Ministry on the Margins at Suffolk: A Community of The Horizon
A Community of The Horizon
This is the most amazing thing that I have ever seen in my life! That was the thought I had that would soon become a belief worth sharing as I walked all 1,092 feet (about the height of the Empire State Building) of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. It was my first Navy deployment and I had never seen such a horizon as the sun kiss the forehead of the Atlantic Ocean. I could smell the Seabreeze in the air coupled with the sounds of birds and the spectacular view of dolphins playing in the mist.
Once more, I thought to myself: certainly, our God is an awesome God for bringing multiple elements in my line of sight at once. The scene was so rich in both grace and mercy that I could not help but wonder if oceans could see, would it see the people of God in the same manner?
Seeking the answer to this question would take me 15 years to find. But little did I know that it would take becoming the lead pastor of a small urban church during a pandemic to find the answer to a decade and a half old question.
As I drove to my newly appointed Church, I decided to take the long way so that I could learn the streets and see the people. I had lived in the city of Suffolk before, but not on this side of town. Very quicky, I realized that it was all new to me and the depths of that reality would soon reveal the distance between myself, the Church, and the citizens of Suffolk.
It became clear to me that this side of town was considered a historical district while the Northern side of the city was more suburban and developed. From experience, I knew that it would take some time to assess the needs of my congregation and even longer, the citizens. But since I had been formally trained in pastoral care and counseling as a Hospital Chaplain, I knew that the best way to assess a need would always start with the injury.
A patient who finds out they have cancer thinks about a wide range of concerns, one of them being finances. I took this and coupled it with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and proceeded with my assessments.
As I drove around, tears began to flood my eyes as I gazed upon some neighborhoods that scream socio-economic struggle. I drove a little further and witnessed affluent neighborhoods that flew the flag of socio-emotional struggle. Normally these two disparages would walk hand in hand and they did, just not in the way I would imagine. In research methodologies, we seek to find alarming information through the gate of the most discrete revealing.
As I gazed upon the horizon of the city, I saw that all the people had one thing in common and it was the fact that they all lacked care. Later that month, after settling in, I called a meeting with my Church leaders and shared my findings and together we produced an event where we would serve free food for an entire week to the entire community and we did.
During this week, we saw the community on the horizon, and they saw us on the horizon. Regardless of our backgrounds, economic status, or beliefs on the pandemic, the city, and the Church, like the dolphins, the birds, the ocean, and the sun stood upon the horizon together ending the community event where a man who was wearing an ocean wave on his shirt said: Pastor, all of God’s creation saw what your Church did today. In the middle of a pandemic, during a time where no one is seeing the other, we saw and cared for each other all today!
By: Rev. KJ Easley, M.Div.