March 15, 2010 issue
Why don't we invite others?
By Hugo SaucedoPage:
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As an urban Mennonite, I wonder whether Mennonites are effecting any change in our communities.
Saucedo
My faith community in San Antonio is similar to many other urban Mennonite communities. Typically, our congregations are situated in economically depressed parts of town where the majority of our neighbors are people of color.
Our congregations are typically populated mostly by Anglo-Americans, sometimes with a sprinkling of other ethnic peoples.
Our congregations are typically drive-in congregations, meaning most of our attendees drive from outside the neighborhood to attend church. Rarely do any of our neighbors attend our Sunday services.
How can we truly claim to be a church that promotes peace and justice when we can’t even open the doors of our congregations to those who live around us?
In many cases, our congregations have a valuable opportunity to bring about hope in otherwise economically depressed communities.
We are in a position to bring economic development that can help our neighbors make ends meet.
We are in a position to bring peace to often violent communities that are longing for a way out of a violent existence.
We are in a position to bring the gospel to those who wish to live the Word, not just hear it.
Yet the simple act of inviting others is a foreign concept to us as Mennonites. We don’t mind visiting the places where brown and black people come from, but when it comes to inviting black and brown people from the neighborhood to our churches, we are suddenly cautious.
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Comments
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Amen, a great Challenge for us. One of the quetsions that urban Mennonite Churches face is to have a robust theology of Place and Nieghborhood when we all drive across town to find our Euro-tribal Mennonite Church.
A great example of how we could be is found in a book of stories by Hugo and Doreen Nuefeld "The North End Lives". Stories of their time in a inner city church/drop in center in Hamilton ON. They lived in the neighborhood, There we radical, Hospitable, embracing, risk taking incarnational and missional before we heard of the word.
Keep preaching it ...
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