Written by Brenna Zeimet

As I reflect on this event, I am awash with a sense of expectant hope. As I wandered the tables and listened to conversations and sat one to one talking with folks, I was struck by how much has changed in such a short time. 

The conversations have changed from questioning what we’re doing here and what this is all about, to finding deep connection with the neighbor’s story and searching for a place in the narrative of the community. Where do we fit? What should we be paying attention to? Who do we need to be to meet our neighbor where they are today? It was no longer a skeptical questioning of this process or a planning session for new programs, this community has begun to fall in love with the people around them and that love is driving change in our worldview and our identity as the Church. We are changing as we adapt to the heartbeat of God for people.

I am excited about what this season of Interpretation will bring as we dig deep into the beliefs and assumptions that drive our actions. We will examine how our worldview brings hope and where it causes harm or puts up barriers to authentic and vulnerable relationship. These teams are ready to engage this intense and transformative work, and the health that will flow from this time will bring change to our churches and our neighborhoods.

At our last learning event Kristina Fruge shared a letter with our RIH community to open our space both online and in person. It was written with inspiration from her friend Lauren out in Spokane, WA. It was a beautiful way to open and close our event and there are invitations she names that are good reminders on how we can create places of belonging for all our neighbors. We share it with you in hopes that it will continue to nourish your soul as you embark on this work of being neighbor in the world in the midst of all the feelings of being human. 

Dear neighbor,

This letter is your invitation. You may have already RSVPed to show up today, but this letter and these words are your invitation to be present and to participate in this gathering – to give what you have to offer and likewise to receive the gifts of others in this community. 

You are invited today, neighbor, to show up with all of you. No need to leave anything at the door today.  Our time together will include exploring the artform of interpretation. This means we will take time to wonder about the realities that shape our understanding of the world around us. This means your experiences, your stories, the places you are from, the people who have shaped you, and the realities and relationships that are currently demanding your attention, truly matter. 

Are you bringing sadness with you today? You are invited. 

Are you bringing joy with you today? You are invited.

Are you bringing worry about the uncertainties of the future – of your own, your congregation’s, your community’s, this planet’s? You are invited. 

Are you bringing exhaustion or fatigue with you today? You are invited. 

Are you bringing compassion and hope with you today? You are invited. And if that’s you, don’t be shy to share a little with those of us who are running on low…

Are you bringing grief with you today? If so, you are invited. And may you be reminded that God’s presence is ever more close to you right now. So keep an eye out.

Each and everyone of you is invited to keep your eyes and ears and hearts open, expectantly on the look out for God’s activity among us. You are invited, just as you are invited to pay attention to all the parts of you that shape the lens you use to engage and understand the world. 

Thank you for saying yes to this invitation when it likely meant saying “no” to others. Welcome! Welcome to this time of sharing, of learning, of connecting. Welcome to this time of community. Your presence and participation today is what makes this community possible. And community makes all things possible. Yours truly, Kristina

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Accompaniment is the first artform of the Public Church Framework. It is the movement out into the neighborhood to hear the neighbors’ stories. In this movement, we learn to engage and listen to the neighbor for the neighbor’s sake. We’ve simplified and categorized accompaniment into four different practices that help us hear our neighbors’ stories. This blog post dives into the second layer of accompaniment, a prayer walks in the neighborhood. 

You can also read more about the previous layer in our last blog post – Becoming familiar with the Demographics of your neighborhood

Often congregations may begin at the top of the triangle and work down as a pathway to getting to know the neighbor. However, notice the proportions of each of the layers match the amount of time folks are encouraged to spend with each aspect. Demographic information begins to help us get to know things about our neighbors and may spark curiosity around things we want to learn more about, but to really get to know our neighbors, one to one conversations are at the heart of building real relationships.

The Prayer Walk in the Neighborhood

Written by Kristina Frugé 

The practice of a neighborhood prayer walk is inspired by the , a contemplative prayer exercise that guides you through an examination of your day as you prayerfully seek moments of desolation and moments of consolation.

Moments of desolation are times of sorrow, brokenness, fear, anxiety, etc.

Moments of consolation are times of hope, healing, courage, peace, etc.

You can use the lens of desolation and consolation as you walk through the neighborhood in which your faith community is located, asking God to show you the places of desolation and consolation in that neighborhood. The general outline of this activity includes walking through the neighborhood, paying particular attention to what stands out as consolation and desolation. Then, together, with people in your faith community, reflect on what you saw, felt, sensed and heard and map the locations of those places of consolation and desolation on a shared map. You will find some simple instructions at the end of this post to help you plan for a prayer walk. However, while this activity is fairly straightforward, there are some important aspects to be aware of as you begin.

In all of our efforts to become vital neighbors, we will find ourselves encountering people and places we don’t know or don’t know very well. We will encounter differences between ourselves and others – whether it be racially, religiously, socio-economically, generationally, or across so many other distinctions. We also expect to experience connection as we discover similarities – love of the same local business, or our pets, or our children, or perhaps share similar fears or longings for ourselves and our neighborhoods. 

Our differences and our similarities are beautiful gifts – they are what makes up a community and can contribute to the mutual flourishing of its members. However, when ignored, dismissed, threatened or undervalued, these similarities and differences can contribute to harm and heartache in our neighborhoods. Or to name it through the lens of the Ignatian Awareness Examen – they can cause much desolation. The systemic realities of racism, bias, and unchecked power dynamics play out in neighborhoods everywhere with devastating consequences. They also shape our individual frame of reference as we encounter new people and new places. Entering into the neighborhood on these prayer walks means we inevitably will bring with us some of our own biases and limited understandings. The best medicine to counter our own limitations, is to also carry with us a posture of humility, curiosity and compassion. 

Humility, curiosity and compassion work together as we participate in accompaniment and encounter our neighbors. On a prayer walk this means that what might first look like desolation to me, could hold a much bigger story. An empty, rundown playground might first appear like desolation, especially if it doesn’t look like the newer playground in my children’s neighborhood that our family visits regularly. But if I hold on to humility and remember my own assumptions are limited, I have room to become curious about what else is going on with this playground in this neighborhood. If I remain curious, I might eventually discover that during the evenings and on weekends, this park is a busy listening post where many local neighbors gather for pick-up soccer games and on Saturdays the picnic tables fill with seniors from the nearby apartments who play chess together every week. 

Similarly, if I observed a newly constructed apartment building getting ready to open with the promise of a coffee shop on the first floor, my initial thoughts may be of consolation knowing it means more housing for new neighbors and good coffee. Yet, if I’m a bit more curious about what this development actually means for this neighborhood, there is likely a lot more to the story. It’s possible that it could be new affordable housing, making it easier for people to access housing. Or, it could be that the apartments are luxury and not affordable to many and the new development may actually be pushing existing neighbors out of the neighborhood. The new coffee shop may threaten local businesses who have been in the area for years. 

These examples are offered to illustrate that participating in a prayer walk in the neighborhood near your church isn’t an end in and of itself. The work of accompaniment invites us into this sacred place of relationship building where the gifts of our similarities and our differences can be experienced. A prayer walk through our neighborhoods without humility, curiosity and compassion in the forefront could result in damage and harm. And most certainly can result in missing out on witnessing God’s activity in the neighborhood beyond our unexamined first impressions. 

A prayer walk is an invitation into greater curiosity about what God is already up to. The steps (or car rides!) you take through your neighborhood become a part of a journey towards more deeply understanding what your neighbors experience as desolation and consolation. It begins with some small humble steps, paying attention to what sparks your curiosity, and trusting that God is accompanying us as we step deeper into relationships in the neighborhood. 

Access to the .

Check out these to share with your context.

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Our new Thriving Congregation Learning Community has launched for the 2023-2025 RIH Journey. We have 3 cohorts, two local groups made up of Twin Cities Metro churches and one distance cohort made up of churches from coast to coast. We have a great mix of large suburban churches, smaller outstate churches and everything in between, giving us a diversity of experience and perspectives that will make our learning communities deep wells for growth and change.

Geoffrey Gill has returned as a congregational facilitator. He is at the helm of our distance cohort and will also facilitate one of our local learning communities. His passion for connection and deep relationship allows him to bridge geographical and cultural differences to create a welcoming space where churches from Massachusetts, Oregon, and rural Minnesota can find commonality and bond over the love for their neighbors. This distance cohort combines passion for racial justice in Oregon, innovative ministry to unhoused folks in Massachusetts, and community building across the small towns and cornfields of Southern Minnesota.

Geoffrey’s local cohort includes churches from St Paul to Plymouth who are passionate about doing work in their neighborhoods – amongst immigrants and politicians, for affordable housing and environmental justice, with students and community partners. These churches are joined by a team of mentors from Diamond Lake Lutheran Church in Minneapolis who will share the wisdom they gained as participants in our last round of RIH learning communities.

Brenna Zeimet has joined as our new cohort facilitator and she will be leading the other local cohort as well as piloting a new program for our alumni churches that helps them continue this work and weave the love for the neighbor into the culture of their congregations.

Brenna’s local cohort spans the Twin Cities Metro area, from Roseville to Eagan and St Paul to Bloomington. The churches in this group come from different denominations and neighborhoods, some are historic churches with a long legacy in their communities while others are young congregations who are growing and innovating in their new spaces. They all share an excitement for this work and a desire to live into being vital neighbors who make a difference in the people around them.

This learning community has proved to be passionate and excited to jump into this work. They already have great ideas and partnerships and seem to enter the space with a heart that beats for the neighbor. The feeling as we launch into this two year journey is one of hopefulness and anticipation. These churches are going to be forces for good in their respective communities and they can’t wait to get that ball rolling. For the full list of congregations, check out our RIH website. 

The post Meet the Newest Riverside Innovation Hub Congregational Learning Partners! appeared first on Riverside Innovation Hub.

On September 16th church leaders from across the country gathered in person and via zoom to embark on a two year journey towards becoming vital neighbors in their communities. Riverside Innovation Hub launched three cohorts of churches, two of them composed of local congregations from the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area, and one distance cohort that will meet online with congregations from Oregon, Massachusetts, and rural Minnesota. We’re inspiring the flourishing of our neighbors from coast to coast!

Cohort participants got the opportunity to learn from our own Jeremy Myers about the Art of Becoming Public Church; diving deep into the cultural impacts of postmodernism, church outreach models, and what our neighbors want and need from us in our post-pandemic world. Jeremy helped our congregations think through what the public church framework is and why it is important to engage our neighbors in a different way than the Church has before.

Next our congregations explored their “why” with the help of our program director, Kristina Fruge. She walked through what it means to engage in “place based vocational discernment in the public square for the common good”, and then invited congregations to talk about their own places and the common good they long to work for in their particular public squares. Congregations also heard from each of our staff members about our own personal “why” that drives us to do this work of investing in our neighbors and building relationships for the flourishing of others. Over lunch, cohorts talked with each other about their personal “why” and began to build relationships with the co-laborers that will walk beside them on this journey.

After filling up on pasta, breadsticks, and brownies, it was time to do some hands-on learning. Our Communications Guru, Ellen Weber, led the congregations in a fun game with the simple objective of completing a puzzle, with the caveat that your team was missing several pieces and had to go get them from the other teams. Fetching those stray pieces came with rules – some participants couldn’t move, others couldn’t talk, others had to sing every word or communicate as a 1950’s robot, still others could only give encouraging high-fives to aid their team in the task at hand. Our congregations played this game with gusto and had lots of fun.

Afterwards our participants shared about how it felt to do a task where they didn’t have all the pieces necessary to complete it and where they had to rely on their team and their neighbors to be successful. The insights from the crowd were brilliant. One team realized early in the game that they had the right pieces, but the wrong framework to put them in, so instead of trading pieces, they switched out their frame for one that their neighbors gave them and then everything fell into place.

Another team had a puzzle that one of the team members just happened to have at home and completes with their kids regularly. Because of that previous knowledge, they weren’t confused by the upside down tiger that didn’t seem to belong and finished their puzzle faster than the other teams. They talked about the power of privilege and knowledge of systems and how those little benefits can impact who wins and loses.

Others talked about their individual roles and how they got stuck on not being allowed to talk and felt like they weren’t very useful until they read the description of their role again and realized that they could walk from table to table which was a very helpful thing. They realized that focusing on what they CAN do instead of what they CAN’T do is how they will best contribute to the flourishing of the team. Our participants are some deep thinkers and our RIH team is excited for what will come of this journey as these cohorts engage new ideas and new perspectives on being vital neighbors.

To bring everyone back together after our game, Cohort Leader – Brenna Zeimet, walked our teams through the “how” of the next two years, emphasizing how we will show up in our cohorts and how our learning will take place across large events, smaller cohort meetings, team lead meetings, and online through our Riverside Collaborative space. Brenna emphasized the power of vulnerability and openness to change in this process, reiterating that “the energy you put into this journey is the energy you will get out” – how we show up matters to our success.

We finished the day off with a panel of RIH Alumni. Pastor John Pedersen of Diamond Lake Lutheran Church and Pastor Eric Howell of Shiloh Temple in Brooklyn Park talked to our teams about their experience and allowed the group to ask questions. Their insights were candid about the struggles the teams will face but also incredibly hopeful about the power of these concepts when they are understood and implemented. 

The launch was a wonderful experience for our congregations to get a glimpse of the work they will be doing and begin to build relationships with the cohorts they will journey with. The energy in the room was awesome and the RIH team left very excited about the next two years and the growth we see on the horizon.

The post The Journey Begins… appeared first on Riverside Innovation Hub.