Community

“During our orientation at the beginning of the week, you talked a lot about ‘the community’ at The Mustard Seed and in the inner-city. You referred to people here as ‘community members’. At that point, I thought you were just trying to refer nicely to clients of a soup kitchen. Now that I’ve spent a week here, I’ve realized there really IS a community here- and people here really look after each other.”

“I’ve lived in my middle-class suburban neighbourhood for almost 20 years, and I still can only tell you the names of 2 or 3 of my neighbours. After spending a weekend at The Mustard Seed and in the inner-city, I am amazed at how everyone seems to know each other, and in awe of the community that exists here.”

These are just two of many comments that I’ve heard from visitors to The Mustard Seed who came in to the inner city expecting something much different than what they experienced. In many ways, there is an amazing community here! People in our neighbourhood are full of strength, tenacity, and care for one another- people know one another deeply.

At the same time, I don’t want to romanticize the community in Edmonton’s inner city- it is broken, unhealthy and dysfunctional in many different ways. And yes, there are definitely people for whom this is not a good community to be part of- it is too full of triggers and stress. (But isn’t most of this true for the communities any of us belong to?)

However, it has been suggested that The Mustard Seed is a place where we want to help people and then send them off, hoping never to see them here again- praying that that they have found somewhere else to belong. Like I said above, this is certainly true of what we should hope for some people. But I don’t think it is- or should be- true for everyone. There is a community here, one that has been and is a lifeline for countless people. Let’s continue to work on ways to empower people to strengthen their community, to make it a healthier place to be, rather than simply assuming there is somewhere better for them to belong. God calls us to participate in restoring and renewing the world- one broken community at a time.

Do you agree? Disagree? Comments welcome!