Disciple: St. Andrew's Sticks With It
How a small church seeks new ways to deepen its connection to its neighbors
By Summerlee Walter
The people of St. Andrew’s, Haw River, know a thing or two about patience and perseverance. Over the course of the last four years, this small congregation has launched a series of creative efforts to build a relationship with the residents of the low-income, mostly Latino neighborhood that abuts the church property. Their story reflects the reality of Galilee ministry: identifying a need in the community, offering a possible solution that meets people where they are, cultivating a willingness to step outside of the church doors and stay there for awhile, and practicing the spiritual discipline of patience.
The church’s relationship with its next-door neighbors began with a community garden – nothing fancy, just an unused field and a hybrid sign-community bulletin board constructed of compressed wood and hand-painted with the words “Community Garden Sponsored by St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church.” The garden, however, served as an invitation, a reason for the people who drove by the church building every day to stop and finally step onto the property.
From there the relationship began to grow, slowly, but enough for the people of St. Andrew’s to invite the neighborhood children to a summer program in 2014. Through those new relationships, the church discerned yet another way to serve their neighbors: an after-school tutoring program.
BEING GOOD NEIGHBORS
Instead of getting bogged down in elaborate plans, the church acted quickly because, as vicar the Rev. Miriam Saxon put it, they had “made that connection and wanted to continue to be good neighbors.”
“We needed to go ahead and figure out dates and times and who could be here in those afternoons because school was going to get started and they would get behind without our being able to help them.”
That fall, a small group of volunteers set up shop at a picnic table next to the community garden. They knew parents would be more likely to allow their children to receive tutoring if the parents could monitor their children without needing to enter the church, and the table was clearly visible from most houses in the neighborhood. The program is an invitation in the truest sense of the word; neighborhood children of all ages bring their homework, whatever it covers, and volunteers from St. Andrew’s work with them to figure out how to complete it.
“We’re doing this totally on a shoestring,” the Rev. Jan Lamb, deacon at St. Andrew’s, explained. “There was not a dime spent in order to set this program up. We have volunteers and we have volunteer materials, and mainly what we have is the children’s homework.”
That spirit of being up for anything did not go unnoticed. One day, the grandfather of one of the tutees arrived with his own homework: citizenship paperwork.
“It was a great thing for us because we realized [our neighbors] actually trust us now,” Saxon said.
Although the people of St. Andrew’s saw signs of their deepening relationship with their neighbors, they still struggled to make inroads with the parents of the children with whom they spent time each week.
“We have a great connection with the kids, but not the adults,” Saxon said, “but we keep looking for ways to invite them in.”
That persistence paid off when a new family, recently arrived from Mexico, walked across to the churchyard during a parish workday. Serendipitously, the person they approached, the Rev. Caleb Tabor, vicar of St. Cyprian’s, Oxford, spoke Spanish.
“By the grace of God, they asked the person who could understand them if we ever held Eucharist in Spanish,” Saxon explained. The answer was not currently, but soon.
BRANCHING OUT
St. Andrew’s ultimately decided to hold a monthly bilingual service so people from the parish could be part of the new worshiping community and meet their neighbors. It is a model used throughout the diocese by St. Cyprian’s, Puerta Abierta and Iglesia de la Guadalupana, among others, and it is effective in bridging cultural and linguistic gaps to unify parishes.
Saxon, in consultation with Tabor and the Rev. Audra Abt, diocesan missioner for Hispanic ministry in Greensboro, decided to begin with a trial service during Lent, posting notices on the community bulletin board by the garden and sending invitations home with the children in the tutoring program. One family attended the Lenten service, and another walked over to participate in an outdoor stations of the cross Abt led on Good Friday. Another neighborhood family came to hunt for eggs on Easter morning.
Saxon understands why families from the neighborhood may be hesitant to attend St. Andrew’s.
“Families know the back door [of the church] but have never been in the front door, so there’s a barrier,” she said. “You can’t see in through the doors out front, so that can also be intimidating if you’re already nervous.” To that end, St. Andrew’s will hold its May bilingual service outside. They’ve already posted a notice on the bulletin board in Haw River’s post office, and they plan to distribute brochures in the local tiendas and leave notices on mailboxes.
“We know the need is there, but we haven’t figured out how to connect it yet,” Saxon explained.
She keeps the church’s growing pains in perspective. Although St. Andrew’s has a successful track record of reaching into the neighborhood with the community garden and tutoring program, Saxon recognizes that the church’s newest ministry will take time and patience to grow.
“I have great hope for this, but we just are at the very, very beginning,” she said. “I keep praying for the courage to be persistent.”
Summerlee Walter is the communications coordinator for the Diocese of North Carolina.
Tags: North Carolina Disciple
