Dear People of St. James’,
Even before I arrived at St. James’ back in late February, I had heard about the good work of Freedom School Austin and the astounding numbers of Reading Buddies mentoring kids at Norman-Sims and the high-quality care being provided by Child, Inc., the HeadStart program on our campus. I soon learned about the Raise-a-Racquet event which brings families from the same communities together. St. James’ is a community that knows that education and justice are inextricably connected to each other, and you have stood with teachers, students, and parents as advocates for a more just education system.
Soon, we were asking together: What if the relationships with families built by Freedom School Austin were supported and nurtured all year round? In many ways, the community that we nurture at St. James’ on Sundays and throughout the week is a freedom school. Together, we build spaces in which we learn to be vessels for the liberation of one another by hoping for each other, praying for each other, and loving one another. What if we could connect these different outreach efforts working within the same school ecosystem to build communities of connected families, that are, in that broader sense, freedom schools? What if we could shift our paradigm of outreach from service delivery to building welcome tables, missional communities made up of families who are there for one another? Such a shift does not mean leaving the current work behind; it would just be grounded more deeply in the community.
Eric Kennedy, Executive Director and President of Welcome Table, Lizzie Cain Clark, and I presented a plan for a three-year experiment in community-building to the diocesan Strategic Mission Grants Committee, and it caught their imagination. I am delighted to announce that we have been awarded the full amount of the grant, $25,000/yr for three years.
What does this mean? It means that between the Strategic Mission Grant and your generous response to the 2020 pledge drive, we will have the capability to take our Director of Family Ministries to full-time faster than we had imagined was possible. It means that we will be digging our roots more deeply into this east Austin community, and we will be looking for partners who share in our imagination and want to put their capacity for relationship-building to work for the purpose of building liberating community. It means that the typical boundary between our outreach and our inward-looking children’s ministries will become a bit more porous. It means that our St. James’ community will be challenged to rethink our assumptions about who is part of our St. James’ family, and we will have to learn some new ways of being family to those we encounter.
I don’t know about you, but I am excited about this new adventure in ministry. If this sparks your imagination and you are wondering how you might offer yourself to this work, come talk to me or email me. In the meantime, we celebrate!
Rev. Eileen
