paying reverence to the great theologians who have come before us, and bringing them in as conversation partners when appropriate as well.

God's peace,
Dustin

Dustin is a Masters of Divinity candidate in his second year of study at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice building in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin really likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.

A Reformation of Christian Education, Pt. 1: Intro

One thing I’ve spent a great deal of time reflecting on is that social networking technology is not only changing the nature of Christian education in the congregation, but the nature of Christian education in the seminary as well. If social networking technology is reforming education from being a more “teacher-centered” to “learner-centered” enterprise, shouldn’t some of our academic papers reflect that fact? In a learner-centered environment where knowledge is formed through conversation in community rather than found in the bowels of a library and where authority is constantly negotiated, perhaps seminarians could contribute to the conversation by beginning to write blog posts rather than papers that stay locked in the towers of academia? From a practical standpoint, as we begin to read and write seminary assignments more on tablets or smartphones and less on paper, enriching our assignments through sound, video and links seems to make sense and can best be achieved through the blogposts medium.

What I propose then is writing my Technology and Adult Education paper not in the form of five pages but instead in the form of five blogposts, including this one. While this process would have ideally taken place over the span of a few weeks, its unfortunately only going to take place over the span of a single Sunday, in order to get my assignment in on time. Ideally, as I live-blog each consecutive post, I’ll pay attention to the responses and comments it garners (please comment friends and thanks for reading), and then include those comments in the next post of my assignment if possible. So here’s what I’m thinking for each of my four remaining posts:

1) A summary of the “Broadcasting Church” era we are now leaving, including its best and worst practices.

2) A summary of the Networked Church era now emerging, with a focus on how it differs from the Broadcasting Church.

3) As my current ministry setting is with Lutheran Advocacy Ministries of PA, I am looking for ways to educate our ministry partners about proposed cuts to the state of Pennsylvania’s General Assistance Fund, which would double Philadelphia’s homeless population.  I’ll begin doing so by critiquing the well-known Kony 2012 model in light of what I’ve learned about the Networked Church.

4) I’ll conclude with ways I could modify the Kony 2012 model to raise awareness about cuts to the PA General Assistance Fund predominately by contributing and attending the ongoing conversation about the issue, as best practices of the Networked Church indicate.

While writing each post, I’ll rely on Rev. Keith Anderson’s March 2nd, 2012 lecture on the Art of Digital Formation at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, Tweet If You <3 Jesus by Elizabeth Drescher and the responses I garner from my post readers. Thanks so much!

God's peace,
Dustin

Dustin is a Masters of Divinity candidate in his second year of study at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. While seeking ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, his focus is on the intersection between worship, service and justice building in de-centralized faith communities unencumbered by a traditional church building. In his free time, Dustin really likes playing frisbee, hiking and pretending to know how to sing.

A Psalm for Her City

Had to write my own psalm for a First Testament course this semester and the following is what I came up with... it's based on a conversation I had with a woman who used to call the Occupy Philly encampment her home.

Creator, nurturing mother;
     Your love and beauty fill all the earth.

Nurturing mother;

     You come to even the forbidden places,

     the merciless grid of the city street.

Yet the demons of poverty, and hunger and open-air death dealing

     press in on me.

The hellhounds of addiction, and depression and hopelessness

     seek to overtake me.

How could I remain without your guiding hand?

     What would I do without your comforting embrace?

May you vanquish my enemies O Lord,

     not with the sting of your sword,

     but with the wild shoots of your garden

     breaking forth through blood stained concrete.

I know your attentive ear

     will hear the groans of your child

     stripped of her humanity.

I am blameless Lord.

     I shout your name from atop tenements.

     I shout within burned out rowhouses.

     I shout both night and day.

     I shout you are my strength, my healer, and my champion.

David Beckmann, President of Bread for the World @ LTSP

On February 7th the LTSP community was privileged to hear David Beckmann, a Lutheran pastor and President of Bread for the World, speak at our first convocation of the spring 2012 semester.  The talk was an encouraging yet sobering update on what has occurred in the struggle to end global food insecurity since the publication of Mr. Beckmann’s book Exodus from Hunger in 2010.  Through Exodus’s inclusion in the “One Seminary; One Book” campaign, the LTSP community has learned a great deal both about hunger and what role public theologians have in leading our world out of what is very solvable crisis.  Much like in his book, Beckmann discussed how solving hunger can be a bi-partisan issue, evidenced by the fact that Bread for the World has both former Republican Senator Bob Dole and former Democratic Senator Tom Harkin on it’s board.”  He also stressed that public theologians have a responsibility to help faith communities see citizenship as stewardship and considering offerings of not only money and food but advocacy actions that work towards changing the system that causes hunger in our world.

While a great deal of work has already been done towards ending food insecurity, Mr. Beckmann discussed how given the current political environment, we need to help defend the “circle of protection” around the poor and vulnerable of our society.  Although maintaining church food banks is a great start, they only contribute 6% of what federal assistance programs currently do towards feeding hungry people.  As state and federal politicians continue attacking the federal safety net of food stamps, school breakfast and lunches, tax credits and other programs, the faith community must stand, the faith community needs to lend its voice to those who do not have one.  Here are only a few ideas of what folks at LTSP and elsewhere could do to help in this effort:

1. Pick up a copy of Exodus from Hunger and read it to educate yourself on the issue if you have not already done so (it’s a really easy book).
2. Check the websites of Lutheran Advocacy Ministries of PA and Bread for the World to learn more about current legislation and issues.
3. Write, call or visit your local, state or federal representatives as indicated on those websites… even if you’re against their position, the people who work in legislative offices are generally pretty nice. Help folks at your congregations and field sites realize how important advocacy is as part of their faith.
4. Let’s get creative on the LTSP campus! Figuring out how to do a well-publicized hunger fast during part of Lent might be a great start.

By engaging in these actions, we can both ensure that hungry people are fed and that we are doing our best to be the Church, Christ’s body on earth.

God's peace,

Dustin

A History of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia Campus

I'm deep in the midst of writing my J-term paper on the what "narrative" has been written about the LTSP campus over the years, and I figured folks would appreciate a preview of the first couple paragraphs.  If you have any questions (or construct criticism), please let me know!

          A few months ago while planning for an upcoming green certification program at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, one member of the committee suggested it would be helpful to study how our campus identity has changed over the years and how it is currently perceived.  In following up on that request with professors and in the seminary library, I was astounded at the amount of information available.  Beside a nearly countless array of original sources, a number of histories had been published since the seminary’s founding, the most significant being Theodore Tappert’s History of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, 1864 – 1964.  While many of these sources provided valuable information about the names of professors and staff, the acquisition and destruction of various buildings and the character of the student body, they all stopped short of answering my committee member’s question.  I had to dig past such information to tell the story of how our campus community viewed its land, understood its urban setting and its relation to the surrounding neighborhood.  In doing so I hoped to discover how LTSP constructed a campus narrative over its nearly one hundred and fifty year history, the current state of that narrative and how that narrative has impacted the faith of our community.

It quickly became apparent that exploring the evolution of LTSP’s campus narrative would not simply be a historical enterprise, but would necessarily incorporate elements of psychology, sociology and theology as well.  With that fact in mind, my research took a variety of forms.  In order to develop a background for my study of original sources, I first read a number of books on Christian theologies of land, place and the city.  I carefully tilled the Tappert book and other similar works for background historical information.  Using Tappert’s bibliography as a starting point, I next examined minutes from Ministerium of Pennsylvania meetings, LTSP Board of Trustee meetings, transcripts of historical addresses and the like.  I am greatly indebted to the seminary archives staff members who helped me locate a number of early seminary publications and photographic slides (and often the near-ancient equipment to view those slides).  The staff of the Germantown Historical Society also proved helpful in providing old property maps and an outside perspective of the seminary through clippings of newspaper articles.  Finally, I sought to allow the diverse voices of the LTSP community to carry into my work through interviewing a number of staff, faculty, students, alumni and other key individuals.

After engaging in such research I propose that through many changes a “narrative of place” has indeed been constructed by the women and men who have lived, studied, worked and worshiped at here.  I have come to understand that this story has a complex plot which is centered around a single question: how can LTSP best serve the church, Christ’s body on earth, out of this place?  The seminary has generally answered this question somewhere between viewing campus predominately through a monastic tradition of separation and a more missional model of engagement with the outside world.[1]  With notable exceptions, our campus has been on a pilgrimage across that spectrum, slowly shifting away from some of the weaknesses of the monastic model while striving to retain the sacred character of its space and community.

---

[1] As the current Seminary President Rev. Dr. Philip Krey aptly reminded me, at it’s the best the monastic model can indeed be missional, as such institutions engage in a wide variety of ministries on behalf of their surrounding neighborhood and the church.  “Missional” in this paper however designates a disposition toward interacting with and recognizing the sacred in the wider world whenever possible.

Live Music @ Wired Beans Cafe (in video)

I had an epic experience last night.   While I headed over to Wired Bean Cafe (my new favorite coffee shop in Mt. Airy) planning to sit quietly and get some work done I instead ended up getting treated to one of the best open mic nights I've heard in quite a while.  After talking with the cafe's owner Robert Wheeler, it turns out that Wired Beans hosts family friendly open mic nights every Wednesday from 7 - 9p.  One of the folks present informed me that there can be thirty folks in attendance on good night, and sometimes there's traveling musicians that stop in from all over the country.  The open mic night is in addition to poetry nights which are held every Thursday from 7 - 9p (one of which I walked into last week).

The host for the evening, Sad Patrick, opened up by playing John Prine's "Angel from Montgomery," which really got my attention.  As more folks gathered into the small coffee shop, Beorn Sunflower took the mic to play a few original songs, mostly off his album "Songs From the Fridge."  I was able to pick a copy of the album and it's got a sweet sound... sepia toned folk music drenched in Beorn's weathered yet powerful voice.  Next up were two sisters with absolutely amazing voices, singing everything from Beyonce to Etta James's "At Last."  I got their permission to tape a rendition  of Jill Scott's "The Fact Is."  Bethlehem is the main singer here, although I didn't catch her sister's name:



Wow... what a voice!  Bethlehem and her sister are regulars at Wired Bean's open mic nights, so be sure to come by and check em out.  After that Bethlehem sang a couple songs with Sad Patrick, but the highlight of the evening was when her father showed up with a couple friends.  He had just gotten out of choir practice at New Covenant Church, so he sang a hymn called "Touch the Hem of His Garment."  For a finale he then sang "Stand by Me" (with his daughters backing him up from the audience).  I fell into sheer musical ecstasy at this point, listening to the family sing such a moving song while other audience members drummed along on cafe tables.

I'm always someone that needs to be getting something done... checking emails, reading various articles, etc. so for most of the night I was on laptop while listening to the performance.  During the duets though, Bethlehem graciously motioned for me to pay closer attention, and she was absolutely right.  I ended up shutting my laptop and instead soaked in what was going on all around me, and I'm very grateful for it.  That's the sort of place that Wired Beans Cafe is... while you can certainly have your privacy, it's a coffee shop where folks congregate to learn from each other, affirm each other and pay attention to each other.  It's a place that creates community amongst the unforgiving grid of Philadelphia's urban landscape.

God's peace,
Dustin

A Lutheran Seminarian @ Wired Beans Cafe

Photo credit: Mom of Three Photography

While doing reviews isn't usually my thing at "It's Only a Northern Blog," my first visit to Wired Beans Cafe was an amazing experience and I just had to write about it.  Since I got to Philly a year and a half ago I've been looking for my "third place," a place that isn't home or school that I can belong to.  Unfortunately though, I hadn't found much luck... Infusion's hours weren't very good, Chestnut Hill Coffee came off to me as very pretentious (and way overpriced) and Starbucks was well, just a typical Starbucks.  While I occasionally would venture out farther for a good coffee shop, I never would have thought of going much farther down Germantown Avenue.  I'm sure to be over-generalizing a bit here, but I'd say that there's an unfortunate notion on campus that venturing much farther down the avenue than the Acme (at least on foot at night) for entertainment can get a little dangerous.  That may just be my own thinking, but at any rate, it never crossed my mind to check out the area.  A couple days back though I was looking at Google Maps and saw Wired Beans.  After checking out a couple reviews I was pretty impressed... the prices looked amazing, and it was recently voted the best coffee shop in Mt. Airy.  That really peaked my interest, so I decided to check it out.

It was warm out last night so I decided to walk over after hitting the gym, and all the reviews turned out to be absolutely correct.  The place had an extremely welcoming atmosphere, someone's child was playing at one table and there were Obama organizers meeting in a corner of the shop.  After grabbing a three dollar macchiato I sat down and got to work on an independent study I'm doing this January.  The coffee seemed good enough but after giving the menu a glance I was even more impressed... the sandwich selection was awesome and omelets were only five dollars!  Soon though I got distracted from my work by the folks setting up for an open mic poetry night (which I found out they have weekly Thursday @ 7pm).  As the place filled and people gathered around the microphone, I realized that work probably wasn't happening, so I pulled my chair over to listen for a bit.

The host opened up with a thought provoking and humorous poem about serving coffee, but it was the second poet that absolutely blew me away.  She began by reciting passionate lines about society not living up to the dreams of Martin Luther King and then followed up with a heartbreaking poem about loosing her young son to the great oppressions and injustices many face growing up in Philadelphia.  Before I had to leave I listened to another man's poem about Malcom X.  As I headed out the door I knew I had finally found my "third place" in Philadelphia.  There was a lot to love at Wired Beans Cafe... the coffee was good, the price was right, the atmosphere was welcoming.  Most of all though I really appreciated the sense of community I felt there.  Wired Beans is a place where folks of all different backgrounds, colors and economic situations can meet in true fellowship.  From a Christian perspective, it's the type of table fellowship spoken of so often but rarely experienced.  I highly suggest you check Wired Beans out, and as for me, I'll be heading back tomorrow morning for that omelet.

God's peace,
Dustin

A Christian Response to Gov. Corbett's Plan to Asset Test Food-stamps

A article came out a couple of days ago in the Inquirer stating that Gov. Tom Corbett plans to reinstate asset testing for food-stamps in the state of Pennsylvania.  Anyone under sixty receiving food-stamps would be limited to having $2000 dollars in assets, excluding one's home, first car and retirement benefits.  Folks over sixty would would be limited to having $3,250 in assets.  While this measure is purportedly part of a larger effort to reduce waste, fraud and abuse across all state programs, it simply won't do so.  As the Inquirer article stated, Pennsylvania has received rewards for how efficient their food-stamp system is, with the program's fraud rated being an estimated one-tenth of one percent.  As food-stamps are federally funded, the only expense Pennsylvania incurs at all is in the program's administration.  While the state's asset test will reduce the number of food-stamp recipients by about two percent, thereby theoretically reducing administration costs, it will cost more money to add an expensive step to the approval process.  Furthermore, every dollar of federal funds spent on food-stamps adds $1.73 to the state's GDP.

As the asset test really won't reduce waste, fraud and abuse (but will hurt the state's economy), the Corbett administration's move simply isn't practical.  Instead, it is either a politically or ideologically motivated attack on the most vulnerable Pennsylvanians.  Young families on food stamps won't be able save up money to get out of poverty.  Poor elderly folks won't be able save up enough for proper funeral expenses.  The Corbett administration is using a $2000 limit that was set back in 1980.  At very least, the asset limit could be adjusted for inflation, which would put it close to $5500. 

As roughly a quarter of state food-stamp recipients reside in the city of Philadelphia, the local faith community needs to rally around encouraging Governor Corbett to drop the asset test plan, maintaining the circle of protection around our most vulnerable fellow parishioners and neighbors.  Besides everything Christ taught about caring for the poor, the Incarnation itself points to why Christians are called to feed the hungry.  The simple fact that God was fully incarnate in the person of Jesus points to a need for us to respect all humanity.  If God thought humanity was worth Christ being fully human and fully divine, shouldn't all humanity be worth being fed?

So what can you do?  Tell your friends and neighbors, write to the editor of your local newspaper about the issue.  Talk with your pastor to see how your congregation might engage in advocacy efforts against this attack on the poor.  Put a phone call into the governor's office or even plan a visit to Harrisburg with your congregation.  I just put a call in myself and I promise, the receptionist is friendly.  While the advocacy community is still figuring out how to work with the issue, Lutheran Advocacy Ministries of PA can help you get started as well.  Thanks so much for reading and your efforts to maintain the circle of protection around Pennsylvania's most vulnerable citizens.

God's peace,
Dustin

Mayor Nutter Raps with the Roots @ His 2nd Inaugural

While I already loved Philly a lot, this video made me love it even a little more:


Mayor Nutter Raps At His 2nd Term Inauguration Party With The Legendary Roots Band from Identity ink on Vimeo.

Could Mayor Nutter do a better job of supporting the city's poor, unemployed and hungry?  Yup.  Could Mayor Nutter be working more positively with the POWER movement?  Yup.  Could Mayor Nutter have dealt more fairly with Occupy Philly?  Absolutely.  Still, it's great to see this more "humanized" portrait of him... and besides, it makes him kind of cool, right?

God's peace,
Dustin

Prophetic Witness @ OccupyPhilly

As written in an upcoming edition of LTSP's The Seminarian:

Over the last few weeks I had the pleasure of visiting the OccupyPhilly encampment at Dilworth Plaza three times.  Each visit was a uniquely amazing experience.  It was great to talk with folks and feel a strong sense of community during my first visit, but I was also disappointed that people of faith weren’t visibly present at all.  My second time down I attended a meeting of the then newly formed Interfaith Working Group.  Since that meeting, I’ve seen the Interfaith Working Group do some fantastic ministry.  They’ve organized weekly speakers, made appeals for food donations and cared for the many homeless folks living at Occupy.  The group provided a calming presence when police closed the encampment last week and they’ve even worked with the Rev. Jesse Jackson to reach out to the city’s African-American church community.

I purposely made my third visit to OccupyPhilly during one of their public feeding times.  At the encampment’s height they was feeding 900 folks each day of the week and 2100 folks on the weekend free of charge.  Meals were cooked at a local Friends Center kitchen and carted over to the encampment, providing a very public witness to our city’s hunger crisis right in front of City Hall.  Before leaving that evening I briefly spoke with a man who said he wanted to start going to church because the Friends Center was so helpful.

The city government evicted occupiers from Dilworth Plaza last week to make way for a construction project without granting a new overnight permit for another location.  Since then OccupyPhilly’s Interfaith Working Group has worked hard to help homeless folks find another long-term residence.  While I pray the movement stays alive and even grows in the coming months, Occupy has already provided us with an important model for being church in the 21^st century.  Living amidst such social and economic injustice, the church must bear very public, prophetic witness to the many sins of our contemporary society.  Like Occupy, the church must publicly witness in partnership with our interfaith sisters and brother in manner centered on conversation rather than violence.

God's peace,

Dustin

After Dilworth Plaza: Being Forced to Exist Alone

One of the best aspects of OccupyPhilly's former encampment at Dilworth Plaza was that it provided a semi-permanent community for homeless folks in Philadelphia to live in a central location with easy access to food and other important resources.  Since the city evicted the occupiers from Dilworth Plaza last week, the rare sense of community for the city's homeless has been destroyed.  Immediately after the eviction, some homeless occupiers attempted to set-up another encampment in North Philadelphia under a I-95 underpass, but they were recently asked to leave as well.  Paul Klemmer, one of the homeless occupiers, recently wrote an open letter to Mayor Nutter about the situation.  Check out the following heartbreaking excerpt:

Philadelphia has about 4,000 homeless people and 40,000 empty dwelling units, but, apparently, unless the wealthy can profit by our occupying these dwellings, they would rather see us alone, with our possessions if not stolen by regular criminals, "confiscated" by police, since we have no place to store anything we can't carry and are not allowed to congregate to watch one another's belongings.

You can check out more of Paul Klemmer's letter here.  The church needs to be a prophetic witness and support individuals like Paul who want to set up fully functioning communities where homeless folks can live, be good neighbors and even minister to each other without being victimized by our wider society.  As Paul mentions later on his letter, these encampments or facilities could be located in those forgotten, abandoned places in the city like foreclosed homes.  OccupyPhilly's Interfaith Working group has continued working on helping the homeless of our city find new, fully functioning communities to live instead of simply shelters.  The group can certainly provide a strong model for the rest of us.

God's peace,
Dustin

UPDATE 12:47 PM: Here's a great video segment on this second eviction from Fox29 News:

Second Occupy Camp Evicted In Philly: MyFoxPHILLY.com

The Faith Community's Role at OccupyPhilly

I've been meaning to write a second theological reflection on my experience with OccupyPhilly for a while now.  I just watched this footage from ABC6 below, and boy, it's so compelling I had to write something:



Obviously, emotions have very much escalated since police began evicting the OccupyPhilly community from Dilworth Plaza.  While I've haven't personally been able to make it down there in recent days, from email updates I've read it is very clear that the Interfaith Working Group has been working hard to cool tensions and develop productive alternatives to occupying Dilworth Plaza.  Especially after seeing tonight's footage, it looks like OccupyPhilly needs the help of our local faith community to help keep the peace more than ever.

God's peace,
Dustin

UPDATE (7:02 AM): Right originally posting this I came upon some more footage on OccupyPhilly Media. It looks like from some of the following footage that things were really quite bad tonight:








Are police really trampling folks with horses and pulling knives on people? While this news is still unsubstantiated, I believe our faith community really needs to actively observe what's now happening at OccupyPhilly to help prevent further violence.

OccupyPhilly: Interfaith Working Group

Just finished up with a really exciting Interfaith Working Group meeting at OccupyPhilly.  While it was my first time participating, today's meeting was the third of such gatherings... they're actually regularly scheduled on a bi-weekly basis: Saturdays @ 1:30p and Tuesdays @ noon.  There were fifteen folks involved from faith communities all around Philadelphia, and boy, it was really heartening to see that people of faith are becoming more visible at Occupy.  Besides providing a safe space for individuals to pray, meditate or just have a few moments of quiet contemplation, the Interfaith Working Group has also put together a weekly speaker series on Saturday afternoons.  An open-mic church is being organized for 5:00p on Sundays and a holiday celebration is also being talked about for December 17th.

As a Christian, I firmly believe the church is called to publicly witness to issues of hunger and inequality, issues which are central to the Occupy movement.  Even if believers don't specifically support the political goals of the Occupy movement, surely all Christians are interested in feeding, clothing and caring for individuals.  Currently OccupyPhilly is feeding roughly 900 people each day during the workweek and around 2100 each day on the weekend.  Collecting food and clothing to support this work is a ministry any faith community could participate in.  There is a strong pastoral care need down at OccupyPhilly as well.  If you're at all interested in finding out how to get involved, your best resource is the Interfaith Working Group's Facebook group, found here.  Thanks so much!

God's peace,
Dustin

A Lutheran Seminarian @ OccupyPhilly

This past Friday I took the commuter rail down to City Hall, making my first visit to OccupyPhilly.  On my way there I generally thought I supported what was going on, but my main purpose was to get some postcards signed...  Philadelphia is one of the hungriest large cities in America... 1 in 4 folks face food insecurity here.  Despite such an alarming statistic the city of Philadelphia also doesn't currently have an official hunger plan.  City Soup recently launched a campaign to change all that.  Over the coming weeks, members of faith communities throughout the city will sign postcards to advocate for the development of a hunger plan.  And they're going to sign a whole lot of postcards... 30,000 of them, to be exact.  As part of my field assignment with Lutheran Advocacy Ministries of PA, I was asked to support the campaign by getting the Occupy folks to sign as well.

Upon exiting Suburban Station I quickly realized Occupy was something I had never before experienced.  I've been to protests before, marching against the Iraq War in NYC and Washington, but this was completely different.  It wasn't a protest at all really, but rather a fully functioning community organized around fighting economic injustice.  There was strong infrastructure in place... a welcome tent, a medical tent, a media tent, a legal tent and food tent were only a few of the many ways the community supported it's members.  Despite a week-long occupation, the park was amazingly clean.. cleaner than many parks I've visited in Philly.  Finally, there were people not only talking, but really listening to each other all around me.

Most impressively, the folks over at OccupyPhilly were doing exactly what the city hasn't succeeded in doing: feeding hungry people.  For days police have been directing people who are homeless to City Hall in the hope of overwhelming the occupiers.  Instead of being overwhelmed, the community is simply feeding hungry people... a whole lot of hungry people.  In fact, over 1000 people are being served each meal.  That's right... Occupy has become a huge feeding operation right in front of City Hall.  Right after I learned about the feeding operation over a hundred students came marching down (I think) Market St. from Temple University... they had staged a walkout in support of the protest.  The community grew to embrace the Temple students, and continues to grow each day.

The sad part though was that people of faith were almost nowhere to be seen at OccupyPhilly, at least in an official capacity.  There was a Society of Friends tent and a Unitarian/ Universalist tent, but that was about it.  Despite Christ's work feeding the hungry, supporting the poor and serving the marginalized, Christians weren't really around.  Even if the church can't support the Occupy movement itself, it surely can minister to the community there.  I heard from one of the folks at the Society of Friends tent that pastoral care needs were overwhelming and that help was needed.  I heard from community leaders how desperately more food is needed as well.

OccupyPhilly was a truly amazing experience, an experience of the Spirit working in a community organized around fighting economic injustice.  The people there (whether they knew it or not) were living out a vocation to feed hungry people and give a powerful voice to those who have never had one before.

Philly's Got the POWER!

Wow... I've had a real busy start to my second year at seminary.  Now that things have slowed down (a bit), I hope to write a few posts about what I've been up to.  What follows is the first and it will also be published in LTSP's The Seminarian.  Thanks for reading!

Early in the twentieth century, around 1901, Methodist pastor and composer Charles Albert Tindley wrote a hymn that would later evolve into one of the organizing songs of the American civil rights movement.  You may have heard of it... it was “We Shall Overcome.”  Over a hundred years later on September 25, 2011 the same organizing spirit was alive and well at Rev. Tindley’s old church at the founding convention of POWER (Philadelphians Organizing to Witness, Power and Rebuild).

As part of my field site placement with Lutheran Advocacy Ministries of PA I was lucky enough to attend the POWER convention that afternoon, and I’m very grateful I did.  On my way down to Tindley Temple United Methodist Church I expected a typical sort of organizing meeting with a typical sized crowd, but boy was I wrong!  Nearly two thousand believers from churches, mosques and synagogues all over Philadelphia were present.  Scanning from the upper balcony of Tindley Temple I saw folks of every age, race and economic class in community together, organizing for economic justice in the city of Philadelphia.

As I learned throughout that evening, Philadelphia is in desperate need of such justice.  As you read this article a quarter of our city’s residents face food insecurity.  Philadelphia has a 10.8% unemployment rate with over 40% of its adults no longer even in the work force.  Of those who have jobs a further 40% have incomes that fall below the federal poverty level.  At the POWER convention one woman, Kathleen Elmasry, spoke of her struggles to find a job in such a difficult environment.  Kathleen was laid off over sixteen months ago after working at the same orthopedics office for thirty-four years.  Since then she’s applied for over 1,200 jobs and hasn’t even been offered a single interview.  Now nearing the end of unemployment insurance, she recently began selling jewelry to make ends meet.

That night, I was blessed to witness the fruitful efforts of many different faiths coming together to organize in support of people just like Kathleen. POWER has made a specific goal of bringing 10,000 new jobs to Philadelphia by 2016.  Councilman Bill Green spoke at the event and put forward one idea to meet that objective. The city is planning a multi-billion airport renovation and Councilman Green suggested that at least half of the jobs coming from that project should go to Philadelphians.  Mayor Nutter, not willing to make any specific commitments, gave a less encouraging speech.

Regardless, it was a great privilege to see the Spirit at work amongst the people gathered for the POWER founding convention.  Inspired by word, prayer and song, I left knowing so much more about how advocacy and organizing are important aspects of the baptismal call to serve one’s neighbor.  It is also important to mention that many LTSP students, faculty and alumni were at the event.  If you’re interested in finding out more about POWER, check out their Facebook Page or their national affiliate’s website at www.piconetwork.org.

God's peace,

Dustin