I stop by Domino’s on my way to church. It’s Friday night at 9pm. When I get there I meet one of our young adults, and we walk to the corner of Cedar and Riverside. A plastic table is already set up with a kettle of tea and a warming bag to hold the pizzas. Just cheese, no meat, Abdi told us when we offered to bring them. It’s what the guys prefer.

Abdi Mukhtar is the founder of Daryeel Youth. Daryeel means “care” in Somali. Each Friday night, even in the coldest winter, Abdi shares chai tea and pizza with young men in our neighborhood who are most vulnerable to drug use and violence. Weekend nights at the corner of Cedar and Riverside is where Abdi had seen the most harm. So weekend nights at that corner is where he sets up.

Abdi knows everyone that night. Not just by face and name, but by their backs, a full block away. He calls out greetings, offers a slice to a passerby or a whole box for a group of friends. He is here to build trust. With him is a crisis counselor, who talks with the young men who stop at the table. He hands out his contact information along with refills of tea.

I ask Abdi more than once if our presence as guests is going to deter the guys from coming by. And he tells me, more than once, that we are welcome. Neighbors joining Daryeel to hand out pizza is a sign that we stand together, he says. It’s a sign that we care.

Trinity Lutheran Congregation is the only remaining Christian community in the largely Muslim, largely East African Cedar-Riverside neighborhood. By virtue of its surroundings, almost everything Trinity does is interfaith (except on Sunday mornings). We take joy in being part of the neighborhood.

I had met Abdi through various community events and meetings in my first year at Trinity. Pastor Jane knew him well as a leader committed to the neighborhood. But when the Riverside Innovation Hub (RIH) invited Trinity’s young adults to listen again with care, we heard Abdi’s story with new ears.

The public church framework, as shared by RIH, led our young adults through a careful process. We identified listening posts and asked questions in our community and within our congregation (“What are the hopes and joys in this place, what are the sorrows?”). We discerned with the help of our innovation coach and color-coded sticky notes (“What are the overlaps, where are the gaps?”). Data turned into themes, themes turned into stories, and stories turned into partnership (and pizza).

The public church process helped Trinity grow not by offering fixes or changes to our ministry, but by helping us to listen with new ears, and with greater intention, to our neighbors. Getting our heads into public church meant living more fully into the gifts that God has already given us, and into the place where God has planted us.

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This blog is the second in a series of stories of transformation from our congregational learning partners. We hope these stories illustrate the larger story of our project as we promote another��learning partnership opportunity.��

When we first started conversations with Riverside Innovation Hub, we could hardly have imagined the depth and variety of challenges that would face our congregation and our society in these past few years; but the insights and collaborative support we received through our partnership could not have come at a better time.

In the initial stages of the process, the public church framework offered clarity and a healthy challenge as we discerned where the Spirit was calling us. Their early enthusiasm was additional confirmation that our desire for a regenerative reset of our relationship with the land itself was an idea that could catch imagination and spark passion with many. Church “as we’ve always done it,” we sensed, was increasingly failing to satisfy the hunger of our members and community. With the support of our RIH partners, we began our multi-year permaculture project.

Over the first winter, a group of lay volunteers met on a bimonthly basis to study the foundational principles of permaculture and the history of farming regeneratively as many of our cultures of origin have done for thousands of years, as well as all the un-learning necessary in many “modernized” countries.

After spending some time with accompaniment and interpretation- discovering the how and the why– we crafted a plan for the what, with the help of our friends at Ecological Design, the women-owned/run permaculture design firm behind the Frogtown Farm in St. Paul and the Tiny Diner Farm in Minneapolis, among others. Naming our neighborhood as including our grounds, Silver Lake at the bottom of our hill, and the Rice Creek Watershed (emptying into the much wider Mississippi Watershed) we were convicted to incorporate as many layered features as possible for water retention and erosion/runoff prevention. We also incorporated food and habitat for pollinators and other wildlife, as well as meeting spaces, herb and vegetable gardens, and play areas for our human members.

As we moved deeper into discernment, we began very literally removing things that needed to be sacrificed for new life to thrive- namely, all the conventional sod across our property… with a sod cutter and volunteers from our congregation- and reseeded with a clover/fescue mix that retains significantly more soil and water while also providing for pollinators. It took some courage to invest in trees and other perennials, as well as outdoor construction and 26 raised beds- taking it in faith that our congregation would share our vision and see it through.

Those early risks have provided for a very abundant harvest, both figuratively and literally. We’ve launched an herbalism business based on the botanicals grown on-site, and been able to provide medicinal teas to our community which have been especially helpful during this time of pandemic. Assembling and installing 26 raised beds this spring required an additional investment of volunteer labor; instead of being a bothersome chore, our people were delighted to have a safe way to fellowship and work together (outdoors, with masks and social distance).

This energy continued throughout the season as we grew, weeded, watered, and harvested together from the gardens. We also began an outdoor nature-based learning program for our children this fall, made possible by all our previous work. During this unprecedented time when indoor worship as an entire congregation has not been possible for nearly a year, we are grateful that we can continue to proclaim the good news as we live it each day, both among our members and to the wider community. Despite receiving some initial resistance (the beginning stages were not aesthetically pleasing), many neighbors have expressed gratitude for our project, some even sharing that, in this time of pandemic and growing fascist threat, walking to our grounds and witnessing all the life unfolding throughout the season has been a balm to their spirit.

We are extremely grateful to Riverside Innovation Hub for their visionary leadership and transformative partnership, spurring us on towards deeper love and transformative good deeds for the sake of the gospel in our community and beyond.

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I’ve been asked to respond to the question,��How has your��faith��community experienced transformation as a partner in the Riverside Innovation Hub?��I feel that any response to this question requires a two-part answer. Prior to the COVID pandemic, the work at St Luke’s was building momentum. We had a clear plan and goals for how we were continuing and expanding our work and partnership with RIH. PeaceCraft, the initiative that evolved from this, was very integrated into our faith community. The public church framework was becoming our��lingua franca,��or common language.��Then COVID hit and it felt like everything came to a screeching halt.

At first, there was a felt sense of grief and lament. We’d lost so much and initially struggled to find our way to next-steps. However, the public church framework of listening, discerning, and applying what we had learned helped us rise up from the ashes.

Despite not being able to enter a physical building during the time of COVID, it feels we have been spiritually resourced by RIH to find ways to connect with God and others outside of it. In fact, it has become very natural to turn our attention out and towards others. For example, when a homeless encampment appeared around Lake Nokomis in summer 2020, some members of our community supported and worked with local groups who were providing food and resources for families. They felt that this work and our mission values inter-connected. I immediately recognized the public church framework playing out. This work was also immediately validated by our church as an expression of authentic Christian faith.

Finally, and as we look to COVID restrictions being lifted, we feel our new community is once again being drawn into the work of accompaniment, interpretation, and discernment. We’ve become curious. We are wrestling with the tension of programming vs innovation. Where it seems we have become too focused on programming, there is a restlessness and desire to turn our attention outside. We are finding ourselves existing in the thin-space between balancing the needs of the faith community and those of the neighborhood. We are also willing to ask why we are doing things. We are not rubber-stamping the old ways. In one sense, our partnership with RIH has led us to the idea that the work we do is never truly done, and also not necessarily measured by definite outcomes. Instead, we celebrate what has gone before and remain open to new movements of the Spirit amongst us.

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