Worship locally, eat locally?

In the Milwaukee area, several churches are a drop-off point for CSAs. That would be a good starting point. (On the other hand, the couple big ones I'm aware of involved like this are UU "churches" . . . )

know that this is a little off topic, but the words "worship locally" put me in mind of something I would love to see.

Used to be that people would go to a church in their immediate neighborhood. They would plabt themselves in their immediate community and worship with their neighbors. This would have been particularly true of Anglican and Roman parishes especially in the old world and probably still is to some extent. Basically, the area or community you lived in determines the place where you worship. I'm not sure how much of that carried over to the new world and the religious marketplace that was created here, but I am hoping that you get the concept anyway.

Now I realize that many people don't have the option to go to the nearest local church. Many in my denomination are forced to travel long distances to find a suitable parish. For the Orthodox, any parish at all might be miles away. I understand the problem.

But here is what I wish would happen and I think it might be doable (and even compatible with the topic of this post) I would like to see people who do live within 10 min minutes of their church to make a commitment to stay in that community and in that church as long as they live in that city and can worship in that church in good conscience.

I think that we as a society move around too much. We are losing sight of the idea of planting ourselves somewhere, anywhere. I think this has two major drawbacks which can be clearly seen when you look at what is an all too typical case.

You have a young couple who start out their married life somewhere in the city. They attend a church, start having kids. Then after a few years, they pick up and move out to the furthest new burb. They leave behind the old and yes also, all too often, the non-English speaking immigrant. The result is a kind of balkanization of those left behind, not because the groups left behind can't get along, but because the young of all these communities don't stay long enough to raise their families and plant the next generation in the same place so that these separate groups can grow together. Instead the community keeps dispersing ever farther outward. The churches of the more developed city areas also start dying out and are soon unable to mount much assistance to the poor and needy who are left behind due to lack of resources.

This constant movement outward not only hurts the community and the local church (esp the small to midsized ones), it hurts the environment. People have to drive further and further to get from their home to their job. If they really like their former church they may drive tens of miles back into the city on Sundays.

Why can't we just stay? Why can't we revive the idea of a community church as well as a community garden? Would it really take anything more than some people simply deciding to pay the cost and buck the trend?

ok, so that's the end of today's sermon. What do you think? Do these two ideas have any merit as a package?

It might be nice if people stayed put, and indeed, some people say Manhattan places less burden on the environment per capita than a suburb. (For example, the surface -to-volume ratio of an apartment building is much less than a single-family house, so it's cheaper to heat and cool per capita.)

Married people with kids leave cities for a number of reason: safety, schools, housing costs, the desire for a little yard, some trees and a garden. Safety and schools relates to race (and class), but we're not supposed to talk about it.

Just like ancient Rome, the city facilitates ephemeral pleasure-seeking and discourages marriage and children. They vote for Democrats, abortion rights, and government handouts to everyone.

With the rise of telecommuting, the internet, and FedEx, lots of people could work in rural areas and leave the conurbations entirely. I'm back to Rod's utopian quasi-monastic communities of married people.

Christ the Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Spring Texas outside Houston has a garden that parishioners volunteer at and give the food to shelters. I used to work there, a great parish

Vineyard Boise has a terrific program going that does all of these things (garden, soup kitchen, work program, etc).

Contact Pastor Tri Robinson at (208) 377-1477

Tell him Don (The Evangelical Ecologist guy) sent you.

The also have a vibrant environmental ministry, and are going solar last I heard.

gb/db

endyblue,

Thank you for your comments. I also didn't choose my current church because its minutes away from me, but I also just love that it is so close. I never have any trouble getting there and I can be very active as a result. The only drawback is that I don't get snow/ice days off from church. I like to joke that my priest would hire a dog sled if he had to in order to have Mass and so if he makes it then I'd better too since he knows where I live! haha. I can just imagine the look I would get the next time I showed my face :-)

But I digress. The idea that the wonderful community that I find within that church could also spread outward into the community and that the "familial" bonds found inside its walls could be strengthened by physical proximity in the surrounding neighborhoods as been my pet idea for some time. Being an Anglican I am keenly aware that I belong to a parish without a surrounding parish in the original sense. I am aware of how of parish-centered communities once formed back in the day. They were literally founded by the planting of a church and all the rest followed and that this was a very stable arrangement that worked for centuries. I don't doubt that this was also the case many times here in the US but here with all of our space and mobility, we have to make a more conscious effort to build the kind of strong church-centered communities that were once common and which we would love to see again.

Like yourself, I have never brought this up to anyone before. In my case, I haven't had the nerve to suggest to the people of my parish that if they should move house, then they ought to consider making a conscious decision to move closer to the church, not farther away.

I think your idea may be a bit more workable and less potentially off-putting than mine ;-) I think yours is a very good idea, one of those simple things that could easily work and accomplish some good. You should really work to make it a reality.

Ok, now I will say no more so as not to hijack Rod's thread any longer. Just some food for thought.

Englewood Christian Church
Indianapolis
http://www.englewoodcc.com/
317.639.1541
We have a community garden across the alley from our church building.
About 75% of our congregation lives within a half mile radius of the church building. Since we are in an urban area, we've had problems in the past with the theft of the garden's produce, but hopefully the food is going to feed people who need it... We've hoping that some of this summer's produce from the garden can be preserved (canned/frozen) for a coference on the Church and Agriculture that we are hosting in November (keynote speaker: Ragan Sutterfield, farmer and writer from Arkansas, a sort of Wendell Berry for the younger generations). We will be running a summer arts/gardening program for youth this year, so we hope to have more help in maintaining the gardens than in past years.

We also help to start and still work closely with a church-based CSA farm about 45 minutes outside Indy. We have a couple of beehives on our church building and several of our members who live in close proximity are raising chickens and rabbits on a small scale. Since so many of our folks live so close, we're hoping in the coming years to convert some of our largish parking lot into gardens/greenspace.

Chris Smith
Englewood Christian Church
Indianapolis

Rod: University Village, the University of Notre Dame's housing complex for graduate students with families, maintains a communal garden. Though there are no religious requirements for residents, most are Catholics or members of other religious traditions. I believe many of these residents connect their faith with their food choices, and the Village is largely, if unofficially, pervaded by a crunchy ethos. Also, given the presence of so many graduate and professional students, you can expect that many in the Village have interested, developed thoughts on the subject. This is not quite the "perfect source" your colleague mentions, but it might be an interesting community to examine. If she is interested, I can put her in touch with some good people.

My sister's church in Socorro, NM operates a community garden on its land and works closely with the local food pantry. Trinity Fellowship: http://jet38.hasweb.com/~trinity/index.html

I don't think that this work is very thoroughly integrated with the Sunday-morning preaching-- which tends to be more straight-from-the-Bible. But it's fully a part of their community ethos.

Somebody brought up that somebody who is Orthodox may have to travel a "fur piece" to get to their parish; this raises the "worship locally" issue in many respects.

All Saints, my parish, is the southernmost Orthodox church in the state of Indiana, at an hour south of Indianapolis. We've got some folks who commute between an hour and two hours to get here because they just don't have another option. As it is, even for people who live in Bloomington, All Saints is far away from the center of town, and it's because it's the best the parish community could do for the money they had.

Being a walking-distance church in a center of population density is *expensive*, in other words, and if you don't have the numbers to make it workable, good luck. The problem is, get far away from town, and you may be able to get more bang from the buck, but it's going to be a lot harder to grow. We've got Indiana University in our midst, and we've made it about as inconvenient as it can be for a student without a car to get to church -- even if buses ran more extensively on Sundays here, the closest bus stop is a mile from the church property.

It's kind of a "how do you get there from here?" problem.

Richard

I am part of the 100 mile church movement. LOL Just kidding, the closest church that fits our convictions is about 45 miles from our home. I figured if a church is less then a 100 miles, then we are doing pretty good.

As for a church garden. I think it would be more logical for the members to grow their own food and tithe it to the church. I think that was part of the tithe deal in scripture.

Nothing disturbs me more than churches playing environmentalist. The problem, is that what you hear from the pulpit should be "absolute truth" and almost NOTHING the environmentalist movement says is.

Thus, we see churches promoting political goals and political positions, often not factually supported. Does it make any sense at all to substitute a flourescent made in a poorly regulated country, in a polluting factory, using huge amounts of power generated likely by coal, then shipped across the ocean, to be sold at great cost by an importer, which then fails way too soon, or gets broken, polluting your house or landfill, or maybe even your yard with finely dispersed mercury?

This is what happens when JUDGEMENT IS ABANDONED and narrowly considered fad positions gain respectability. Did ANYONE, ANYWHERE actually work out the benefits of using CFL's? I've never seen any factual and comprehensive analysis of the downsides vs the claimed upsides. I have made my own. They will NEVER be used in my home again. There's zilch for risk using the old faithful filament. And BIG risk using those crappy CFL's.

More of this ill considered stuff is promoted by churches from the pulpit, and it should NEVER be. Our responsibility to be good stewards of the earth the Lord gave us to use and bless us is very much on topic and valid, but when the line is crossed and politics drives the message, the Gospel is diluted and discredited.