A Wake-Up Call

This is an important year for studies on religious life in the U.S. From Kinnaman and Lyon's UnChristian, to David T. Olson's The American Church in Crisis, data is accumulating that business/ministry as usual is not a great strategy for most U.S. denominations and nondenominations.

The
new Pew study highlights the fluidity of commitment among the American
people of faith, and it raises important questions for church leaders
in at least three areas.

1. If congregations and denominations
are not connecting with people's questions, needs, and desires - people
are moving on. Old-fashioned denominational loyalty is gone. Church
leaders can complain about it, but they'd also better acknowledge it.
Now this fact could be used to advocate increased religious pandering
... a "give 'em what they want" approach that turns church leaders into
"purveyors of religious goods and services" (a damning turn of phrase
from the missional church folk) who are competing for share of the
religious market.

But it could also have a much more positive
effect: by convincing church leaders that blindly maintaining the
status quo is a losing strategy, the data can liberate them to ask
deeper questions like ... Why are churches here? What is our mission?
What is our core message? Does Christ's church have a mission, or does
Christ's mission have a church? How much can, and should, change in our
churches? What shifts in church history can guide us as we face this
sea-change in our religious environment? In other words, the new data
could challenge leaders to ask, not simply, "What do the customers
want?" but, "What does God want?" ... and not just "What do members
need from their church?" but "What does the world need our churches to
become, be, and do so that God's will can be done on earth as it is in
heaven?"

2. People are dropping out of church altogether. The
fastest-growing religious segment - especially among the young -
continues to be the unaffiliated. If the "church growth" question of
the 90's was, "How are we going to attract baby boomers to come back to
church services on Sunday?" the "church mission" question in coming
years might be, "How can our churches inspire younger generations to
live a new way of life as disciples each day of the week?"

3.
Old categories are blurring and old identities are diversifying and
fragmenting. The study highlights the simultaneous growth and
diversification of the old evangelical base, for example. As older
generations pass from the scene and the alliances they created lose
strength, who will help catalyze new movements and alliances? What will
their priorities and ethos be?

In light of the accumulating
data, it's become increasingly clear: we don't just need new answers to
old questions, but we need new questions as well.

Brian McLaren (brianmclaren.net) is board chair for Sojourners. He is in the middle of an eleven-city speaking tour you can learn about at deepshift.org.

What if... Compton's Transformation

Market Opening Draws Droves of Shoppers – And a Prince!

Residents say store featuring fresh, nutritious foods ‘couldn’t come soon enough’

Scores of shoppers who waited for more than an hour outside the new Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Feb. 7 fill the aisles once the store opened its doors to the public for the first time. —Compton Bulletin photo by Allison Jean Eaton

By Allison Jean Eaton
Bulletin Staff Writer

COMPTON – The city’s new Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market opened its doors last Thursday to a throng of eager shoppers, most of them from the surrounding neighborhood, and a member of the British Royal Family.

His Royal Highness Prince Andrew, Duke of York kicked off a U.S. visit with a stop at the new location off the intersection of Central and Rosecrans avenues, the latest in a rash of stores the U.S. arm of British retailer Tesco is opening in California, Arizona and Nevada.

The prince is currently touring British business ventures in the United States in his capacity as the United Kingdom’s Special Representative for International Trade and Investment.

“If I was going to want to shop on a regular basis, I’d rather come to a store this size,” said Prince Andrew after comparing large Tesco supermarkets he’s seen back home to Fresh & Easy’s smaller size and wider aisles.

Despite what Dr. Kofi Sefa-Boakye, the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency director, described as a “fast tracked” project, the store billing itself as a one-stop shop for fresh, nutritious and wholesome food products was a long time coming, according to some residents.

“It’s about time they opened a store like this here… I am so excited about this store being here. I could not wait – the day couldn’t come soon enough,” said Sharron Bryant, 48, who lives around the corner on 131st Street.

Bryant and several other women pushing shopping carts with cherry-picked selections took a little time out from shopping to comment on what a relief it is to finally have a store like Fresh & Easy in Compton.

“In these areas like this… people think we don’t eat healthy,” continued Bryant. “Well, we do. It’s just that the ones that do eat healthy go outside. We have to go far away to get to a Trader Joe’s or a Whole Foods or a Bristol Farms or something like that. But now we have it here locally, and it’s excellent,” she said.

And it means more sales tax revenue for the city, chimed in longtime resident Erma Clements, who lives six blocks from the new market. She and shopping companion Melanie Franks said they’re used to traveling all the way to Gardena, Manhattan Beach or El Segundo to access fresh and for the most part organic and preservative-free foods.

Sefa-Boakye said this new market is likely the fastest project he’s ever worked on in his years of community redevelopment experience, and it proves that Compton “is at the head of the pack in urban resurgence.”

“It was about October or September (of 2007) that we got the news” that the market chain had decided to locate here, he said. And now, just a little more than five months later, what was a vacant dirt lot littered with used tires has been transformed into a an eco-friendly structure that inside offers nutritious foods to an underserved population.

The entire northwest corner at Rosecrans and Central has been redeveloped over the past five years, Sefa-Boakye said. Just in front of Fresh & Easy sits Rite Aid, and next to that is Starbucks and T-Mobile. Prior to these developments, Sefa-Boakye said the area lay blighted and run down, an eyesore to the neighborhood.

The city “fast tracked” the project, speeding up the permitting and inspections process to get the store to residents as soon as possible and to give the city a competitive edge in attracting additional economic development.

Sefa-Boakye explained that if the city can offer companies the ability to get a project done from start to finish in a matter of months, Compton will become more attractive to prospective businesses interested in setting up shop in the southern Los Angeles area.

“The location they (Fresh & Easy) selected wouldn’t have been better,” said Sefa-Boakye. “Because this northwest quadrant, which includes Atkinson Brickyard, is one of the sleeping giants which eventually is going to transform the community of Compton.”

What’s more, the store rings true as a sign of urban revival here.

“Fresh & Easy is going to put Compton straight on the map,” he continued. “Why? Because urban communities are currently being realized as the best place to do business. And Compton is the ‘Comeback Kid’.”

Which hasn’t always been the case.

2nd District Supervisor Yvonne B. Burke said she’s struggled for years to get supermarkets and major grocery chains to open stores in her district, but to little avail.

“We’re so pleased to have this facility here – it makes such a difference. I know that everyone assumes that there is a grocery store in everyone’s neighborhood where you can get good produce and where you can get all the things you need to raise your family. Unfortunately, that is not always the case in my district,” said Burke. “Too often when people go into the grocery store, the produce is at its end of its shelf life, and you cannot get a full array of the kind of products you want.”

Mayor Eric J. Perrodin echoed Burke’s comments.

“This means so much to us here in the city of Compton,” he said. “We’ve been trying to get a full service supermarket that offers healthy food for so long here in the city of Compton.

“We had to get somebody from Great Britain to come over here before we could get our own Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, so thank you, Great Britain.”

A Great Compton Work Day on Feb 2nd!

IMG_5674.JPG
Originally uploaded by urbanfocus

A Great Compton Work Day on Feb 2nd!

"I feel like we have a new house!", said homeowner Alisha from Rose Street. She cried, giggled, laughed and did alot of hugging over the period of the day.

Over 50 volunteers, mostly from West Coast Sand and Gravel in Buena Park, scraped, painted, plastered, dug and landscaped Alisha and her family's home. "We have been here over forty years and we have never seen anything like this", she exclaimed. She expected a three or four painters to do a little bit on the house, but she became quickly overwhelmed when she saw all the vehicles and volunteers arrive bearing paint, ladders, rollers, etc.

This past Saturday, over 600 volunteers participated in the most recent Compton Intiative Work Day, making it the most populated work day so far! One hundred and sixty people drove up from Saddleback Church in south Orange County for the day, along with forty staff and college students from Campus Crusade for Christ, as well as over fifty students from Biola and University California at Irvine.

Six Compton churches including, Faith Inspirational Missionary Baptist Church, Citizen's of Zion Missionary Baptist, The Salvation Army- Compton Corps, and New Birth Foursquare Church had close to 200 volunteers represented.

Thirteen different sites were worked on, most of which were on Alisha's street, Rose close to Faith Inspirational Missionary Baptist Church. Two of those locations were churches, Faith Inspiratonal and Martin Temple, but the others were private homes like Alisha's.

See some of the days pictures from the Feb. 2nd Work Day by clicking here http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanfocus/sets/72157603844189992/

Don't forget the next work day, March 29!