Living in Place
For the next three weeks I want to flesh out the three emphases that make up Grace Downtown's goal to be inwardly growing and outwardly serving. This first one is reflected in our larger purpose to be In and For the City--Living in Place.
In the New Testament, the Church is qualified in one of two ways, either "of God" or of a place: "to the churches of Galatia", "to the church of the Thessalonians", etc. This shouldn't surprise any reader of the Bible because it's filled with all those hard to pronounce places! The scriptures are just full of references to real places. Why does God bother to mention that he appeared to Abraham at the oaks of Mamre or that David was anointed at Hebron or that Jesus was crucified on Golgotha or that the Church began in Antioch? It is because God cares about Place. He created the place as a habitat for us to develop and cultivate. When sin enters the place we see it through things like pollution or stripping of resources. As God acts in redemption it includes the place, "You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you" (Isaiah 62). And when Christ returns he will restore the place, "Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And then I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man'" (Revelation 21).
In other faiths there may be a sacred place (or two) but often little emphasis upon place. The spirituality is disembodied and dis-placed. The Christian faith is a real world religion, so much so that God himself, in the person of Jesus Christ, entered the place. The late theologian Eugene Peterson said, "God’s great love and purposes for us are all worked out in messes in our kitchens and backyards, in storms and sins, blue skies, the daily work and dreams of our common lives."* Amen. Aside from what theologians refer to as the intermediate state (when believers die and their spirit goes to dwell with the Lord) we will always be "placed". Either on earth or for all eternity on the New Heavens and Earth.
This is why Christians should be thoughtful and missional concerning where God has placed them. Why we at Grace Downtown should bother to learn the story of our place (D.C), care for it and not use it and actively seek it's prosperity: "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare" (Jeremiah 29.7). Fulfilling the two great commandments to love God and neighbor means loving our place. When my neighbor sweeps or shovels my sidewalk I feel loved. I'm reminded of something one of our founding elders, Bob Baldwin, wrote, "A mobile population produces people (1) less focused on long-term problems of their community (“I will be gone soon so why bother?”), (2) less inclined to invest the time to cultivate new relationships (“It takes too long to develop really good friends.”), and (3) more consumer oriented (“How can I benefit from my current situation?”). The Church emphasizes the opposite: the importance of relationships, God and neighbor, and Place.
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*quoted from Eugene Peterson's Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology