Reformation in the park
God's transforming work through simple acts of love and service
After a couple months of living in New England as a Lutheran, surrounded by Episcopal and UCC friends galore, I was yearning for some Lutheran traditions.
So I packed my bags and headed to Providence, Rhode Island for the last weekend of October to celebrate Reformation under big trees in Burnside Park with some fellow Luther-lovers.
I immediately felt right at home. There was an abundance of red. We read the traditional Reformation scripture passages. There was a good deal of talk about this Martin Luther dude who some people were hearing about for the first time.
Though it looked very similar to Reformation Sundays of past, it hit very differently for me that day.
Church Beyond the Walls is an outdoor church that serves primarily unhoused and inconsistently housed people. However, that’s not its origin story.
To my surprise, the church began during the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2008, protests that began in New York City, but then spread across the country and eventually made their way to Rhode Island. Burnside Park quickly became the literal home for hundreds of Occupy Providence protestors.
In their protest, they were not leaving their campsites in the park to go to church on Sunday morning. Churches began to notice lower attendance and some missing faces in the pews.
A few faithful pastors responded to this new reality and decided to bring church to the park dwellers. They shared Word and Sacrament with the people fighting injustice whose lives and schedules didn’t accommodate indoor church, but who still desired and were worthy of God’s grace and love.
The pastors began with a couple one-off Saturdays before the protesters requested that they come back every week. Over a decade later, the church still gathers every Saturday afternoon in the same park.
After hearing this story from Pastor Lisa, I couldn’t ignore the innate reformational spirit of this worshipping community.
The founding pastors left behind what was unimportant so that God’s people could hear the Gospel in its fullness.
They empowered people to live out their vocation to protest and advocate, and proclaimed that God meets them and uses them in that important work.
They trusted that they were not the keepers of God’s gifts of Word and Sacrament, sharing them wherever God’s people gathered.
Over the past 16 years, Church Beyond the Walls has not moved. It has not changed its tactics or tried to expand or explored a new way of doing ministry.
What has changed is the people who come. The worshipping community is no longer a group of protestors, but now consists of the unhoused community who are the current residents of Burnside Park.
And that’s what I find so reformational:
How God takes a simple idea and grows it into a community of faith.
How God transforms churches into something totally new to reach God’s people.
And how God sustains these communities through change and transition and a new way of being together.
I’m sure the pastors in the beginning of Church Beyond the Walls were not expecting to jumpstart a new worshipping community or even that this church would be worshipping mostly unhoused folks in ten years.
But now, because of their simple and faithful response to the needs of their community, people who do not feel comfortable attending indoor church have a place to hear the Gospel every week. Every Saturday in the park, rain or shine.
That little faithful act to love and serve God’s people that turns into something bigger than we could ever imagine?
That’s how God works.
That’s reformational.
🪴
What simple act of love or service are you being called into today?
These reflections, experiences, and dedicated time for writing is thanks to the generosity of The Reverend Janet Karvonen-Montgomery Preaching Fellowship from Luther Seminary. You can learn more about Rev Janet and the Fellowship here.
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Thank you, Jenna. That's wonderful!