our happy block
An uncared for parking lot can be a major pain for a neighborhood.
One such parking lot exists just down the road from my house on 82nd & Woodstock. A neighbor took note of how the parking lot was being used as a cutoff to get around a stoplight which was creating traffic safety issues for the neighborhood. In addition it was attracting unseemly elements of drug trafficking and prostitution. This neighbor decided to do something about it and after networking with neighbors, the church that owned the parking lot and writing for grants, Our Happy Block was born.
Through Our Happy Block, a large chunk of the parking lot has been depaved, ending its career as a street cutoff, and now this depaved space is being converted into a natural plant garden. I stumbled across the project a while back after hearing about a mural they painted on one of the buildings neighboring the parking lot. And after being inspired by the vision, it’s been exciting to get involved and invite the Sacred Roots community to be involved as well.
Having put in a number of hours on the project, it’s been incredibly moving to see what can happen when a number of neighbors work together to help out their neighborhood. Two Saturdays ago there was a planting party in which over 1000 native plants were planted all over the newly reclaimed space. I’ve had the joy to see quite visually the very quick progress in demeanor of a space that has become much more inviting and a joy to the neighborhood.
And I’ve been inspired meeting my new friend, Terah Beth (that neighbor I mentioned earlier) and many others who’ve been hard at work on this project. It’s been incredible to see what can happen when a neighborhood is brought together to take control of its own issues and it’s led me to thinking about something both for the future of Sacred Roots and the broader implications for the types of churches I believe in helping cultivate elsewhere.
You see, I believe there a numbers of people like Terah Beth that care about what’s going on in their neighborhoods and who can help lead these sorts of projects and there’s a number who just need the encouragement of people coming alongside them. There’s been a lot of encouraging discussion lately about church and our need to continually rediscover our rootedness in our neighborhoods and be engaged in these sorts of projects. However, it’s also quite easy for many of us church leader types to immediately jump into “what can we start?” and while sometimes this may be the case, many times we miss an opportunity to join beautiful Kingdom values type projects that are already happening around us.
In my last post, one of the things I pushed for is that to work towards seeing Christian communities emerge means spending more time listening than just coming up with a plan of how to bring the cool church to the neighborhood without being already immersed. And I suppose this is both a testimonial and a followup plea. Be all about loving your neighborhood and wanting its best. Just be aware that sometimes taking off our skinny jeans and putting on our carhartts also means not being in control but coming alongside projects that are already happening and just asking the question “how can I help?”
This can be a nerve racking process, after all part of the reason we all do what we do is because we want to see friends meet Jesus and it can be quite scary to hand over the control on something because you never know when you get to talk about why you care about doing what you’re involved in. But this doubt comes from a false belief that we must be in control of our situations and projects to be able to testify to the Jesus way. Jesus’ thoughts about his ministry and how we emulate him were quite different. I’ve come to serve, not to be served.
There are multiple little projects like Our Happy Block, already looking to accomplish the sorts of things we hope to see in our neighborhoods and we miss great opportunities to love our neighbors when we are concerned with being in control.
An uncared for parking lot can be a major pain for a neighborhood but it can also be a great opportunity to come together and actually love our neighbors.
