COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Our congregations must ask not only “Who are we?” but also “Whose are we?”. If we truly believe in the interdependent web of all existence, as I do, then we belong to the world as much as we belong to one another. We are bound up with all those around us, our well-being inextricably linked to theirs. In the framework of inescapable mutuality, there are no other people’s children. All children are our children. The deeper and wider our relationship nets are cast, the more fully we understand this reality. Community outreach and community building is not about helping other people, rather it is about learning from their struggles and connecting our own struggles to those of our neighbors. It is about relationships of mutuality, trust, and love.
Action in Austin
At the beginning of my ministry at Third Unitarian, we began a new Action in Austion team dedicated to community engagement in Austin, the neighborhood in which Third is located. Austin is located on Chicago's Westside, which competes with the Southside for highest crime rates and poverty levels. A recent study showed that people living on Chicago's Westside are deeply isolated by poverty, with some of the worst statistics in the United States. The Action in Austin team joined Community Renewal Society, a Chicago group dedicated to building power for social and economic justice. The team leaders got trained on organizing and strategy. I worked with them to organize our congregation for the Martin Luther King Jr day of action for social and economic justice in Chicago, and a quarter of our congregation participated. This year, we are
organizing a congregation-wide listening campaign to focus the congregation on and build commitment to a few clear action items. Once the congregation selects its focus areas, it will move together towards its social justice goals.
Community Garden
Austin is also a food desert: an area with little to no access to full grocery stores. Last year, Third Unitarian expanded its community garden to the vacant lot across the street. Community members are able to grow their own vegetables, and have a piece of outdoor space in an area full of apartment buildings. Third's Community Garden team worked with the Central Austin Neighborhood Association to build the new plots, which Third rents for $25/year, to cover the cost of the water used, when most garden rental prices are $70 or higher. A number of neighbors have plots in the garden, and members at Third are developing realtionships with their neighbors while growing food.
Austin Scholarship
For more than 40 years, Third Unitarian has been giving scholarships to high school students from the Austin Community. In May of last year, I led a ceremony giving out 24 scholarships to local students. You can read the Order of Service from that ceremony here. Prior to the service, I met with the students, played games with them, facilitated community-building exercises, and talked with them about the value of community in their first year of college. I also connected with alumni from previous scholarship years who returned to the church to encourage the next generation of young scholars from the neighborhood. Most of these young people are first generation college students, and it is encouraging to them to connect with other people who have gone through the process and succeeded. This photo is with one of the returning scholarship alumni, Henderson Banks, who is currently in law school.
