The FaithX Project

Strategic Missional Consulting

FaithXperimental Spotlight: Grace Cafe, Valdosta, GA

by Ken Howard

The Grace Cafe college group on the porch of Louttit Hall during the 2018 Spring Semester.

Grace Café is an innovative college outreach ministry to students at Valdosta State University (VSU), sponsored by Christ Episcopal Church, Valdosta, Georgia.  

Also known as the Christ Episcopal Church College Ministry, Grace Café is a place of fellowship, prayer, and service. It is also a place at which VSU students of limited means can work in exchange for housing. The program currently has nine college students who live on the church campus and work 20 hours a week running Grace Café, helping with the Thursday Dinners, and serving in other areas of ministry at Christ Church.

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The “winners” at the recent UMC convention say the Bible condemns same-sex relations. But are they right?

By the Rev. Ken Howard

The General Conference of the United Methodist Church met in special session late February, in St. Louis, Missouri, to debate the denomination’s stance on same-sex relations. There were three proposals on the floor:

  • One would rescind the UMC’s ban on LGBTI clergy and same-sex marriage.
  • The second, the so-called “Traditional Plan,” would strengthen and aggressively enforce the ban and expel clergy who were openly gay or performed same-sex marriage.
  • The third was an attempt to find middle ground between the first two.

When all the votes were tallied, it was clear the proponents of the “Traditional Plan” had won the day. But was it the right decision?

In the debates that preceded the vote, the traditionalists claimed that theirs was the only proposal that followed the clear teachings of the Bible. They also claimed that those who opposed their position and advocated the full inclusion of LGBTI people were rejecting the authority of scripture and abandoning biblical morality in order to pursue liberal Western sexual ethics.

But is this true? Does the Bible really teach that same-sex relations are an abomination? And is any other point of view just another form of syncretism with culture?

Or did they get it wrong?

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MapDash Evangelism Project: Valdosta, GA

Bishop Russell Kendrick and the Central Gulf Coast team

On February 27, the bishops of the Episcopal Dioceses of Georgia and Central Gulf Coast and their leadership teams gathered at the Grace Cafe, a ministry of Christ Episcopal Church, in Valdosta, Georgia, to continue their work on the MapDash Evangelism Project. The session was led by the Rev. Ken Howard, executive director and principal consultant for FaithX Strategic Missional Consulting. The MapDash Evangelism project is funded by an evangelism grant from Province IV of the Episcopal Church. MapDash for Faith Communities is a product of Datastory, a GIS firm in Baltimore, Maryland. MapDash is collaborative creation of Datastory and FaithX.

At this third working meeting of the project, the bishops and their teams began mapping out living missional strategies for their respective dioceses. A living missional strategy is different from a strategic plan in that a strategic plan tends to be a highly-structured, multi-year document, while a living strategy is emergent, model based, and adaptive.

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FaithX & Datastory at New Story Festival

Just a little over a month from now, FaithX and Datastory will be participating in the New Story Festival, which is being held on March 29-31 in Austin, Texas.

The New Story Festival is a new annual gathering for community, creativity, and the common good: a bold experiment for a better world, embodying imagination, spirituality, social action, and playful connection – defined above all by the practice of love.

Ken Howard of FaithX and Matt Felton of Datastory will be program presenters and will also be exhibiting MapDash for Faith Communities. FaithX and Datastory are also festivals sponsors. And because FaithX is a partner organization, those who register through the FaithX portal get a $20 discount.

As the Festival website says, the world runs on stories – the narratives that fuel the ways we live in this world and relate to one another. Our stories can liberate or oppress, encourage reconciliation or further separation, inspire new life or even bring death. But when we become conscious of our stories, we can begin to change them. Believing that “the best criticism of the bad is the practice of the better,” the New Story Festival seeks to lead us into a better story – one that encourages growth and liberation, healing and harmony; a story where the downtrodden are uplifted and everyone is included.

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FaithXperimental Ministry Spotlight: The Stepping Stone Gathering

Courtesy: The Rev. Peggy Bryan

From time to time, our FaithXperimental Spotlight series shines a light on particular faith-based communities or organizations that are engaging missional opportunities or challenges in their neighborhoods in innovative and experimental ways. Today’s spotlight is focused on an innovative ministry partnership in San Jose, California.

The Stepping Stone Gathering is a ministry partnership between St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Saratoga, California, and Grace American Baptist Church, a radically-inclusive Baptist church in downtown San Jose.

Their weekly ministry starts with a Sunday morning worship service at Grace American Baptist (shown above), which is then repeated in the afternoon at the county jail (Santa Clara County Elmwood Correctional Facility, Men’s Dormitory Unit). Both services involve Jail and Reentry Worship Team members and clergy from St. Andrew’s and Grace members join in the morning worship. Upon release, formerly incarcerated men come to the service at Grace where they are welcomed by friendly and familiar faces and tangible reentry support, including groceries, clothing, transportation, and more.

Every Sunday, 50 or more men meet for worship in Stepping Stone Gathering’s worship service at the jail. Meanwhile, as many as 20 reentering men, along with their families and members of St. Andrew’s and Grace gather together for worship and support at the Stepping Stone Gathering’s urban church. The ministry maintains an active communication network via a Google Group and Facebook Page.

Renee, 41, made the rounds between prison and jail for the past 17 years since his early 20’s. At his last stint in jail he responded to an invitation to join the first jail-based Education for Ministry (EfM) class in the country, facilitated by Saint Andrew’s mentors. He proudly graduated from Year 1, was released, and six months later celebrated another graduation from rehabilitation, after which Renee and his mom Clara were confirmed and joined Saint Andrew’s (see their picture above with Bishop Mary Grey-Reeves). On Sundays he gets up early to participate in the Stepping Stone service, then doubles back, picks up his mom, and attends the midmorning service at Saint Andrew’s. Renee currently serves on a parish committee that reviews and awards grants to outreach agencies and is organizing an IBIY (I Believe in You) team to join the 545 mile LifeCycle ride to end AIDS.

“I have never been part of any church community,” says Renee, “but since those very first days when I hesitantly signed up for the EFM class held in my jail unit and then accepting the invitation to come to Saint Andrews, I see what real community is. The support I need is always there and it inspires me to live into a strong Christian life.”

St. Andrew’s and Grace launched Stepping Stone’s Sunday morning reentry/recovery service in October of 2018 and is part of of a larger jail ministry, which has been in operation since 2014. The Jail/Reentry Ministry is led by the Rev. Peggy Bryan, whose position is fully funded by grants from The Episcopal Church and Saint Andrew’s.

For more information on this innovative and collaborative partnership, contact Peggy Bryan at pbryan@st-andrews.org and 1-408-679-0240.

The Rev. Peggy Bryan is pastoral associate at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Saratoga and spends much of her time in the community visiting with the recently released.

She is from Santa Cruz and Dinkey Creek, California and is a graduate of the University of Southern California. (“Go Trojans!”). Peggy’s hobbies include swimming, hiking, and indie films. She also enjoys film festivals, Christian contemporary music, bluegrass music, Mexican Train, dancing, walking, social media, paying it forward, baseball, 49ers, and strong coffee. Her favorite Bible verse is Micah 6: 8 – “What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

Is your faith-based community or organization doing something innovative and experimental to engage or transform the neighborhoods and communities it serves? Write about it and send it to ken@faithx.net. You might find your story featured here.

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